I believe our Government and many others around the world to be dumbing down much of its population, having us too busy, tired and stressed to stop and think. Many of us are quite simply worn out and worn down. So much of our time and thoughts are given to managing our lives, that we literally have very little brain space left to think about much else.
We are shackled to the mundane, worrying constantly about putting food on the table, paying all our bills and looking after our children. Working hard from dawn till dusk. Juggling money and bills, trying to keep our heads above water, hoping nothing breaks down so we don’t sink under the pressure. Kids are struggling at their new school, are we doing the right thing for them, we have no family support here, should we stay or should we move? Worries at work. Three broken teeth, can’t go to the dentist or no one will eat for a month. Can we afford a load of wood, it’s getting cold, where will that money come from? Sitting in the dark at night, hot water off, all so we can afford the power bill when it comes. Rotten window needs replacing, water tank is leaking, stove is dead, on and on it goes. My mind is a spaghetti junction of thoughts constantly whirring round and round, just like many other people, it’s exhausting. It leaves little or no time or space to consider life outside the four walls of home and work.
I sit down at 6pm to catch up on the “news”. This biased media would have us believe that all is rosy in the world. Releasing only the information that fits their agenda. Once upon a time I believed it too. The statistics and information they use are always biased, if it wasn’t for me taking the time to research for myself, I wouldn’t know any better. Main Stream Media bombards us with one sided details and quite often fails to report at all. So us, in our befuddled brains just suck that in and take it as truth. It is only when you dig deeper that you realise most of it is rubbish and what they are really doing is hiding the truth, keeping us dumbed down on purpose. Well not me, not any more. I am awake now, regardless of our stresses, I endeavour to inform myself, and can I suggest you all should do the same.
Governments and Main Stream Media are lying to us. They are keeping the truth hidden, presenting stories in a way that hides certain aspects of it from us. Spin and fudging figures are high on their agenda. It is time it stopped and the truth be known. For the sake of our children, and their children, before it is too late, we really do have to wake up. For that is all part of the plan, to keep you busy and exhausted so you tow the line, keep the peace, don’t fight back. Just follow along like the good citizens we are. Take a good look at the bigger picture, and have a think for yourself, you will be surprised at what you might find, I know I was. And finally, we need to remember that our ignorance is their power.
I was in the same place years ago. Ignorant of what was truly happening and relying upon the MSM to inform me. Thankfully I woke up and started researching what was actually happening in the world.
Samantha, you might find more evidence or argument for dumbing down in this (UK) collection of essays edited by Ivo Mosley, entitled “Dumbing Down: Culture, Politics and the Mass Media”. I loaned from AUT’s library and found it very good.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dumbing-Down-Culture-Politics-Media/dp/0907845657
Great article, Samantha, very insightful. It has me thinking that what’s actually worse than financial poverty is poverty of attention and personal energy. Even if there’s money in the bank, we’re too exhausted to feel the value of it.
I know in my workplace there seems to be a policy of grinding everyone into the ground, such that people soon end up with no energy and no inclination to question the powers that be. A very high proportion of people using antidepressants and the like, just to get through the day.
Perhaps one of the most important tools of revolution, then, is helping people to recharge themselves, so they can live at a personal-energy surplus, no matter how modest. Even just a couple of minutes of innocent timelessness each day, to turn the mind’s creative juices back on.
Yes, when you’ve taken the red pill, it’s impossible to go back to the Matrix created by the msm
Come on, this is a damned cop out, burnt out people, yeah, what a great excuse, same like, ah that protest was at an “inconvenient time”, and so forth.
You people need to wake up, people have become “lazy”, politically and mentally lazy that is. The over inundation with trivial and other information by way of internet and MSM does of course over saturate what people can “digest”, but people, especially those with a bit of intellect, can learn to discern, and to select the info that is important.
I see most not even bothering to do that. The MSM is like a tsunami, it is like Goebbels on steroids, and watch TV, listen to radio and see the pop ups on your screen on many websites, it is insulting and aggressive, what advertising gets hammered into us.
But does any idiot take a stand, take action and stop it? NO, the people are LAZY, complacent, often even give in to the crap, and then settle for a crap society of sell out shit, or mercenary lifestyles, of consumerism, of disloyalty by being the total individualist and commercial competitor, and worse.
Western “culture” is decadent and disgusting, as it is these days just a remnant of what true “culture” used to be, it is now all about commodities, about investment, about gain, profit, about what I am, can do, what I want and “fuck” the rest.
That is what we have “achieved”. This should get lefties bloody wake up and stand up and take a stand, and FIGHT, but I see very little of it, apart from the loyal ones that have always done this.
Where are the people to do the revolution, where are the people to bring a change, where are the voters to vote for a progressive, alternative government? They are nowhere to be seen, I am afraid, and it is shocking and depressing, and I wonder, what is the purpose of life in this kind of world, where we have people even allow media tell them it is all about trivia, and all else is just unimportant.
Are people still human beings, or just the designed, dumbed down consumerist robots, that the ruling elite and business circles want us to be? Are you a slave, a mercenary, a robot, or have you still got a pulse beating, flesh on your bones, are you still alive, dear readers out there. I wonder, as I am actually dying while I write this, due to disease. But who cares, who give s a shit these days, nobody cares, it seems.
Replace “lazy” with “fearful”, and this is right. Capitalist authoritaranism levers off fear of being poor, in debt, and also, in looking for help if poor or in debt – the underlying assumption we’re whitewashed with being, if you are poor or in debt it’s your fault, you’ve made poor choices. Never mind the power structures you live within (who could stop the rise of petrol, transport, energy sell-offs, comm and health prices, getting into the “right” school and making the “right” friends) entirely out of your control. Then there’s the self-censorship, like “good germans” just wanting to keep our current or future job security. Add to that that society is so large, community so fragmented by the pressures Samantha mentioned, we fear each other.
So the fear is being alone against all this.
But we know, from facebook, from these posts and comments, we aren’t actually alone. We’re not each the only one disempowered by the Establishment writing media narratives to detach us from the reality of our own lives. It’s most of us, including those who haven’t felt the tuth yet. It’s hard to believe, but we are so saturated in this narrative, we don’t really know how close we are, collectively, to turning from a sea of atoms into a revolutionary tsunami.
And that’s what has the silver spoons turning with fear.
I learned years ago that I must try to live life in 3 D so as to not be ruled by evil people .
Dear old Plato spotted that before I did clearly .
3 D . Don’t Do Debt .
When the MSM tries to infect you with the disease of instant gratification , chant your mantra . Don’t Do Debt .
Debt , and it’s filthy , dirty little stain which is usury interest rates , are a blight on humanity .
If ones Government stands back and blithely allows the citizens it’s paid by to represent in good faith fall into debt , it aint your Government so the citizens MUST pruge that Government of its evil people . Sooner or later that must happen . History will show that , time and again .
This ‘thing’ , what ever you’d like to call this small group of evil people who tell us it’s our Government are simply stalling for time to set themselves up with their personal wealth at our expense . That’s all . Nothing more nor less . So they must go . They know that . And they know that , that’s slowly dawning on us so they must work quickly before we twig on .
We do work too hard . We do live in poverty in a land of more than is able to be comprehended . We have our lives , literally our days , stolen from us by Banks . Foreign owned banks charging us usury interest rates . We pay foreign owned banks so as we get to live in our own country and to do that we must labour away our lives while we must watch our children fall by the wayside , for no other reason than societal neglect only to become irreversibly damaged . They then breed ever more damaged , dysfunctional children through no fault of their own ( Though the braying , neoliberal , parasitic , evil people would try to argue otherwise . ) Thus they , like fleas in the poem , go on ad infinitum .
( ” Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on; While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.
[1872 A. De morgan Budget of Paradoxes 377] ” )
Basically , they , those evil people , like all good parasites , know how to manipulate their host .
Paula Bennett , for example and by virtue of her societal tinkering for her profit and her pleasure , is creating a tide of tomorrows monsters . The damage she’s inflicting on normal people ( ie people who don’t aspire to becoming multi-millionaire debt peddlers ) will been seen from history as an act of terrorism . She , and her ilk are terrorists of the very worst kind . They don’t simply blow things up therefore kill a few hundred people . They destroy entire cultures and the ripples of their handy work reverberate down through many ,many generations .
Watch this and be amazed and terrified . And please , don’t be afraid . Draw your parallels .
Ed Yong: Suicidal wasps, zombie roaches and other parasite tales
http://youtu.be/CfqO1U6lfDs
And remember ; DON’T DO DEBT ! Don’t put your head on that particular block .
By the way . See , over to the right of the screen ? An ad for you to buy a washing machine ? ‘ The Good Guys ‘ are wanting you to BUY NOW !
Not only is the ad so clever in that it floats there annoyingly and I can’t get rid of it but if I have a following of fans for my work , the Good Guys are using me to effectively sell their washing machine without my permission .
( Yea , I know . That could be argued . Never the less , that’s what’s happening . )
Another thing . When I’m driving in my car and I see a hoarding with a cute girl on it which is designed to attract my eye and then as I look at her I see that her body is being used to sell some thing or another I believe I have the right to stop my car , get out , go over to the hoarding and pull the fucking thing down . I did not ask to have my subconscious be parasitised in a covert attack by a Bankster .
Thanks for your piece Samantha. I recently read a book called “Maverick!” by Ricardo Semler, the CEO of an industrial maunfacturing company in Brazil called Semco. I think it may offer a path out of the chronic overwork which, as you have identified, makes it difficult for people to carve out time and energy for the unpaid responsibilities of citizenship.
When Semler’s took over the company his father had founded, he followed conventional Harvard Business School “wisdom”, and continued to grow Semco into a standard, pyradmid-heirarchy corporation, treating its workers like prison inmates. Then he followed his gut, fired most of the top executives, and embarked on an internal revolution in which decision-making power is given as much as possible to all the workers in the company, and they get a negotiated share of the company’s profits. Despite this, Semler acknowledges the importance of unions as independent advocates, and Semco encourages its workers to join their union, and has a strict policy of not allowing workers to be punished for their roles as delegates or even strikers etc. See the short doco by Journeyman Pictures, ‘How Brazil Has Taken Workers’ Rights to a New Level’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG3HPX0D2mU
Most people are aware of small, tech businesses like Loomio which are being set up as radically democratic cooperatives. What I find exciting about the Semco example is it shows even large, established companies can be transformed into radically democratic organisations, and succeed even by the fiscal standards of conventional businesses. That Semco was able to do this, and still weather the storms of the volatile Brazillian economy of the 80s and 90s, while exposing corrupt officials, is even more inspiring.
Comments are closed.