Shining Thru

I think it’s pretty awesome that we are allowed to have our own thoughts, and opinions in this country.  However, I find it pretty fascinating at how vast of differences those opinions can have, and how the media will always try to do their best to persuade your opinions to those that will sell the most stories, papers, magazines, etc….

It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s a good thing or a bad thing in reality, the media is going to spin what they put in front of the nation into whatever story is going to sell.  If they feel a good human interest story is the best bet, then they will go for it, but generally speaking they go for the scandal aspect.  The latest with the scandals is that President Obama took his wife for a romantic evening in New York City.  Personally I think this is awesome, but the media is slamming him.  What is worse is reading some of the comments to the articles…some people are thinking for themselves, others are simply repeating exactly what they saw in the article.  Unfortunately, this is what our society has come to, being brainwashed by the media.  The majority of people in this country will believe whatever they hear, as long as they hear it on the news. 

I think it would have been interesting to see what people would be saying about the night out if the media would have taken the nice human interest approach, rather than the slaughtering approach.  And by the way, I think the President is doing a pretty amazing job if the worse thing the media can find to report on is that he took his wife out for a romantic date and is doing a great job keeping up with his relationship and his new job as President. 

I wonder what those people would be saying if the media would have promoted the good aspects of the situation….and I also wonder if this would be happening with a different president.  It seems to me like the President has always done family focused things and have always been applauded for their efforts.  Would the whole nation be supportive of the date nights if the media twisted the story into a positive light??  Will we ever be able to teach our general majority to think for themselves again or will we always be dependent on the media to feed the opinions of the masses.

Black and White

Gray…Hazy fog moves in

Gathering at the bottom of the ravine

Nothing in sight but mist

Person can’t see, comprehend

A glance through one eye

Squinting trying to see

Turn around and look

Life is made of middle ground, gray haze

The vibrant colors of day spill out in the sunrise

The colors concealed as darkness falls

Shadows of the world move in

The unknown is revealed

 What makes people paranoid about what they don’t know, why do we hesitate for opportunities to experience new things?  What is it that intimidates us?  Makes us wait and see?  What makes people wait to see someone else go first?  Why are we afraid of what we don’t know…we of course referring to our society in general….  Why does our society fear what could be looked at as exciting and new..instead so many push for traditional and sticking with what has been done in the past.  Our society seems to only want what it can know and understand, it trains people to believe that anything different from the standards set forth by the majority is wrong.  The only thing I can see this doing is making people hide who they really are so that they are not seen as different, or “wrong.”  What is the logic behind making people appear to be “normal” so that you can feel like you are in control when really you are only making more unknown variables, because now you don’t know who is really following protocol and who is just putting on a face for society to see.

It’s crazy how controlled our society is by the media that surrounds us.  The news, radio, papers, etc.  All of them press the ideas that they want people to believe, or simply ideas that will sell…that people will want to know about.  The majority of our society buys into whatever the media says, no matter how absurd it sounds. 

Take the most recent media frenzy, the swine flu, for example.  The news pushed the issue so much that people were panicking everywhere over it, despite the fact that the regular flu that went around this year just as it does every year.  People still went crazy because the media made such a big deal out of this particular strand of the flu.  The flu medication is the same, the symptoms seem the same, yet people were in a massive panic. 

Now all of the sudden the media has stopped pushing the issue, someone must have clued them in on the fact that the regular flu still kills thousands and this flu had only killed a hand full of old and frail of health people.  Now that the media has stopped, I haven’t heard a word from anyone about it.  Now that the newspapers have stopped reporting on it, it’s unimportant, people have stopped stocking up on the vitamin C and the hand sanitizer; all of the sudden they are unconcerned.  Simply because the media has stopped telling them to be fearful….. 

I think this is one of the scariest things that has happened to our society.  People of our society are losing the ability to think for themselves.  What will we do when the media has complete control over thought…in reality it’s not that far fetched of an idea.  So many people already allow themselves to take what they see on the news as complete fact, instead of including it as only a source of some information, information that should be questioned.  All media sources have their own interests to keep in mind when reporting on the “facts”.  Information that is left out of the nightly news, can be just as important, if not more so, than the information that is given on a single thing. 

I think that as a society we need to reclaim our right to question the information presented to us, remember that we can think, discover, and reason for ourselves.  If we don’t learned to grasp these skills again, I am afraid for what our world will look like in another few short decades.  Our society is getting too use to being handed things the easy way.  Instant gratification is what people want these days, but we need reo remember that some things are more important that to see the results instantly.  Sometimes it is better to work for something, puzzle something out, instead of simply accepting what is handed to us. 

What is it about our nature as humans that we enjoy investigating, exploring, and messing with the emotions of people, even ourselves.  What is the point of a movie like Seven Pounds that leaves you feeling such a mix of feelings that it’s over powering.  What is it about us that makes us push other people’s buttons, knowing that it’s going to drive them crazy…or just the opposite, know where to avoid because it still gives us some kind of control because we know we could set them off but choose not to….Maybe that’s it, maybe it’s a pleasure of feeling in control. 

Controlling someone’s emotions is definitely a way to control them….just as placing ideas into their heads…that is why advertising plays on things like the fear of the majority, or the idea that it will make you one of the crowd or above the average person.  These are all strategies in the advertising world, and they work because they are playing on the emotions…once you make that emotional connection, there is something for the product or idea to latch on ot in the mind of the person…something that they can’t get rid of.  People can’t control their emotions but you can control what is linked with them.

A very simple example is that, like most people I have always hated being sick, and all growing up my mom gave me a certain type of soda when I was sick, and to this day I hate it, even though I liked it when I was young and sick.  I now associate that soda with that feeling of being miserable and sick, I can’t help it and can’t get over it….well I probably could if I wanted to badly enough, but it just doesn’t seem like it’s worth that much effort. 

Why are we so obsessed with emotions and control….???  Why do we try so hard to control our emotions instead of just letting them be, since they are natural….It’s never the emotion that’s the problem, it’s the reaction to the emotions that we need to be careful of.

I was thinking about the movie Benjamin Button yesterday and I think one of the best parts of that movie is when he talks about how the girl he loves would have never broken her leg had anything that day gone differently…I have thought about this concept before, about how a string of events just peels out and effects so much more than what that one or two people see directly.   I think that the movie shows the concept very well, about how people you don’t know and events that you don’t know took place, can still effect your entire life.  It’s crazy to think about all that can effect you that you have absolutely no power to control.