from Truthdig:
The False Idol of Unfettered CapitalismPosted on Mar 16, 2009
By Chris Hedges
When I returned to New York City after nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans, I was unsure of where I was headed. I lacked the emotional and physical resiliency that had allowed me to cope as a war correspondent. I was plagued by memories I wanted to forget, waking suddenly in the middle of the night, my sleep shattered by visions of gunfire and death. I was alienated from those around me, unaccustomed to the common language and images imposed by consumer culture, unable to communicate the pain and suffering I had witnessed, not much interested in building a career.
It was at this time that the Brooklyn Academy of Music began showing a 10-part film series called “The Decalogue.” Deka, in Greek, means 10. Logos means saying or speech. The Decalogue is the classical name of the Ten Commandments. The director was the Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski, who had made the trilogy “White, Blue and Red.” The 10 films, each about an hour long and based on one of the commandments, were to be shown two at a time over five consecutive weeks. I saw them on Sunday nights, taking the subway to Brooklyn, its cars rocking and screeching along the tracks in the darkened tunnels. The theater was rarely more than half full.
The films were quiet, subtle and often opaque. It was sometimes hard to tell which commandment was being addressed. The characters never spoke about the commandments directly. They were too busy, as we all are, coping with life. The stories presented the lives of ordinary people confronted by extraordinary events. All lived in a Warsaw housing complex, many of them neighbors. They were on a common voyage, yet also out of touch with the pain and dislocation of those around them. The commandments, Kieslowski understood, were not dusty relics of another age, but a powerful compass with vital contemporary resonance.
In film after film he dealt with the core violation raised by each of the commandments. He freed the commandments from the clutter of piety and narrow definitions imposed upon them by religious leaders and institutions. The promiscuous woman portrayed in the film about adultery was not married. She had a series of empty, carnal relationships. Adultery, at its deepest level for the director, was sex without love. The father in the film about honoring our parents was not the biological father. The biological mother was absent in the daughter’s life. Parenting, Kieslowski knew, is not defined by blood or birth or gender. It is defined by commitment, fidelity and love. In the film about killing, an unemployed drifter robs and brutally murders a cab driver. He is caught, sentenced and executed by the state. Kieslowski forces us to confront the barbarity of murder, whether it is committed by a deranged individual or sanctioned by society. ........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090316_the_false_idol_of_unfettered_capitalism/ 
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