On Being Programmed

    Has anyone else noticed that authority figures like businesses and governments don't want you to think for yourself? Consider everything you may or may not have in your home to distract you: phones, iPods, movies, televisions, computers, game systems...all of these serve one purpose: to keep people content. TV feeds you what it wants you to watch, the internet is currently being tailored to cut certain content,and the radio only plays certain songs over and over. It's like we're watching a constant tape, looped over and over again in order to keep you docile.
     On the outside, movies, sports, and music have become so hyped that people will line up outside of a venue to spend exorbitant amounts of money just to watch other people doing things that, in the broad spectrum of things, don't mean anything. Entire industries have been built around "entertainment" around the world, siphoning billions of dollars out of people around the world for decades. The same goes for clothing, highly-processed food, alcohol, sex, religion, tobacco, politics, celebrities, and a slew of other industries that we may or may not know about.
     This cacophony of white noise has deadened our senses, leaving us paralyzed in the worlds we exist in. It is this constant sensory overload that western culture wants us to exist in every day, spending our money aimlessly as we trip along and do what whichever authority figure tells us to do. The powers that be want our money, our blindness, and our silent cooperation. And, for the most part, that's what Westerners tend to give them, unblinking as we worship whatever idol they erect for us. We slip into fanaticism over the dumbest things, going as far as to paint our faces, buy hyper-expensive clothing, wave signs, and even shed tears or commit suicide over things that have nothing to do with us!
     Whatever happened to thinking? Whatever happened to silence? What happened to the person that can sit down, organize their thoughts, and make rational decisions? It seems, reader, that these are becoming more few and far between as time goes on. How many times have you seen a person jump on a bandwagon lately? When you ask said people why they enjoy whatever activity or device, how many can give you a rational answer?
     Here's a perfect example: I used to have a few friends that watched every television program that came on MTV. They liked Four Loko, listening to pop radio, getting wasted and high all the time, tanning until they were orange, and otherwise living like "guidettes." When I asked them why they liked the shows (as well as the alcohol, which tastes like utter shit), they looked at me like I was crazy. "Why DON'T you like them?" was the closest response that I could glean from them, their scraggly, rat-textured hair appropriately "bumped" and dyed. I had to do away with them simply because I realized they didn't have much of a mind left. MTV had brainwashed them into tanned, constantly inebriated, drama-fueling bitches, and everyone in my circle was content with that.

Everyone except me, obviously.

     In the end, people like what they like. They dedicate their time to things that may or may not "mean" anything in the grand scheme of things. I understand that. However, I also understand that all of these things that people fall into are distractions from the problems that are not only happening both here and abroad, but are being caused by the very things they love. They are a temporary escape from personal problems, a repast from areas where people may need personal growth in order to become complete people. They divide attention away from crooked political practices, government officials and their behavior, and the laws they pass to constrict the freedoms of the American people. It makes sense, then, that those in power manipulate said distractions for that purpose, moving the public eye away from themselves so they may keep figuring out how to fleece us again and again.