Twenty First Century Man Jan. 22, 2024
I still can’t believe we’re 24 years into a new century.
Growing up, I always believed the year 2000 spelled the
absolute end of life, or at least, we would wake up in a world completely
different from the one we lived in at the time.
In some cases, this came to pass – although in an ugly
Orwellian way – as we still struggle to get off the face of the planet, and yet
carry around in our pockets the fundamental tool for brainwashing – the cell
phone.
Rarely in my travels, do I encounter anyone without one.
On the train, people stare down into their small screens to
get their share of propaganda – almost all main stream media doing its best to
make Orwell’s 1984 a reality.
No wonder Facebook and other social media censor those who
would provide an alternative vision of the world. We are being fed what they
want us to believe, and they take offense when we refuse to be indoctrinated,
calling people with alternative views evil or cultist or worse.
It is no wonder so many people emerging out of the college has
no sense of history, or a perverted version of it that fits with the new agenda.
Whacko radical professors have access to our kids and we are
largely helpless against them – although admittedly, the miseducation of Rita
happens long before college, as teachers (who now believe they have a right to
determine a kid’s gender rather than the parents) get their nasty claws into
kids as early as kindergarten, and the rest – the internet, college and media –
merely reinforce the brainwashing long in place.
While Orwell saw this coming, I never imagined we would
become so complacent or for that matter, so intolerant of alternating opinions.
People with alternative views are unwelcome, and our society
treats them the way old time Christianity used to treat witches.
We don’t actually burn people at the stake these days, but
metaphorically we do. Sometimes, we imprison them such as some of the Jan. 6
protestors, to teach the rest of us to comply or find ourselves in similar
straights.
Once in a while I am pleasantly surprised by young people
who resist, adopting views that are counter to those being forced down their
throats by society. Sometimes, I even admire people on the train who are
actually reading real books, even if they are reading materials to support
their misconceptions about history such as the 1619 Project.
Paulie, a book lover who spent a huge chunk of his life as a
librarian, once challenged me when I asked why he is promoting the reading of
comic books and graphic novels, instead of real books.
People, he said, have to start somewhere, and he’s grateful
that they are reading at all.
Most of what I see on the cell phones on the train is image
based, videos that require very little thinking, and so add to this mashup of
misinformation because seeing is believing, even when what they are seeing is a
lie.
The future I imagined never occurred. We got to the moon,
but never went back – with nut cases who have taken over telling us space
aliens wouldn’t allow us to, although now we’re in a race to get there again
before the Russians or the Chinese do, making you wonder what happened to the
space aliens, and whether Paulie’s belief of them being in league with
government officials was some kind of delusion as well, a magicians slight of
hand, a mis-direction to keep us from confronting the real issues in our lives.
As long as we’re looking to the skies, we’re not seeing what’s going on under
our feet, such as having the rug pulled out from under us.
Fortunately, I’ve lived long enough to realize life comes in
cycles, and what is popular now will be rejected in the future. But sociology
tells us that in the end the most terrible force on the planet is not space
aliens, or even the nuclear bomb, but bureaucracy, which dulls our senses and
lulls us into complacency, we coming to believe that some greater force will
solve all our problems, if only we placed our faith in the system, when in
fact, we simply empower those forces that brainwashed in the first place.
A depressing thought.
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