2-25-07 Complete Overload

The trick to turning a whole population of free people into a population of slaves is to completely overwhelm them. Sensory overload, intellectual overload, financial overload, emotional overload, ...I sometimes wonder how much of this a person can take before they end up collecting returnable cans and bottles on the street, just to get enough money to buy a bit to eat every day.

The first thing a person would have to do in order to not slide down that slippery slope into oblivion would be to turn off the television and stop reading the newspaper. It's really very simple. The mass media in America is the main source of confusion. It's quite effective in capturing people's attention, warping it into focus upon things that truly have no direct bearing in their day to day survival, and addicting them to the premise that if they don't keep watching and reading... well, they might miss something important.

When was the last time that anything really important happened, and your only source of the fact that it happened was the television? Never. The only "news" that the major media has ever "broken" upon the attention of this nation has been the aftermath, and "the official story". As they brought that aftermath and official story closer and closer to the point of actual occurence, the illusion of any of these events being an actual "experience" became more and more believable.

For instance, the events that took place on 9-11-01 were broadcast in "real time", and everybody who watched them on TV felt they were right there, experiencing these events as they happened. It was horrifying and shocking.

But WE, as a nation, did NOT actually experience those events. The only people who DID actually experience those events were there AT the places where they happened, and THEY WERE NOT WATCHING TELEVISION.

Now, I'm not saying that our sources of second hand information about what's going on the world have no valid place in our day to day lives. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that, in order to remain sane in this world, one should be able to differentiate between first hand experiences and second hand experiences.

There's a big difference.

So far, my own day to day life has been entirely unaffected by the events of 9-11-01, the suspension of Habeus Corpus, the insanity of the current administration, or the Patriot Act... Yet, these (and many other) things "feel like" they have because of all the second hand information I've taken in regarding them.

I have never witnessed a murder. I have never known anyone personally who was murdered. I only know one person who has had a person that they know who was murdered. Yet, it "feels like" the prospect of me or someone I know being murdered is a constant, day to day possibility because I see so many news stories of people being murdered, almost every single day.

I don't argue for burying one's head in the sand and ignoring what's going on in the rest of the world. But it will drive you completely insane if you fail to notice that the major media are NOT providing you with personal experiences. They are providing only second hand information, and the bulk of that so-called "information" is all designed for one purpose and one purpose only... to get you to keep watching and reading and being exposed to the advertising.

Since all that "information" is specifically designed and packaged and "spun" to addict you to it, the simple process of withdrawal can reveal how unimportant it actually is for your real life, the one you experience first-hand on a day to day basis.

Try this experiment. Stop reading the newspaper or watching any commercial TV for two weeks. Cold turkey. It won't take too long before you begin to notice that your ability to keep your head while everyone around you is losing theirs will be quite profound. Believe me, real life is much easier to live when it's your main focus.