Did you think for yourself or merely think what they told you to think?

With all the chest thumping and media misdirection over news I think of as being mostly irrelevant it was easy to miss the real news happening around the world. Blood libel, “Obama will make some remarks later” and political rhetoric overshadowed the collapse of Lebanon’s council with Hezbollah, Haiti’s one year anniversary, the flooding of Australia’s third largest city and the foreclosure crisis being projected to be worse in 2011 then 2010. Since you’re clearly on the internet if you want to know more about those things you can look them up; I am going to talk about the failings in mass media and journalism.

“Brave New World” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World) is far from becoming a reality, sleep learning and controlled reproduction isn’t something that is likely to happen in my lifetime. The other parts of the story, overconsumption and being blinded by pleasures, are fast becoming truth. While overconsumption is a compelling topic, it is best saved for a different time and focus on the narrower aspect of being blinded by pleasure.

Blinded by pleasure is how I describe allowing the television to dictate to you what you should watch, eat, learn about, etc. The sitcom or police drama that you’re watching reaches out to you and it takes you to a new world for one hour every Wednesday, Monday or whatever day it releases on and for that hour you are entertained. It’s harmless, right? By itself, yes. To get a better understanding we should look at it like this:
Days in a week times hours in the day 7*24=168
8 hours of sleep a day times days in the week 8*7=56
hours in the week minus hours asleep 168-56=112
Minus the 40 hour work week 112-40=72
Minus 1 hour of commute a work day 72-5=67
67 is the number of hours a working individual should have give or take depending on their situation. One hour out of that isn’t so bad, especially if it helps relax a hard working individual. Once that hour turns into two, three, and so forth it starts to get dangerous until the individual is now endlessly watching television as their sole source of entertainment and information. Three hours of television nightly is 21 hours, just about one third of the remaining free time in a week. The changeover is subtle at first from merely consuming the information for entertainment or news to allowing oneself to be told that such and such program is entertaining and what is news, what they should be concerned about, what love is etc. It’s a system that easily reinforces itself, if you didn’t see the latest episode of “Time wasters 3000” and a couple coworkers start talking about it you are on the outside, not as informed about it as them. Humans are social creatures and have a strong desire to belong and so in that situation it difficult. However, in trying to conform we risk losing our individuality to cookie cutter archetypes dreamt up by corporate executives so they can cram more mass media into their audience.

Entertainment is not the enemy. Conformity is not the enemy. Thoughtlessness is the enemy. Have you thought for yourself today or did you think what they told you to think?