The Dangers of American Society and Media
Ranging from black people subconsciously wanting to be white people, moving to the manipulation of human consciousness through media and technology.
It seems to me that many black people just want to be white people. They want to be white men specifically. At the top of the totem pole, able to do what they want, command the most authority and money with the least amount of work. They want to become the dominant class because they cannot see past their own sense of self and believe they deserve the same perks that accompanies being a white man in America.
People don’t see the folly in this line of thinking. In order to be on the same level as a white man in America, that means you must reinforce the unbalanced power dynamics that occur within American capitalism and this means enforcing racism, classism, and sexism at a larger scale. To reach the level most people desire, to be accepted in all the boardrooms, swanky parties, and golf outings, you have to be okay with stepping on the little man. This is how the elite work. They make their money on the back of the poor and middle class and then refuse to redistribute their obscene wealth, which was only made possible by the hard work and dollars spent by the proletariat. This is what many black people in America aspire to be. Ultra rich and wealthy. They do not consider the immorality that accompanies acquiring so many resources. The manipulation it requires, of people, of markets, of human decency.
Why do black people still want to assimilate into American society? We can objectively say that America is racist, sexist, and classist, yet black people as a community are still desperate to join such an evil state of affairs. We can talk about the education system brainwashing children with propaganda regarding America, championing it as a land of the free and home of the brave. Even though it was one of the last countries to outlaw slavery and frequently murders or excoriates the people who envision a better society for all.
We can talk about the Western media brainwashing the children, sending them images that make them think of black people as less than white people, as criminals, or as solely entertainers. These entertainers become the idea of success in many black people’s minds.
We humans are all shaped by our environments. The environment our brain exists in matters. We have to understand how what we ingest through our sense organs (touch, smell, sight, hearing, taste) affects how we view the world and how we feel in the moment. Our environment is bloated by media distracting us from pursuing useful information, rather than facts about kardashians or kanye west.
Think of how insane it is for people to care about people who make way more money than them and who don’t know they exist. People today, because of technology, think of total strangers as essential parts of their community, simply because they make music they like, or have an instagram page they like, or are their favorite entertainer.
The dissolution of boundaries between our immediate physical realities and what the internet allows us to envision as our life interests me. There are billion dollar industries built solely around entertainment. Around a celebrity culture that somehow people imagine as healthy. No, it’s not healthy to be obsessed with someone who doesn’t know that you exist. It’s not healthy to dedicate time and money to someone who’s already making a whole hell of a lot more than you. We have been misled and tricked by society into thinking it’s okay to mindlessly consume the drivel we are fed daily. We lack focus building ourselves because we are more focused on building or falling in line for someone else. Celebrity culture is toxic and leads to a lack of self actualization from the people who need to be finding themselves the most.
American media’s propaganda is one of the most insidious plans for widespread restructuring of the human consciousness that’s ever occurred in history. When you can guide people to their own destruction, leaving them with the semblance of options, but really giving them choices between bad and worse, it makes it even harder for them to realize the true roots of their issues. They will constantly blame the symptoms they experience.
We’re conditioned to champion money as the end all, be all, worshiping it like an idol in America, then act confused when we are apt to put the pursuit of money over the wellbeing of ourselves and others. People’s shitty actions and choices are excused, as long as they have money or receive money. Celebrities get deified simply because… they’re rich? They have a lot of money? Because a lot of people know them? A lot of people don’t know they have worth regardless of whether the world knows them.
Yet fame has become the height of existence to many people, the ability to be seen by a ton of folks and be acknowledged. We are desperate to exist past our physical lives, but the thing is, even these celebrities and famous figures will be forgotten by the annals of history. The right idea is to contribute to society by contributing to the lives and wellbeing of others, so we live on through them and the people they touch. Not to give ourselves and others a false impression of our importance just because we got on some tv shows, or had a lot of followers. The quality of your relationships is so much more important than the number of them.
Would you rather have a hundred deep and meaningful relationships or would you like to have a million shallow ones, that mean little and are contrived? We shouldn’t gather confidence from shallow relationships that aren’t built of anything with actual worth, like love, compromise, communication, sacrifice, and hard work. Relationships should be something we engage in and make us better people, not a feeling of fake connection we get from social media.
People like to blame technology. But technology cannot do anything by itself. It needs a human to code it, set it up, advertise it, get people to buy it, etc. Technology has not reached the point where it is autonomous of the humans who need to program it. So technology is just an extension of human desires that change the current environment that we live in. Our brains are an amazing wealth of information that can be used to create a reality that doesn’t rely on technology for hits of dopamine or to feel good about our lives. We can feel good about ourselves completely devoid from technology and its advances.
They make these apps as addictive as possible, so you feel they’re something you need to keep coming back to. They use technology to prey on human tendencies that have been present for thousands of years. They’re not necessarily changing humanity but making humanity adjust to change. Physically and mentally,, humans have been damn near the same for thousands of years. It is important for us to explore how the current environment adjusts the human experience as a whole. Because the environment we find ourselves in is going to affect the human and humanity as we know it. We are shaped by our environment and adjust to it. Technology and its advancements have always been a part of our environment. But as human beings, we have the capacity to be aware of our thoughts. What much of technology is doing, is making us less self aware and less cognizant of the habits we constantly fall into, whether good for us or not.
Many things championed by society are not necessary, many not even healthy. We want the biggest house, the biggest car, the material things we’ve been conditioned to believe makes us better people or will help us live a better life. But we all know people with a tremendous amount of resources can be sadder than a poor child. So if money cannot guarantee happiness, why do so many people chase after it mindlessly?
Well one, money seems to be a requirement for life today, so people need it in order to survive. But deeper than that is the fact that people will have enough money to live comfortably and it’s still not enough. We’ve been so conditioned by society to chase after things, that we can rarely appreciate what we do have on hand. American society and media teaches us that greed is not only okay, but greed is good. And that somehow being greedy and trying to set yourself up for monetary success, is good for the people around you, good for society as well.