Just as our "solutions" are shaped by how we frame "the problem," our understanding of our world is shaped by a "politics of experience" created by our cultural milieu, education, mass media and government.

As noted in the excerpt from R.D. Laing above, the key feature of "the obvious" is its elusiveness. Thus we don't consciously formulate the notion that what we buy and own defines our "true self;" that notion is like air, everywhere around us and thus not in our conscious awareness.

"The politics of experience" is by definition not selected or consciously chosen; it is precisely the invisible assumptions we live by which are so unconscious that we cannot even recognize them as anything but "obvious" without great effort.

As an example, consider the work of author Douglas Rushkoff. Rushkoff's reply to an interview question on the pervasive consequences of ubiquitous marketing reveals how media/marketing has created an unquestioned "politics of experience" in which one's identity and sense of self is constructed almost entirely by what one buys:

As Laing also described, the past "politics of experience" is largely inaccessible to us for the same reason we cannot discern how unobvious our own "obvious" truly is: the assumptions were so deep and elusive that contemporaneous accounts never even mention them, and thus histories are blind as well except by extrapolation of what was considered worthy of comment.

An excellent analogy to this problem can be found in the common Mississippi river barge of the 19^th century. So common was this mode of river transport that no one bothered to fashion a drawing of one or count them. They literally vanished without a trace simply because they were too ubiquitous to elicit notice. Recently a few representatives have been exhumed from the mud; these forgotten artifacts are our only evidence of what was once unremarkable but vitally important.

Thus is it difficult for us to register how drastically our experience has changed over time. What seems "normal" and "obvious" to us—the constant bombardment of marketing, the financial stress of over-indebtedness, the insecurity of employment, the reliance on powerful psychotropic prescription medications to "get through life"—are actually artifacts of an obviously destructive set of assumptions and values.

Individuals pursue their livelihoods in this peculiar state of unawareness in which they are unaware of what they are unaware of, and unaware of the consequences of the "obvious" incentives and assumptions that underpin their sense of identity and seemingly "conscious" choices.

Consider a mortgage broker or salesperson. In the real world, their compensation depends on persuading a "consumer" (a word loaded with subtle assumptions and incentives) to take on more debt to acquire a good or service.

This individual is not consciously seeking to overburden another individual with too much debt, but this is the net result of what's "normal" and "obvious" in the salesperson "doing their job" and the "consumer" setting out to achieve what he/she has internalized as "happiness" or "success:" a bigger house, a nicer car, a faster computer, a trendier outfit, a top-notch personal trainer, etc.

As we explore the elusive qualities of our common "obvious" experience, we must differentiate between the mostly unconscious actions of most of us and the carefully plotted conscious actions of those seeking to influence our experience for specific gain.

For instance, most elected officials do not set out to be evil or to acquire wealth and power at the expense of others; most are well-meaning people who are attracted to the power of office but also to the notion of doing some good or serving their community.

Since running for office requires vast sums of money, they find that listening to those willing to donate large sums to their campaign makes sense. Once these lobbyists and representatives of the Plutocracy have aired their concerns and interests in various specifics, it only makes sense for the elected official to pay attention to their concerns.

And since the long-term consequences of satisfying the donors—national insolvency—is safely in the future, then it "obviously" makes sense to tend to the business at hand, which is getting re-elected and juggling all the competing demands of various well-funded interest groups.

The average voter—and how many citizens actually cast a ballot? Some 40% on average?—has little interest in most of the complexities of governance, and so the elected official need not trouble themselves with their views other than auto-responses to the usual "noise" of "fringe" issues: cruelty to pets, some foreign policy imbroglio, etc.

Thus "just doing my job" and pursuing "what's obvious" can lead to the reinforcing crises we now face. In the politics if our collective experience, we're all simply doing what was obvious as officials, employees, consumers and voters.

For example: the first project of "the Powers That Be" is to deny the existence of The Powers That Be via a sustained propaganda campaign touting the great opportunities, justice and equality of our society and economy. The goal is to shape our interpretation of our experience into a politically pliable complacency which leaves the powers and influence of the Plutocracy safely unquestioned and even unseen.

The "politics of experience" which operates at a very subconscious level includes all the myths, incentives and assumptions which form our worldview.

Here is another example: "the rugged individual" myth that is core to American society has many positive elements—for instance, the ideal of individual responsibility for one's life and actions—but it also works to mask political and financial overreach by the plutocracy/Powers That Be by cloaking large-scale movements of vast profits and power as the disconnected workings of unrelated individuals.

For example, the "politics of experience" of the subprime mortgage meltdown was presented by the Mainstream Media as the fault of irresponsible/greedy subprime borrowers. Then, as the U.S. government funneled hundreds of billions of dollars in bailout funds to save the Plutocracy from losses, the full extent of the corruption, greed, recklessness and fraud within the banking/mortgage plutocracy was revealed.

The "politics" behind that interpretation was revealed as a clever masking of the true cause: a Plutocracy operating without regard for laws or regulations and unhindered by political oversight. Please read Fiasco: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader and Greed, Fraud & Ignorance: A Subprime Insider's Look at the Mortgage Collapse for fuller accounts of the chicanery, greed and blatant disregard for law and risk.

The Mainstream Media (MSM), a highly centralized, corporate-owned structure, is a key player in shaping the politics of experience, as described in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. I have covered this topic many times, most recently in Our Schizophrenic Media and Garbage In, Garbage Out.

One key concept/mechanism in the politics of experience that we need to understand is how simulacrum are consciously presented as the "real thing" to protect the elites' power and privileges.

Consider how the word "capitalism," with its powerful invocations of free markets, capital freely risked, transparency, entrepreneurship, etc., is constantly deployed to mask crony capitalism, which fundamentally undermines all the key elements of true capitalism.

Thus the crony capitalism on display when stupendous government bailouts are sunk into a handful of Plutocracy strongholds is masked by explanations that "we're doing this to save capitalism."

Capitalism does not require government to borrow a trillion dollars and throw it into the coffers of the Plutocracy. What is being presented as "capitalism" by the Plutocracy and its MSM minions is in fact only a simulacrum of capitalism, a sham representation decorated with just enough shreds of resemblance to the real thing to fool the unwary.

Another key job of the MSM is to distract the populace from the political realities with endless entertainments, just as the Roman Empire provided the citizens of Rome with free bread and fully 175 days a year of free public entertainment.

So our national "politics of experience" serves three explicit goals:

1. Provide a superficially plausible simulacrum of justice, opportunity, equality, capitalism, good governance, etc., so the unskeptical/credulous will comply with the wishes of The Powers That Be and blame themselves (or a carefully chosen "other group") for whatever is awry in their communities.
2. Offer up a cornucopia of compelling distractions via mindless "entertainments" and a broadcast media presenting a nonstop diet of "crimes, cops and docs" and a simulacrum of meaning and authenticity via social networks. Please see my book Weblogs & New Media: Marketing in Crisis for more on the superficiality of social networking. Lastly, offer up a politically potent entertainment of divisive finger-pointing and rancor which works to create superficially appealing "us and them" ideologies.
3. Construct a simulacrum of authenticity bound and defined by consuming, buying and presenting an attractive avatar in the media, i.e. a simulacrum of authority, "coolness" or celebrity which creates a sham "Infrastructure of Self" in a politics of experience dominated by hollow social networks, consuming/shopping and celebrity worship.