A ironic bitter-angry voice picturing the human condition in this world as it was 22 years ago. Has anything fundamentally changed since its first publication? Of course not!

It is well researched with sources listed and an index. Of much I was aware. What he does not explicitly mention - if I remember correctly - is the ongoing corruption of language. Two examples:
In Britain at least, “passengers” are confined to private cars; those who travel on buses, trains, airplanes have all become “customers”: travelling is reduced to a money-transaction. The same fate suffer library users- former ‘readers’ -, visitors to museums, …
A second example from this year of the virus pandemic: The government advises to keep a 2-meter “social distance” as if ‘social distance’ and ‘physical distance’ (or simply distance) are the same. Do they want to fool us to believe that - once the pandemic passes - all the inhabitants of this ‘United Kingdom’ are equal? That classes and social distance do not exist in this class-ridden society? - [That can be said of all so called ‘democracies’ or are there any exceptions known?]

Altogether it makes an easy and „enjoyable“ read - if that can be said when confronted with this thoroughly depressing subject - just as you can enjoy the lively figures of skeletons and devils that populate the pages provided you can be sure they stay on the pages! (VIII-20)

Work by José Guadalupe Posada: https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m02vw34 ( )

Hace ciento treinta años, después de visitar el país de las maravillas, Alicia se metió en un espejo para descubrir el mundo al revés. Si Alicia renaciera en nuestros días, no necesitaría atravesar ningún espejo: le bastaría con asomarse a la ventana. Al fin del milenio, el mundo al revés está a la vista: es el mundo tal cual es, con la izquierda a la derecha, el ombligo en la espalda y la cabeza en los pies.

La escuela del mundo al revés

Eduardo Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America, describing 500 years of brutalization and exploitation of the peoples, lands and resources of Latin America by Europeans and North Americans makes for tough reading. Upside Down, A Primer for the Looking-Glass World, on the other hand, takes hard-to-swallow subjects such as racism, sexism, corporate manipulation, government betrayal, workplace dehumanization, brainwashing of children, environmental poisoning, systematic jailing, torture and murder and treats these subjects alternately with laugh-out-loud black humor, out-and-out sarcasm, and sharp steely needles of cynicism. Tell us what you really think, Eduardo! Modern culture and society as a bushel basket of rotten apples. Here’s a sample of some of those most rotten –- and, I’ve linked a few words of my own experience tasting these unfresh fruit.

The first chapter deals with education, which makes abundant sense since that is how we begin our human odyssey, as children imbibing our culture’s values. Galeano writes, “The looking glass world trains us to view our neighbor as a threat, not a promise. It condemns us to solitude and consoles us with chemical drugs and cybernetic friends. We are sentenced to die of hunger, fear, or boredom – that is, if a stray bullet doesn’t do the job first.” Fortunately, I grew up in a shore town where I spent many hours at the beach swimming and diving and at the ocean surfing. One thing I could never figure out: why were all the kids I knew armed to the teeth with cap guns, water guns, pop guns and even BB guns. When many of those same kids grew up and were sent to Vietnam, I started figuring it out.

In Eduardo’s chapter: Racism and Sexism 101, we read, “In the Americas and Europe the police hunt stereotypes guilty of wearing an unconcealed face. Every nonwhite suspect confirms the rule written in invisible ink in the depths of our collective conscience: crime is black or brown, or at least yellow.” I witnessed a white mass exodus fleeing North New Jersey for Central New Jersey after the 1967 Newark race riots. If you live in the US, there isn’t a hotter hot potato than race, both back then and now When it comes to race, all you have to do is rub people the wrong way ever so slightly and an avalanche of anger and rage can pour out.

One of personal favorite chapters: The Sacred Car. Eduardo begins by saying, “Human rights pale beside the rights of machines. Automobiles usurp human space, poison the air, and frequently murder the interlopers who invade their conquered territory – and no one lifts a finger to stop them.” Ain’t that the truth! Being a walker myself as a kid and adult, I’ve had an entire lifetime of playing dodgeball with cars. But I must admit one good thing: other than the occasional dog-owner walking doggie, I have the sidewalks pretty much to myself. Men and women in the US taking on the role of ‘the inside people’; in other words, padding from home to car to work to car to shopping mall to car back to home. An entire population of ass-ploppers, plopping posterior cheeks in front of the TV, at the computer, at the dinner table, at one’s desk at work, and, of course, behind the wheel of one’s car. The automobile as the noisy, dirty glue fitting all the pieces together. And, God forbid, if anybody has any doubts, check out the flood of TV commercials: an unending stream of handsome, happy men and beautiful, sexy women driving sleek, shiny new automobiles. Good times in the land of plenty.

On commercialization and brainwashing, we read, “Hours spent in front of the television easily surpass those spent in the classroom, when hours are spent in the classroom at all. It is a universal truth that, with our without school, TV programs are children’s primary source of formation, information, and deformation, as well as their principal source of topics for conversation.” As a boy I lived in a small house where the TV was king. My only escape was going off to college. As an adult I’ve never been a TV watcher. I suspect a good measure of my modest success in creative endeavors results from freeing myself from the boob tube. Come to think of it, why do I no longer hear people calling that silly thing the boob tube or the idiot box?

“The number of unemployment keeps on growing. The world has more and more surplus people. What will the owners of the planet do with so much useless humanity? Send them to the moon? . . . In Mexico, work is the only commodity whose price goes down every month. Over the past twenty years, a good part of the middle class has fallen into poverty the poor have fallen into misery, and the miserable have fallen off the charts.” If anybody reading this has a steady job with good pay and adequate benefits, count your blessings. But, as you are counting, reflect: is your job empowering you to express the full flower of your creative energies, or is it just a tad deadening?

I’ll let Eduardo have the last word here. He writes toward the end of his book, “Every day, the ruling system places our worst characteristics at center stage, condemning our best to languish behind the backdrop. The system of power is not in the least eternal. We may be badly made, but we’re not finished, and it’s the adventure of changing reality and changing ourselves that makes our blip in the history of the universe worthwhile, this fleeting warmth between two glaciers that is us.”

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Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America,” describing 500 years of brutalization and exploitation of the peoples, lands and resources of Latin America by Europeans and North Americans makes for tough reading. “Upside Down, A Primer for the Looking-Glass World,” on the other hand, takes hard-to-swallow subjects such as racism, sexism, corporate manipulation, government betrayal, workplace dehumanization, brainwashing of children, environmental poisoning, systematic jailing, torture and murder and treats these subjects alternately with laugh-out-loud black humor, out-and-out sarcasm, and sharp steely needles of cynicism. Tell us what you really think, Eduardo! Modern culture and society as a bushel basket of rotten apples. Here’s a sample of some of those most rotten –- and, I’ve linked a few words of my own experience tasting these unfresh fruit.

The first chapter deals with education, which makes abundant sense since that is how we begin our human odyssey, as children imbibing our culture’s values. Galeano writes, “The looking glass world trains us to view our neighbor as a threat, not a promise. It condemns us to solitude and consoles us with chemical drugs and cybernetic friends. We are sentenced to die of hunger, fear, or boredom – that is, if a stray bullet doesn’t do the job first.” Fortunately, I grew up in a shore town where I spent many hours at the beach swimming and diving and at the ocean surfing. One thing I could never figure out: why were all the kids I knew armed to the teeth with cap guns, water guns, pop guns and even BB guns. When many of those same kids grew up and were sent to Vietnam, I started figuring it out.

In Eduardo’s chapter: Racism and Sexism 101, we read, “In the Americas and Europe the police hunt stereotypes guilty of wearing an unconcealed face. Every nonwhite suspect confirms the rule written in invisible ink in the depths of our collective conscience: crime is black or brown, or at least yellow.” I witnessed a white mass exodus fleeing North New Jersey for Central New Jersey after the 1967 Newark race riots. If you live in the US, there isn’t a hotter hot potato than race, both back then and now When it comes to race, all you have to do is rub people the wrong way ever so slightly and an avalanche of anger and rage can pour out.

One of personal favorite chapters: The Sacred Car. Eduardo begins by saying, “Human rights pale beside the rights of machines. Automobiles usurp human space, poison the air, and frequently murder the interlopers who invade their conquered territory – and no one lifts a finger to stop them.” Ain’t that the truth! Being a walker myself as a kid and adult, I’ve had an entire lifetime of playing dodgeball with cars. But I must admit one good thing: other than the occasional dog-owner walking doggie, I have the sidewalks pretty much to myself. Men and women in the US taking on the role of ‘the inside people’; in other words, padding from home to car to work to car to shopping mall to car back to home. An entire population of ass-ploppers, plopping posterior cheeks in front of the TV, at the computer, at the dinner table, at one’s desk at work, and, of course, behind the wheel of one’s car. The automobile as the noisy, dirty glue fitting all the pieces together. And, God forbid, if anybody has any doubts, check out the flood of TV commercials: an unending stream of handsome, happy men and beautiful, sexy women driving sleek, shiny new automobiles. Good times in the land of plenty.

On commercialization and brainwashing, we read, “Hours spent in front of the television easily surpass those spent in the classroom, when hours are spent in the classroom at all. It is a universal truth that, with our without school, TV programs are children’s primary source of formation, information, and deformation, as well as their principal source of topics for conversation.” As a boy I lived in a small house where the TV was king. My only escape was going off to college. As an adult I’ve never been a TV watcher. I suspect a good measure of my modest success in creative endeavors results from freeing myself from the boob tube. Come to think of it, why do I no longer hear people calling that silly thing the boob tube or the idiot box?

“The number of unemployment keeps on growing. The world has more and more surplus people. What will the owners of the planet do with so much useless humanity? Send them to the moon? . . . In Mexico, work is the only commodity whose price goes down every month. Over the past twenty years, a good part of the middle class has fallen into poverty the poor have fallen into misery, and the miserable have fallen off the charts.” If anybody reading this has a steady job with good pay and adequate benefits, count your blessings. But, as you are counting, reflect: is your job empowering you to express the full flower of your creative energies, or is it just a tad deadening?

I’ll let Eduardo have the last word here. He writes toward the end of his book, “Every day, the ruling system places our worst characteristics at center stage, condemning our best to languish behind the backdrop. The system of power is not in the least eternal. We may be badly made, but we’re not finished, and it’s the adventure of changing reality and changing ourselves that makes our blip in the history of the universe worthwhile, this fleeting warmth between two glaciers that is us.”




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