Waking Up Is Hard To Do

One of the underlying themes for the novel The Unbearable Lightness Of Being is how people would prefer that the state make their choices for them, as they are too overwhelmed to make their own choices. We would like to think otherwise, but, when taking a good look at our society, it becomes painfully clear that we do indeed eschew the responsibility of freedom. Certainly, the predator class has done it's level best to keep us under their thumb, but we have met them halfway, and made it all the easier for them to keep us down.

Still, one wonders how it might have been if not for the mental fences surrounding us. Emerson and Thoreau's treatises on self-determination may not have been lost on us. So, how do they do it? Unless one lives in the wild, the answer should be obvious. That television in your house is the devil in your mind. Instead of us going to the carnival, the carnival comes to us, and plays us for every bit the fool. But, it goes much further than that, and the beans have been spilled. Every seven or so years, there is a new "education crisis", and it's out with the old, and in with the new. And, with every turn of the screw, we have gradually become a school-to-work feedstock. Thinking beyond the left-right false dichotomy, much less questioning the validity of one's vote, is seemingly impossible, given the signal-to-noise ratio of the dumbing-down process.

To call attention to this mass-manipulation is, of course, to trigger a well-conditioned mind-set characterized by reflexive ridicule, and a disconnect from rationale. The tin-foil hat meme allows one to bypass the out-in-the-open Kenny Lays and Halliburtons, and to ignore the obvious sociopathic current that runs through our ruling class. At the least, it causes us to focus our mistrust on one entity, while the rest operate in seeming invisibility. It is a neat trick, and it's architects are well-versed in the art of mind control. At the rate things are going, I would hardly be surprised to someday see a majority of Americans on all fours, barking like dogs whenever they start to experience any cognitive dissonance. All bark and no bite is, after all, what we want here. Why bite the hand that feeds us?