Wake Up You Dreamers

When I was growing up and into adulthood I believed in things like the news and history. Now I know that such things are actually just stories; a kind of gossip as it were. What's worse though is that it's not just persuasion that the manipulators of media are performing- a very good part of who you believe you are is an invention, an implant. Deep down, we all know that there is something very real about our existence, something immutable. And believe it or not, no amount of brainwashing in the world can erase this knowledge. What's more, it is absolutely universal and has nothing at all do with culture or religion. It is, one could say, your birthright.

Despite this very solid fact, people behave in ways that run contrary to who they really and believe that this behavior will bring them happiness. Take the United States, for example. The forefathers of the US never laid out a plan to make everyone 'a good American.' They laid out a plan that would ensure individual freedom and civil rights. The State was to exist to serve the people, not the other way around, as JFK would have it. Somewhere along the line though, 'The American Dream' was invented and the good American was defined. Few Americans today would even question this part of their identity, though it has nothing to do with their nation's roots, much less their true selves.

The news is probably one of the most predatory and manipulative media organs the world has ever seen. The other day I was riding the bullet train from Tokyo to Fukuoka. There was an LCD screen in each car, and between announcing stations and maybe the weather, they repeated only two blurbs from the national broadcasting system during the whole trip: the murder of a couple in their apartment in Tokyo and the search for a missing child, presumably kidnapped and murdered, in Aichi prefecture. Now, I understand that terrible, horrible things are happening in this world every single day. I don't need the news to tell me that; they've been telling me that my whole life. And why would the executives at a highbrow organization like NHK choose to feed commuters such trash, over and over? I think fear is an energy, and the media wants to keep us in fear. We'll want to find something to relieve that fear, and that's why commercials and media go together. I know it sounds simple, like something everybody already knows. But are we really aware of it, isn't it working, and isn't it true? That's just my opinion.