Or: more CItizens, less Consumers.
Our vocabulary word for today, kids, is: brainwashing.
The American people are being brainwashed by a number of things. The first of those things is advertising, mainly that of television. Adverts are constantly, from the time we are old enough to actually see the television in some cases, streaming into our consciousness, and making us less satisfied with what we have-that's what they are designed to do. The cumulative effect though, is less happiness, and defining our happiness by material things.
http://mattbrundage.com/
But people today not only don't realize they are being brainwashed, they are fishes swimming in a stream of propaganda. Such that when someone tells them the full truth, it sounds very odd. (Try explaining the true complexity of any given geopolitical situation to a CNN or FOX watcher you know...they will eventually stop listening due to boredom, tell you you're lying, or ask for a dictionary.) Because most media communicated to them is designed to talk down to them(so as to not challenge them and make them feel inferior), cater to their prejudices (ropes in more ears/eyeballs), and accuracy in reportage is no longer a big concern (accuracy causes cost of production to rise and profits to fall.)
So the corporate media have failed to make Citizens out of the American people, by not educating them about the issues in an accurate, reliable, and most importantly, holistic way.
The education system has failed to make Citizens out of the American people in many ways. Not the least of which is by not teaching them about the ways of psychological manipulation . Not knowing what it is, the fail to recognize it. Failing to recognize it, they do not question it. Failing to question it, they believe it at worst, or at best, become suspicious and isolated.
Worse, the education system teaches so poorly these days that 18-year olds graduate not knowing enough facts to be able to tell lies from truth, a fact from an opinion, a feeling from a thought, or even how to determine when something is a lie or not: how to do one's own basic literature or internet research.
You see, I used to be a believer in anarcho-syndicalism...and in my heart of hearts I would like to see a radically destructured and restructured society. But I came to recognize that this would require a very deep tectonic shift in the way people behave towards each other in order to produce a healthier, happier society. I also came to see that that shift in culture was more crucial than government structure.
What we need is a critical mass of Citizens. This as I define as people who are used to taking action for themselves AND responsibility for their society, try not to take actions that needlessly cause harm to others... care for the survival/happiness of all humans everywhere on this planet to some degree, and care about the survival of the ecosphere as well. Citizens educate themselves, find out the truth, and try to make the world a better place.
What we do have is a huge majority of Consumers trained to look for leaders, money, stuff, substances, food, sex, attention, and dominance over others to make themselves happy. Worse, they will do so at great cost to their own future, never mind the future of others. Because they have been brainwashed all their lives to need, need, NEED all this crap...and then will find the crap WILL not make them fulfilled when they get it-or not for long... they must have More Crap, or More Crap than someone else who has More Crap than they do...a constant influx of crap, like some sort of giant inverse cloaca...
Consumers consume...they do not create, they don't try to make a sustainable future for everyone. At best, they may look out for their kids...but they don't think about the entirety of the world their kids will inherit. That world can go to hell for all they care...and they just pull out their big spoon, and keep scooping.
Tell them they need to take on more responsibility for the long-term consequences of their actions...and many behave like addicts when confronted-in an infantile, egotistic fashion.
As a dumpster-diver, I see a whole lot of working appliances, or ones that can be easily fixed, just waiting for me to come along and rummage them out...good clothes, tools, canned food good for years...thrown away because they didn't fulfill people. With no thought about its' potential utility to anyone else or how throwing away useful goods fills up a landfill uselessly.
I despise waste...and my society is a profoundly wasteful one. Can you walk a 30-foot square area thoroughly in any part of your landscape (that has not been recently tidied)-and not find trash? That's what I thought.
If you've read this rant, chances are I'm preaching to the choir, and you're already at least part of the way to being a Citizen. We need Citizens. We need a critical mass of them.
Look around you. Look for the tweaks. Look for how a Citizen is created, how a Consumer is created. Find ways to throw the levers and start shunting people from the Consumer memeplex conveyor belt (thanks, RD) to the Citizen thought/behavior set.
I'm not saying turn into a Communist...in fact, the Soviet Socialist Republic destroyed what it did have of this native collective spirit in a very devastating manner.
I think this actually runs deeper than politics alone,or at least what most people would call politics. This goes right down to how we interrelate, how we think, and how we behave towards each other.
It's something I'm still mentally turning about in my head myself, so I'd welcome helpful feedback.
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