more discerning consumption or even taking time off from restaurant meals and someone else's idea of what is entertaining. Such consumerism creates dependency and a gradual softening of the intellect. The public gives over the whole responsibility for entertainment to Hollywood, Blockbuster Video, and the cable company, making it difficult for the average person to feel confident about entertaining oneself. Greene advocates awareness of these processes and acting counter to them when possible.
Bureaucracies tend to oppress people in America. Everyone has their Department of Motor Vehicle stories or their Internal Revenue Service stories, as it is a stupefying, mind-numbing experience to communicate with civil servants who have been in their jobs for decades. They cannot hear a different type of question without telling you to stand in a particular line or fill out a particular form. This is oppressive to the alert, thinking person. Even contesting an unjustified parking ticket can consume days, precious time, as robot-type workers shuffle a person through the process. Greene says that "people are absorbed by commodification," but it is possible to resist, to persevere at DMV, to write to a Congressman about the IRS and to persist until the unjust parking ticket fine is refunded (Greene, 1988, p.25).
Jefferson believed that the greatest tyranny was control over another person's mind, a genuine blasphemy for a free person. The darkest examples of this type of oppression in America are the oppression of blacks and the oppression of women. The blacks came to this continent already deprived of their freedom (Greene, 1988, p.87). However, they kept their oral histories, their music, their instruments improvised from memories of instruments left behind, and their strong spiritual nature. Even when the plantation owner forbade particular religious practices or organized music for fear of what it would do to spirits who longed ...