Mind Control

[Ripley]

It happens to every single one of us. No, the perpetrator is not some evil genius creating a slave army of workers to increase his wealth. Oh, wait.. It’s the Invisible Hand of the Market that the economic guru’s so lovingly talk about right out in the open. It is the System, you know the modern economic model that has so skillfully convinced even the most shat upon members of our society that material wealth or bling or whatever you want to call it is the one true way to acquire self worth. There is no value to anything unless it has a monetary value.

The degradation of the News into slick entertainment productions where war and suffering have been conflated with fictional storylines and fictional people (celebrities) has rendered people as good and damned desensitized as any lobotomy performing mad scientist could hope for. The Corporate Package of how to behave, to look, to think is remarkably within narrow parameters despite the millions of web addresses and thousands of cable stations.

The insidious plan works. Everyone thinks they are immune to propaganda and it’s the other guy who is brainwashed. Yet read the blogs and most of them reflect the narrowly defined “news” determined by multi-national corporations. Lots of people claim to be independent thinkers yet follow a remarkably well-worn path that was blazed by a marketing department or think tank.

The Citizen has been replaced by the Consumer and most are proud to define themselves that way. Identifying yourself by what soda, beer or wine you drink, what car you drive, what music you listen to. Black and white thinking is the hallmark of Authoritarianism. It would be a good thing if more people would step outside their sphere once in awhile and look at the world through a different lens.

No one is immune, everything should be questioned.

[Virginia Dare]

1. Catapult the propaganda, baby!....

opiate the masses, and all that other stuff.