Yeah... I no longer trust mainstream music, not to the point of feeling paranoid about it, but I’m really fed up with the general dumbing down of music where lyrics become repetitive “Oh baby, baby”... But I need music in my life just as I need air to breathe.
I have to say... I feel like I’ve suddenly lost much of my enthusiasm about writing any story at all. I keep wondering: but why? Why do I want to write anything at all, and why such and such stories when it seems that all that I come up with is already tainted by my social conditioning?
Am I really the writer, or am I but a mind under influence spitting out what it was instilled to spit? Who can even answer such questions?
I suppose it’s going to take a few days for the shock to dissipate. I certainly hope so. What shock? Well, the one that has everything to do with our reality.
Part of me - and I don’t know, still, how big that part is - doesn’t want to believe what my gut and brain keep taking for at least a glimpse of truth amidst the lies... That the whole world is being played by a handful of highly skilled manipulators who only deal in term of evil deeds.
Sounds much like any action movie would, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe all those movies full of apocalyptic symbolism have that secondary aim beside mere mind-numbing entertainment. To shape you into disbelieving certain things from the word go.
If something is too easily dismissed to the point that you will dismiss an idea before you can even evaluate it critically in your mind, then something must be amiss. Fact.
A true logical being should have the capacity to consider all arguments put before him, so that he can critically accept or dismiss them. If this stage doesn’t occur, then surely something isn’t working right in terms of mental processes.
Yet there are certain ‘taboo’ subjects which most people will refuse to dwell on; worse, still, they will simply appear to “switch off” at the mere mention of words, as though those words were but triggers telling the critical mind not to bother. I’m not immune to that, of course, but I’m trying to question my inability to be even remotely questioning as far as certain subjects are concerned. Something as silly-sounding as aliens, for instance, or many other topics which the majority is said to agree on as right or wrong and which we accept as the norm or "truth".
I can see how movies can act as “desensitivators” (Yes, I just made up the word, I think!) in the sense that for most people, movies represent the gateway to fantasy, or fiction.
Once such a link is created in the mind, once you get the automatic reflex to dismiss movies into the fiction category, all that is shown on screen is likely to end up in the fiction box of the mind. It makes sense. When you are inundated with sci-fi movies full of the most far-fetched ideas, it becomes easier and easier to stare at the screen blankly, while your mind just dismisses the whole thing as escapism. It isn’t real, mate.
What happens when a fact-based story is given the movie treatment? We might consciously know that it is based on truth, but the unconscious part of us is already wired to make the unbreakable link (movies equal fiction or fantasy), and so it must be that when movies have become a confusing mix of truth and fantasies, the mind is at loss. It is no longer about a blur between reality and illusion, or truth and falsehood, it is a giant void in the mind. A black hole full of noise.
Books are different. The act of reading doesn’t have the same impact as passively watching moving images. The brain gets that split second of respite between each word that is read by the person, and that split second allows for more time for critical reasoning to kick in. As such, when something is amiss while reading a page, one can go back and read the words again to make sense of them. You don’t get that in a movie. You only get to watch a very fast succession of actions, and even if you could pause the scene, your mind is too occupied with following many things happening at once and critical reasoning is forever impaired. There are, however, some people out there who appear immune to such a confusion- inducing effect, and those people are the ones who will point at disturbing things they can spot, or mistakes, or weird symbols, etc... Things that should be so obvious, and yet if they hadn’t pointed at it with a finger, you would never have noticed on your own. I’m in that category. Unless I am shown, I have no clue. I take it all in mindlessly.
It makes me wonder how come I can still find the strength to be critical at all, knowing how easily biased or dazzled I am by society’s sham. Surely, since I fall into almost every single trap, I should by now be a perfect little conformist. I should be one of those who nod with a smile at everything. I should be taking everything at face value, surely.
The aim is, and I suspect has been for quite a long time, to trigger as much division as possible among people. To that end, cities become the greatest symbol of division, albeit a subtle one.
By gathering us mostly in cities where space is stiffly limited, especially for the poorer majority, those in power ensure that they can keep better control over us.
Isn’t it easier to keep tabs on people if they’re all gathered within a well-defined area rather than having to scour miles of countryside across which people are scattered? The granting of technological comfort ensures the majority’s compliance, as comfort and promises of luxury act like a drug for the mind. The stage is already set: countrysides are being emptied, villages are left to die, so that people are forced, one way or another, to join bigger towns.
I'm beginning to think that living in cities goes against human nature. How easy it is to forget that despite our thinking brains, we remain quite biologically linked to nature! Each human being needs his proper personal space much akin to the notion of having your own territory. To each their land should not sound far-fetched, it should be a norm. The fact is that people strive better in smaller communities where they can grow meaningful social ties than in big cities where they are made to become faceless. The process of having us all divided works better in huge concentrations of numbers, ensuring that the lack of personal space and social ties nurtures a strong emergence of what we loosely call selfishness.
Some now like to parade the idea of a ‘selfish gene’ but they are confusing the natural survival instinct with a psychological trend that has been purposely left to grow by taking away from us what made us more human in the first place. In other words, selfishness is a trait that is being allowed to spread and amplify in strength. If that trait were a flower, in the modern day flower pot it would be one of the best cared-for and watered plant.
For people to find their own sense of harmony, it seems crucial that we should be allowed to live in small, tightly-knit communities, such as village-like structures not to be confused with the now mainstreamed idea of gettoisation that worked in demonizing the mere thought of ‘small’ community.
Some will counter, of course, that looking back at history alone, village life was often plagued with narrow-minded attitude, if not worse. They will say “but if that type of life was so great, then how come so many, espacially the young, long to leave it behind?”
Well, we are groomed to feel that way because wealth and comfort is attached to the idea of city life. It is more or less like the donkey going after the carrot being dangled in front of his unsuspecting nose.
Besides that point, there is the matter that villages are only the reflection of those in power instilling ideas and a narrow-minded attitude from bygone times. If small communities hadn’t been wired to be a certain way, then they woudn’t be that certain way, but different.
My thoughts on the subject wouldn’t feel so important to me if it wasn’t for the obvious effort put into emptying rural parts to have us all living on top of each other in grey, fuming cities where these days even work is lacking because - guess what!- those in power delocalized most of the jobs abroad for cheaper labour.
I mean... Even the loaf of bread you buy in the shop these days comes from some far away country, like India.
They make a little fuss about people being out of work and all that, but truly, isn’t the aim to have most of us on the dole, being given just enough to barely survive so that in the end we have no strength left to rebel? As for those who do get jobs... What kind of jobs are they? Sitting in front of a computer all day pushing buttons is not a job. It’s revolting.
At least when you were forced to work in some slimy factory all day for peanuts, you got angry enough to want to change things for the better. History is littered with examples of people who put up a good fight for better justice. What about today? Most jobs are still as mind-numbing, but you can sit in a cubicle all day without sweating, and you get just enough to buy a better car or TV screen than your neighbour. The impression of having it easy, or better than before, is enough to put out most people’s fire. And the majority becomes a passive herd, too afraid to lose the little comfort that was thrown at them to ultimately control them.
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