Boss
Take a Memo:
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to get into a conversation with someone 20-30 years old, only to find they have no grasp of history whatsoever, no understanding of actual science and very little comprehension of our founding principles in general. I often blamed this on a liberal-run education system which has been a disappointment and utter disaster at educating our youth. But it occurred to me, basically the same people were in charge back when I was growing up. So, while our schools are falling apart and failing, I don't think that's where we jumped the tracks and I can't blame everything on it. Oh, it's bad... I totally missed out on the hot nympho teachers and "outcome based" test results. You had to actually know the material and take the tests, make a passing grade, etc.
While things are definitely tanking on that front, I feel the problem is much deeper. I think it's our free culture and society which has caused us to become victims of our own device. Hear me out, because you'll need to think outside the box to understand. Not very many of us can remember life before television. It has been a part of our lives for a long time. With the new electronic media, seeing the most current movies has also become a social prerequisite. Even if you haven't actually seen a movie, you've probably heard about it through social media or trailers on TV. The point here being, we are living in an age where society is inundated with a constant flow of "conscience" through entertainment.
A good example of what I am getting at is our perception of civil rights in America. It's repeatedly drummed into our heads, this stereotypical mindset of how things went down, how people were "good guys" and "bad guys" through all of it, and the "good guys" ultimately prevailed. As if our history follows the template of a great movie. That is our perception but that isn't the reality. There were "good guys" who were doing very wrong things, and there were "bad guys" who believed they were doing the right thing. No one is a stereotype, no situation is a stereotype. But our free culture and society has neatly repackaged our history in a way that we perceive the past as some sort of 'manifest liberal destiny' for lack of a better term.
We have brainwashed ourselves into believing our own scapegoats and denials. Who is to say-- and get ready to bristle at this-- that "Separate But Equal" wouldn't have produced a better and stronger society as a whole? Keep in mind, we never tried "separate but equal" because it was rejected by the masses. We had been trying "separate but unequal" for years and it certainly didn't work. Why is it we assume that the path we took to a forced integration of black and white culture was "the best" way? The answer is, because we have been programmed by the script to believe this. There is no symbiotic reason to think forced integration was ideal in any respect. In fact, nature would suggest that we would have been better off as a whole if we had adopted a solution which respected cultural differences and didn't attempt to force integration. But none of this can ever be changed now, we can't go back and try an alternative at this point, we simply have to accept the reality of what we have. And we have our entertainment media which has replaced actual knowledge of history and such, to reinforce our perceptions of what is "right and wrong" or what was "noble and just!"
Now, it was risky for me to make that example and the shallow end of the gene pool here will undoubtedly interpret my remarks as some sort of neo-confederate call for a return to segregation, and that's just not true... we can never put the genie back in the bottle. Water under the bridge now, we have to move forward. It was just an example of how our cultural narrative is shaped around a false and stereotypical perception of the past.
We now have a nation comprised of multiple generations who've reached voting age, yet have no clue whatsoever about history other than what they have been taught through the brainwashing of pop culture. They watch a movie about the Civil War and injustices toward blacks and they believe that's how things really were. That's history! They develop this image in their minds of a morally right Union and morally wrong Confederacy as if each side was comprised of monolithic thinkers who all fit the stereotype. Why? Because it's easier to believe a movie that reinforces the cultural script than to actually study history and learn something. Again, not defending slavery or the Confederacy, just pointing out how culture has driven the narrative.
Think about movies like Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird and M*A*S*H, how they drove the collective cultural narrative, how they effectively brainwashed us into accepting a perception that may or may not depict reality? This isn't something new, it's been happening for a long time. Our evolution as thinkers has given way to "groupthink" as Orwell would put it. We've become prisoners of our own minds, free thinking is condemned by conventional wisdom and we are set on a course to follow our own delusions, guided by entertainment media and pop culture.
It's very depressing indeed.
While things are definitely tanking on that front, I feel the problem is much deeper. I think it's our free culture and society which has caused us to become victims of our own device. Hear me out, because you'll need to think outside the box to understand. Not very many of us can remember life before television. It has been a part of our lives for a long time. With the new electronic media, seeing the most current movies has also become a social prerequisite. Even if you haven't actually seen a movie, you've probably heard about it through social media or trailers on TV. The point here being, we are living in an age where society is inundated with a constant flow of "conscience" through entertainment.
A good example of what I am getting at is our perception of civil rights in America. It's repeatedly drummed into our heads, this stereotypical mindset of how things went down, how people were "good guys" and "bad guys" through all of it, and the "good guys" ultimately prevailed. As if our history follows the template of a great movie. That is our perception but that isn't the reality. There were "good guys" who were doing very wrong things, and there were "bad guys" who believed they were doing the right thing. No one is a stereotype, no situation is a stereotype. But our free culture and society has neatly repackaged our history in a way that we perceive the past as some sort of 'manifest liberal destiny' for lack of a better term.
We have brainwashed ourselves into believing our own scapegoats and denials. Who is to say-- and get ready to bristle at this-- that "Separate But Equal" wouldn't have produced a better and stronger society as a whole? Keep in mind, we never tried "separate but equal" because it was rejected by the masses. We had been trying "separate but unequal" for years and it certainly didn't work. Why is it we assume that the path we took to a forced integration of black and white culture was "the best" way? The answer is, because we have been programmed by the script to believe this. There is no symbiotic reason to think forced integration was ideal in any respect. In fact, nature would suggest that we would have been better off as a whole if we had adopted a solution which respected cultural differences and didn't attempt to force integration. But none of this can ever be changed now, we can't go back and try an alternative at this point, we simply have to accept the reality of what we have. And we have our entertainment media which has replaced actual knowledge of history and such, to reinforce our perceptions of what is "right and wrong" or what was "noble and just!"
Now, it was risky for me to make that example and the shallow end of the gene pool here will undoubtedly interpret my remarks as some sort of neo-confederate call for a return to segregation, and that's just not true... we can never put the genie back in the bottle. Water under the bridge now, we have to move forward. It was just an example of how our cultural narrative is shaped around a false and stereotypical perception of the past.
We now have a nation comprised of multiple generations who've reached voting age, yet have no clue whatsoever about history other than what they have been taught through the brainwashing of pop culture. They watch a movie about the Civil War and injustices toward blacks and they believe that's how things really were. That's history! They develop this image in their minds of a morally right Union and morally wrong Confederacy as if each side was comprised of monolithic thinkers who all fit the stereotype. Why? Because it's easier to believe a movie that reinforces the cultural script than to actually study history and learn something. Again, not defending slavery or the Confederacy, just pointing out how culture has driven the narrative.
Think about movies like Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird and M*A*S*H, how they drove the collective cultural narrative, how they effectively brainwashed us into accepting a perception that may or may not depict reality? This isn't something new, it's been happening for a long time. Our evolution as thinkers has given way to "groupthink" as Orwell would put it. We've become prisoners of our own minds, free thinking is condemned by conventional wisdom and we are set on a course to follow our own delusions, guided by entertainment media and pop culture.
It's very depressing indeed.
