Walking The Path Of The Real Human Being

I like social media. Over the years I have spent a good deal of time here. Just goofin’ around, mostly.

I find it a good outlet for my writing. Every writer has their preferred media. Some write novels and screenplays. Some write greeting cards. And others can write everything in between.

Me? Well, I write in a lot of different media professionally, but for my personal writing, I prefer this medium, which is called a longer format blog post. Generally these posts can be anywhere from 5 or 600 words up to a couple thousand.

The longer format posts I write fall into a few categories.

Industry posts, in which I write about things like writing, advertising, marketing, branding etc. I try to make these posts useful and instructive, especially for people who are interested in communications as a potential profession.

Op/ed posts in which I write about stuff that I have noticed here and there and have an opinion about. I used to write a lot of about Trump and his band of Merry Men, but there are only so many ways you can tell people he’s an moron, and so I have sorta, but not totally, moved on. But mostly these posts can be about anything that I think might be interesting. Like today’s post which will (eventually) be about propaganda.

Rants. These are obviously the most fun and the most therapeutic kinds of posts. I strongly advocate this form of therapy for anyone. Raging against the machine is not only healthy but it lets the system know that they’re really not very good at disguising their bullshit.

The Topic De Jour…Propaganda

One of my favourite adages is this: Agendas are like assholes, everybody’s got one.

There is more truth in this than most people realize. And as the split between the so called Left and so called Right in the world widens to the point where leaping from one side to the other would be considered a death defying act, these agendas have become more and more obvious.

And sadly, many people, too many I would argue, have come to identify themselves as on either one side or the other of this divide.

This leads to a very interesting intellectual situation, in that an alarming number of people out there now have no idea what the truth is anymore. And so the ‘truth’ has become in great part, whatever people believe, which, in turn, is shaped by the messages they receive that support their belief.

I’m Not Nuts

It’s very difficult to talk about the agenda-based mechanisms that have been put in place to shape opinion on both sides of the cultural divide, without sounding like some sort of conspiracy theorist. But the simple fact is that they are there and they are working on you all the time.

They are there in the way that news gets reported, generally accompanied by violent footage that makes people feel like the world is a lot more dangerous than it is.

They are there in the slowly escalating levels of violence that we see

not just in the news, but in TV series and movies.

They are there in the huge influencer industry created on TV and radio talk shows.

And they are there on social media, slanting the news of the day to generate fear and confusion in people.

An Excellent Recent Example

A few days ago, the American military located, trapped and enabled the suicide of ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, somewhere in Syria.

And in his own inimitable style, Donald Trump played it up big time. One of the most widely circulated stories and images was one of Trump sitting around in the ‘war room’ with all the biggies watching this manhunt go down, as if they were actually controlling the action.

But in point of fact, they were not. Trump was actually playing golf at the time, and the image shown to the world was staged a couple hours after the event to make it look like they were all there and on top of things.

In other words, they created a story that gave them credibility that they really did not earn, because the military refused to disclose information about this mission, for fear that Trump would blab out all the details on Twitter, like the twit he is.

But that didn’t matter much to anyone especially the media who was giving Trump a pat on the back for finally getting something right and playing to the Republican base’s perception that their president is a god.

Not Everybody Is Susceptible

We can be thankful that not everybody falls into the category of being seduceable by this sort of propaganda.

The majority of sane people simply tune out and do not pay attention. It’s not that they are necessarily apathetic, it’s that they are simply not interested in bullshit on either side of the divide.

Then there are the few who are left over. Who see the rise of propaganda for what it is, and try to get as many people as they can to think about what’s influencing them. To question sources. To look for agendas. And to decide if it’s simply designed to make them fearful or hateful of anyone or anything.

It’s Just Logical Human Thinking

You know you have really ingested a full dose of the propaganda Kool-Aid….

When you see storms like the ones that are going on in the Caribbean and southern US and the president of the United States talks about climate change as a hoax created by the Chinese, and you are willing to believe that.

When you experience strange weather like people in parts of southern Ontario and Quebec did in the spring, where the flooding from horrendous amounts of rainfall and melting snow was something nobody can remember experiencing in their lives and you willing to write it off as nothing more than a freakish occurrence.

When you see racism and police brutality on an accelerated pace and you are perfectly willing to believe that those supporting it might have a point.

Today, more and more people have lost the ability to consider both sides of any argument because the other side of it doesn’t agree with their thinking. And they have so much control over the media they expose themselves to that there is no need to pay attention to any contrary opinions.

All of this is the direct result of the propaganda machine that has managed to get inside their heads and re-shape their belief system.

Walking The Path Of The Human Being

There is so much propaganda being pushed out there right now that you may find separating fiction from fact is virtually impossible.

But the reality of all of this has to do, purely and simply, with your own human emotions.

Everybody knows what’s right and what’s wrong. We have not lost that yet. Everybody knows that human beings are not designed to hate, but to love. Everybody knows that the truth is what your own 3-D experience tells you that it is.

If you believe everything in the last paragraph, understand that this could be the foundation of your personal belief system. Define it in your head. Then read or listen to the propaganda and agenda-based messages and weigh them against what you, as a human being, believe. Not as a reflection of all the propaganda you have accumulated, but simply from what makes the most practical sense to you.

If you make it a habit to do this, you will soon discover that your ability to see through the propaganda will improve. That you will be able to reject much more than you accept. And that your belief system will be the thing that powers your decisions, and not all the external influences designed to manipulate your opinion.

You will be able to spot the trolls, because they argue with no proof. You will be able to spot the liars, because they tell you things that run totally counter to your own experience. And you will be able to spot the con men, trying to sell you something that sounds too good to be true.

It’s not about taking sides. It’s not about being part of one movement or another. It’s simply about staying in touch with your own humanity, and making sure your belief system is strong and positive.

There is a radiant quality to this kind of thinking. Maybe you won’t change the world. But you can certainly change your own thinking and make your part of the world a better place because of it.

And if you do you will have gotten back or reinforced something that too many people have lost these days….your real humanity.

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