from GlobalResearch Website
Almost all television, be it sagas and melodramas or daily news,
is as addictive as any drug. This single dimensional ‘pulpit’ from which
media preaches to us (often in the centre of our living rooms) actually
seeds many of our negative behavior patterns in day-to-day life.
Often this is
anything but the case. News is provided, increasingly, by a select few.
Those who have views outside what the owners of global media want us to hear
and see have found themselves without a platform from which to present their
knowledge and opinions.
There is
purpose behind this; it ensures that the now global corporate empires of
media become bigger and more powerful, gobbling up any small players along
the way. A select few controlling interests effectively distort democracy by
shaping public opinion through deception on a grand scale.
It perpetuates polarity and provides the momentum necessary for its growth. Our feelings of vengeance and self-righteousness, seeded by lack of balance and distortion of truth reported to us in our news, is the fuel needed for us to supply ‘boy-power’ for the wars we are about to wage (or are already waging).
In the few years since television made its debut into society, people who would be dictators have found the perfect uninterrupted medium through which to shape opinion every night of the week - they do it from behind the scenes by filtering the news and programming we watch.
It is interesting that the first ever public television broadcast was of Adolph Hitler opening the Olympic games in Munich - he understood the immense potential of this new communication medium.
Media can be the most powerful tool of freedom for
the people but it
can also be the most powerful instrument of propaganda (and
manipulation.)
If we were shown the degree of violence which our nations have unleashed on millions of people the world over, on our behalf, we would be horrified and would quickly rise up against those governing us. But, alas, we are not shown these revealing images. Propaganda steers our opinion exactly where it is intended to go.
Disturbing, angry, fear-invoking images are the norm, always
biased to keep us on side.
Whole programs are presented where we watch the best ads. Whole channels exist where all programming is advertising.
Media is actually supplying the information that sells and is in demand. As ego-selves in denial of the common thread linking each of us through creator-self, we do not realize the true implications of this demand. We have not yet come to understand the impact it has upon our world.
Media is much more than a vehicle for supplying us with information
to make decisions - it gives us the very raw materials with which we create
even more misery.
Stories of co-operation are rare and much less popular than those showing competition.
When co-operation is shown it is usually in the form of one
team against another, one army against another, etc. This is not
co-operation in the true sense. True co-operation would mean one team, one
humanity, one earth - why would any aspect of the whole wish to attack one
of its parts?
We have imposed our subjective evaluation on them, turning a blind eye to the reality of the animal kingdom. When we see a nature program showing animals in the wild, we are led to believe that life is war - a perpetual state of hunting and being hunted. Those who have actually experienced the real natural world, now a minority of humans, know this is clearly a deception. Film crews spend months, sometimes years waiting patiently for these exciting scenes.
While on the lookout for their safety, animals generally enjoy freedom and peace the likes of which we have forgotten to even dream about. Predators only hunt what they need, usually taking out the weak or the excess. Furthermore, sexuality and its expression in the animal kingdom is anything but what we have been led to believe. It is colorful, diverse and natural.
While well meaning, those who interpret
animal behavior for us are often biased by their societal belief systems,
subjectivity seeded by religion - all too often
christianity and judaism.
They need to sell program content (product) that is desirable, their commercial interests paramount at all times. Of the few media outlets that are not constrained in this way, most are government funded. These outlets, contrary to what we would like to believe, also have to satisfy their funders.
This media sector tends to attract players of a
particular political bent whose self-preservation (job, financial future and
retirement benefits) rely on the illusion that we need more and more
governing; more controls and restrictions placed on us.
All too often media actually misinforms us by providing the illusion that we are being properly informed. We hear stories about terrorism, earthquakes, floods and famines. We hear of our frailty against an ever-increasing array of attacks commissioned by the invisible world of bacteria and viruses, frailty that can be counterattacked by mega-corporations behind the medical industry.
With only ego, without
spiritual grounding in and through ourselves, these reports succeed in
invoking even more fear.
‘They’ have become our father-figure who we trust and look to for guidance.
This is a grave error on our behalf because many of these people are completely irresponsible and utterly selfish. We have allowed ourselves to become disempowered, cowering and fearful, ready to be herded through any gate and into any trap. Nothing is our enemy if and when we decide to believe in ourselves.
Believing in ourselves
awakens us to the reality that our earth
is alive, intelligent. As with our bodies, earth ‘speaks’ to us, not in
words but in feelings - feelings we should be listening to.
Through competitive spectator sport we have created an activity that is the domain of a minority of physically-suited individuals. For the majority of people who are either unable to achieve such high standards of performance or simply don’t desire the activity enough to partake, participation is reduced to that of mere spectator.
We are entertained just like the ancient crowds watching
gladiators in the Roman coliseum; the only thing that pulls a crowd to its
feet faster than a goal is a fight. The result is that the overall fitness
level of our media-orientated society continues to reach new lows.
The only effort required is a little shopping. The need for more stuff is never-ending. We experience a short term high when we bag the latest product on the shelf, but the unwritten guarantee is that, if we follow the rules of this game, we will come to the same end as everyone else. That is, we will eventually become old, diseased, and finally die.
Why, advertisements even allow us to pre-pay for our own funeral!
Most inhabitants of the earth have no such luxury; many cannot even read (not because they are stupid, but because they did not have the opportunity of learning to read). The greater percentage of humans has only one concern and that is whether they are going to be able to eat today. For many this dire situation is directly related to our imperialism, our greed, our soullessness.
Each of us in the richest
nations is destined to consume 15 to 150 times what one of these people
consumes in a lifetime! If we in the west have just two children, it is
equivalent to giving birth to a small to medium sized village in many parts
of the Third World!
The profits for our cheap
products stay in the hands of greedy Westerners and oligarchs.
Maybe we should learn to maintain and fix things with our own hands, or be prepared to pay others who have taken the time to learn these valuable skills fairly and proportionately for their time. We have lost respect for some of the most important people in society and it is at our peril because young people are not being encouraged to learn practical, hands-on vocations.
A kitchen full of managers cannot cook a meal. A community full of government workers, councilors and inspectors, inventing and enforcing more and more regulations, cannot make for a functional, creative, productive or self-sustaining society.
Practical
skills will become invaluable in a real-world sustainable situation.
By stepping one by one off the treadmill we actually provide the only real opportunity for these people to begin reassessing their needs. Because we cannot know anyone else’s plight we are wise indeed to allow them to proceed without hindrance.
Social revolution is beginning to take place in many significant parts of the developing world, most notably South America.
It is in our best interests to
allow and observe these revolutions, not judge or interfere with them.
Our
infrastructure, contrary to what we might like to believe, is weak and
fragile. It needs constant maintenance and repair to keep it running. The
day will come when we will once again need to face the reality that
co-operation with the natural world is the only way to put food on our
tables. Cell phones, high tech devices, flashy vehicles and silk suits are
quite inedible.
...just a few short years ago these were our mantras.
Now that statistics have been gathered to tell us that smoking is
bad, that tanning chambers can damage our skin, the loop of disconnection is
complete - we buy into what they say.
It is us that have turned dis-ease into disease. Knowing our guilt, governments are now free to tax us whatever they like; smokers are reminded every time they light up how bad they are.
Others, piously confronting them for their bad habits, accusing smokers of affecting their health, fly to far away places, use the same environmentally harmful products (including a plethora of pharmaceutical drugs that end up in the water system), drive their cars and generate dangerous microwave fields with their cell-phones, not to mention wobbling around with tens, sometimes hundreds of pounds of extra fat.
We dare not point out the oxymoron - they have the weight of current public phobia on their side. But this is just the beginning. A new doorway into judging and mistreating others has been opened and tested. A whole sector of society has been openly branded as inconsiderate, unhealthy, stupid - a burden.
Who, we should ask, might be next?
We, once fully conscious, will filter out the polarity being channeled to us.
Self-empowered, we will
observe and steer ourselves on our individual journey towards full
awakening. Using the most powerful tool we have, our contemplative minds, we
will once again have time to think for ourselves.
From a newly empowered position outside the pendulum of polarity, media can provide stark evidence of the intensifying circle that has been cast, one from which there is no way out except recognition of the obvious. It cannot be squashed, fought to death, protested into oblivion - no action taken from within the circle will bring it down.
Taking sides will always set into motion some form of opposition, thereby granting the quandary a life of its own. One last climactic time, this time involving all humanity, history seems destined to repeat.
Afterwards, the survivors will have no choice but to address the fundamental question, using logic to proceed on a sustainable path of evolution with each other and all other life - with cooperation, compassion and honesty.
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