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.
