dangerous self-seclusion

During the period when America's news outlets still reported on this country's ongoing occupation of the sovereign Republic of Afghanistan, they often spoke about the dangerous seclusion of much of the Afghani population. Living in rugged valleys so inaccessible that neighboring villages are sometimes wholly ignorant of one another, even though they live but a few miles apart, the television's talking-heads spoke long ago of the risks to Liberty, justice, and the rights of women that arise when people live in such seclusion, arguing that it granted their religious and societal leaders absolute power over their minds and bodies.

As things stand in America today, however, religious extremism similar to that practiced by close-minded, militant, and misogynistic Islamic leaders in al-Qaida and Hezbollah has infected the minds of even highly-placed officials in the Republican party, rotting the souls of America's Christian extremists, persons who call themselves dominionists. Just as the threat of religious terrorism that we once thought came from without now comes from within, the American people are secluding ourselves into walled-off little worlds whose borders are defined by the edges of our flat-screen television sets, the rims of our hand-held tablet computers, and the invisibly-reaching tendrils of our Wi-Fi transceivers. This home-grown technological self-seclusion is as great a threat to democracy and freedom as the threat posed by Afghani mullahs instilling hatred-of-all-things-unknown in the minds of children living in distant and dusty valleys. Whereas in Afghanistan many villagers only hear and see and are exposed to a limited and selective view of the world – one they receive from often poorly-educated and ill-informed religious leaders – we in America who choose to spend our lives riveted to self-illuminated talking boxes expose ourselves to a limited and selective view of the world, one we receive from often ill-informed religious and societal leaders who exploit fear-of-the-unknown and the power of oft-repeated lies (as per Goebbels) to corrupt the minds of erstwhile free-thinking and self-respecting citizens.

Many other authors and I have rung the warning-bell previously, altering others to the brainwashing and heart-hardening upon which America's mass-media preys, which it perpetuates at all cost, and which it does with such pervasive effectiveness that its methods were copied by the Nazis themselves – all no no avail; it seems that a majority of us Americans do not care that we have become docile sheep, that our minds are owned by vulture-capitalist billionaires, that our hearts are weighted down by pettiness and greed, or that we allow our views to be shaped by small-minded idiots who squawk at cameras with make-up-caked faces. It is not hard, however, to free our minds from enslavement to television or to allow our opinions to grow out of hubris and humility; the healing begins when we turn off our TVs, toss aside our tablets, switch off our radios, and leave our houses to have a nice walk, driving Fear from our minds with gradual surety and loving effort. President Franklin D. Roosevelt got it right when, in 1933, he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear festers in the minds of people who shut their ears to differing opinions, who close their hearts to the shades of truth found in dissenting voices, who allow themselves to be caught up in religious fervor and nationalistic self-righteousness. Please, friend, remember to doubt everything that you hear, to question all that you are told, and to fight the urge to live in the manner of a secluded villager who believes everything his mullah tells him. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

perspective - it matters

Time, age, tiredness, joy, sadness, loss, gain – these hard-to-define concepts are aspects of the human condition, not iron-clad rules of law but rather matters of perspective that change with one's outlook on life. What is to one person a grave insult is to another as a joyous and welcome gift. A few days ago, a family friend was telling me about growing up Jewish in a Christian town, and how the other kids would throw pennies at her and call her a penny-pinching kike, and other bad names, and how she would pick up those pennies and use them to buy herself cartons of milk and boxes of cookies, which cost about five cents a-piece. And then there is my longtime partner-in-crime, Mr. P, a friend from my childhood in Germany, who makes over a hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars a year, who lives in the new W residences near the World Trade Center site in New York City, and who is so upset with his former boss in Thailand for that man firing him and forcing him to leave that country that his heart has become swamped with hatred, keeping him from seeing his life as blessed, the kind of life that people kill for.

I spoke with Mr. P a fortnight ago, trying to help him see things from a different perspective so that he might come to enjoy his time Stateside and not be so miserable and mopey all the time, but changes in perspective are achieved only by each person individually and are not easily forced, or coerced. So subtle is perspective, and at once so powerful, that entire industries exist to shape and to mold the views of persons who consume media (which accounts for any person who has ever watched TV or listened to the radio). Even as far back as the 1930s, American advertising was so effective and so quick to control and to shape the perspectives of millions of far-flung and unrelated citizens that the National Socialists in Germany, the Nazis, adopted Yankee-pioneered advertising and propaganda techniques and used them to brainwash tens of millions of good, honest Teutons into acquiescing to the invasion of sovereign foreign nations and the eradication of train-loads of men, women, and children. The power of the American advertising machine persists – so great is it that an imbecile such as the political puppet Sarah Palin can be packaged and sold in such cunning fashion that otherwise intelligent individuals come to see her as a desirable candidate for the second-highest office in the land.

You may be asking yourself right about now, “Well then, oh-so-clever LyeSmythe, how can I avoid being brainwashed, and how can I craft for myself a pure and honest view of the world?” Persons who change their perspectives begin by turning off and throwing out their television sets, they refuse to watch junk-TV (think reality- and talk-shows), they get news from sources located in different countries around the world, and they read news in languages other than English. In this manner, self-respecting people avoid the snare of America's propaganda juggernaut, giving their minds enough unique views of news-worthy events that their opinions are not shaped or dominated by just one brand of crazy.

Beyond the political sphere, however, one's perspective of something on the order to time itself – time-keeping via clock or watch, being on or off schedule, on time or off it, early or late – is shaped by society and by the consensual, Western hallucination that time is a rigid temporal plane extending in a straight line from the past into the future. Which is all well and good until one runs into the article entitled the Rebirth of a Sioux Nation in the August 2012 edition of National Geographic in which the author talks about the way the people of the Oglala Sioux view time – as a cyclical maelstrom in which past and present, life and death, and the spirit and waking worlds are shadows of one another, not strictly separate realms. Seeing the world from a point of view so foreign to the cookie-cutter, pre-packaged perception drilled endlessly into the heads of average Americans is a nice way to blow one's mind on a rainy Tuesday afternoon; such adventures into the curious minds of wise and ancient peoples are good ways to keep one's perspectives loose, and flexible. Therefore, on the next occasion that someone complains that you were not on time, you, dear reader, can claim to be changing your views on the nature of the universe, and that the clocks were wrong, not you. Give the gift of cognitive insecurity – change your mind frequently, adopt new points of view as often as you are able, and keep that dome-piece of a swivel. Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit