Critique on the Revolutions Reported or Be Careful What You Ask For.
Critique on
the Revolutions Reported or Be Careful What You Ask For.
I’ve been
critical of the so called ‘revolutions’ taking place around the globe recently,
including the Occupy movement of a couple of years ago. They are so-called
social media revolutions because they were built on the availability of social
media to engage many people that may not have ever been engaged. As we’ve seen
the revolutions in Northern Africa slip from the news, the Occupy Movement slip
from having any relevance at all, and Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, and other nation
states, some newsworthy and some not, slip into and out of chaos, my criticism
seems well founded.
I’m only
critical of how all these mass movements became reported, analyzed, and
prognosticated by the media which supposedly supported or reported on them. We
have reached a point in our history where mass media (free press) has been
accepted as the main stay of a free society, such as we like to describe ours,
without any real criticism as to whether or not it is really free.
We have
total freedom when it comes to the use of guns, can watch sexual intercourse
except for the insertion on regular tv, language freedom, both intellectual and
profane and anything goes that can be left to the imagination, but is that
freedom, and if it is, then it’s definitely not democracy. What’s freedom in a
country that cannot nor willingly change even when the politics never work in
conjunction with its own laws and principles?
The disclosures
of Wikileaks and “whistleblowers” alike, ala Ed Snowden, have only put a dent
in the public’s recognition of how important any one leak or disclosure is. In
other words, we hear about the massive train wreck but not how it happened nor
how to prevent it. We hear that there has been massive spying worldwide by all
the powers that be, but we the public, really have no way to prevent it from
happening or stop it from happening at all, so it’s seen as more of a form of entertainment with a now faceless,
obscure citizenry which has become fascinated by its own self -oppression. At
some point, a true fascist society contributes to its own demise by valuing
that belief that suppresses them.
The media
will not tell you what’s wrong with the system, it simply exposes what it
believes will tickle our fancy, both intellectually or culturally. And, if it
gives us that rare glimpse into the inner workings of how or what the power
structure is doing, we want to believe that it is an anomaly at worst so we do
not have to fully accept its consequences. The problem with the media and our
relationship to it is that we are being given a recipe on how this particular
democracy works and we don’t seem to care that it’s not the recipe we think
we’ve been cooking up all these years, so we don’t pay attention to it.
We’ve
reached the point in our intellectual development where we think knowledge is a
tool and is as relevant as we want to make it. Knowledge comes with a price,
and that price makes it so easy to become complacent. We can let others do our
thinking for us, telling us what is true and what isn’t. Accepting authority
until something seems not quite right, but by that point we can’t reverse what
has already happened or go back down the path from whence we came which would
be a perfectly natural thing to do if one is lost. And we are lost. We have
allowed others to choose for us. We’ve become spoiled and arrogant by assuming
that someone else will save us from ourselves or in many cases believing we
don’t need saving. Yes, the sandwich board warning, “The World is Coming To An
End” has been around for a long time, the Old Testament might have started it
off, and the Plague and Invasions of Heathens during the Middle Ages and beyond
certainly fed the prognosticators with reality. Of course, with all these
temporary historical facts came the Solvers or Authorities who because they
were around at the right time, right place said they were the reason things got
better when everyone else thought they would not. They said they prayed to God
who helped us or outright killed the nuisance, whether the nuisance was the
Devil, the Witch, the People next door, or Over the Hills, or Behind the Sun,
the Unbelievers.
So, we went
on. Accepted a new truth until a new virus, a new enemy came upon us. Democracy
came along and now we believe we have choices, pick your poison, but you can’t
opt out or try and find a solution outside the “chosen” one because it either
costs too much or it’s not where the society is going. It doesn’t have anything
to do with whether or not it does or doesn’t work, or “makes sense” enough to
be considered.
Most of our
technology has arisen out of the mental workings of ordinary working people putting
their social heads together, helping to make their life easier until recent
times. The last couple of centuries much
of what we’ve developed has extraneous uses, such as developing the war machine
or enabling the ability to sell and consume by adopting economic conditions that cater to the whims
of wealthy people who base their principals on ownership. Our Freedom now is relegated to choosing colors, styles, things
that have no relevance to what eventually will hurt us. Our science has created
wonders to help prevent illness, but it is limited by the availability of money
in addition to the fact that much of what kills us or hurts us also originates
from the same scientists and its collusion with politics. Science isn’t the
innocent working for the helpless. Science and Industry have colluded in
Weapons of Mass Destruction, creating high priced options, whether it be cars
or medicine, that are unavailable to ordinary people. And we are ordinary
people. Be Proud of it. The Salt of the Earth.
We forget
that it is ordinary people who have been responsible for the increase in
production and development of basic technologies which were usurped by wealthy
and greedy people and though some individuals have gotten credit for
discoveries, most discoveries have been on the order of Columbus discovering
America, I think you know what I mean there. From the containment of fire to
the loom or plow, it’s been common people who live and survive where changes really
come from, not from the mental musings of politicians, philosophers, priests, scientists,
CEO’s, or celebrities.
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