The Objective Situation

I’ll tell you right now, I live under a rock.  I rarely, if ever, pay much attention to the news.

Oh I used too, but I changed…and it had a lot to do with the 11 day electrical outage that we experienced when the Derecho came through during the summer of 2012.  I was without power, without internet (which means no videos to watch or anything to listen to, we don’t have cable or satellite TV, just the internet) without any connection to the outside world for 11 days and I learned a very powerful lesson from that: Everything is meaningless! LOL

We have these continuously running stories that we like to pass around and tell to each other and gawk at and argue over and get all stressed out about, but it’s just a story…how do you know it’s even for real?

I remember as a teen, this was always my issue with “the news”, with the history books etc.  I even asked my 12th grade U.S. History teacher “how do you know that all of this is even true?” and he didn’t have an answer, other than some generic “because this is what the historical experts have agreed upon as true” …EXACTLY!

During that 11 day electrical outage, everything that I experienced was “for real”, concrete and tangible.  And I realized, about 5 days into it, how much of our lives are just wasted thinking about some thing that happened to some person we don’t even know in some place half way ’round the world and we let that concern us.  Meanwhile, in our own lives, we are distanced from each other and our children and our spouses, not even to mention the land and the animals, whom we have a responsibility towards also.

No, we just sit on our asses and flip the channel or clickety click click the mouse and be told what to think, what to say, how to view the world and we LOVE IT!

Naturally, we don’t out and out say this, we never fully admit to ourselves:

I want propaganda.

Most people consider themselves “above” such things, a free and mature objective thinker LOL…and everybody does this! 😆

But look at the basic situation of the average individual in our society.  He is powerless, a simple man with a very basic education, working a simple job all day long, he comes home, and there is all of this STUFF happening all over the world screaming at him from the TV and PC screens, demanding that he asses the information presented and posses an “informed opinion” on the matter, any matter.  He needs to know about foreign policy and economic data and political debate etc. etc….but, in reality, he just can’t…not really..

Faced with such matters he feels his own weakness, his on inconsistency, his own ineffectiveness and on top of that, the very fact that there are things, BIG things, happening in the world, decisions being made for him, that effect him and his family, and over which he has no control, and that realization scares him and drives him to despair.  But he cannot, will not, stay in this situation for too long, he needs a “mythology”, an ideological veil to cover this harsh reality…to offer him consolation and comfort.  And, since man as a whole, has for the most part, rejected God, that leaves only propaganda to offer a remedy for what is basically an intolerable situation.

He’s just a simple man with a basic education and a simple job whose in way over his head.  But he wants to participate, wants to “appear” educated and informed and intelligent…he is caught between his desire and his inability to be what he desires…and he refuses to accept it, for no man will ever believe about himself that he cannot have an opinion on something.  The majority of people prefer expressing stupidities to not expressing any opinion at all…and it is this that gives them the “feeling” of participation, of “belonging” to the group.

And this is where the media propaganda machines come into the picture.  They tell the stories, they dictate the accepted “norms”, they keep the mythology going…telling you exactly what to think and how to think it.  Even the so-called “alternative media” has their accepted and agreed upon as true “reality”…and so the vicious cycle continues…

And I realized all of this during that 11 day electrical outage.  That what was real and true was what was happening right there at that instant in front of my very eyes, in my little family on my little plot of land, actual people with authentic problems and genuine needs… and there was no world looming out there telling me of all of it’s problems and what I should think of them.

The chill of the morning air, the crowing of a rooster, the first faint light of the rising sun, the smell of woodsmoke, the crackling of a fire, the warmth on my cheeks and the flicker of light on my eyes, the smell of good earth surrounding me, the hum of happy plants, wind moving through trees caressing my face, the comforting smell of hay and loyal animals whom I can lean my head against and breath in the smell of their soft fur, comforting…

…the pitter patter of tiny feet racing across the floor, the laughter and squealing delight of children at play, the feel of a small warm hand enveloped inside my own…

…the satisfied smile of my husband, the touch of his hand at the small of my back, the mingling of certainty and purpose with a bemused mischievousness that lights his eyes as he tousles the hair of his son…it is these things that are real and tangible, these are not meaningless but the true ingredients of LIFE.

It matters not what is happening to some person, some where, doing some thing, in his own life that has nothing to do with me and I saw his picture, heard him say five words on a screen …what does that mean??  And why should I care??

I don’t.