Divided We Fall

United we aren’t. If one were to believe the media, there exists such a diverse set of opinions out there that it would seem none of us are able to agree on anything.
Thanks in no small part to the same said media.

It is not possible for us to see with our own eyes everything that goes on in the world. We must rely on the reports of others for this information.

We live in a society where nothing is free. Thus our ‘free’ news reports are ‘sponsored by’ advertisers. With this as a given, the media seldom bites the hand that feeds it. Even more disturbing is the fact that key economic reports are being ‘manufactured’ by agencies of our own government using Enron style accounting methods.

This is pure propaganda, the same kind of thing that occurs under a dictatorship. They keep shuffling the data until the picture reflects the desired results.

All information is context sensitive. Most of the time the media fails to give the ‘background music’ upon which they based their report. So if they give the results of a poll and neglect to tell you who paid for the poll and how many people were surveyed, you have no idea how accurate the information is.

You may as well ask your whacko next door neighbor what they think and base you opinion on that.

You need to poll five thousand people to get the margin of error under five percent. Polling only four or five hundred (and polling them at a gathering for or against a specific cause) severely skews the results. To take the heinous poll thing one step further, most polls never say how the question that obtained the end results was phrased.

If you’re old enough to be reading this then you know it’s not what you say but how you say it that produces a given reaction…which also throws the usefulness of the information collected by the poll in doubt.

Believe only half of what you see and less of what you hear.

The majority of us are far more alike than you’ve been led to believe. The endless polls and surveys of which the media seems to have an inexhaustible supply serve but one purpose…

They exist to make you doubt your own judgement.

Humans are highly imitative of one another. The pressure to conform, to fit in, gives whoever controls the flow of information a tool of great power. Whoever has the power to tell you what to think has the power to mold public opinion.

You are being manipulated.

The only tools you have to combat this kind of manipulation are your awareness that this is happening and your own daily experiences. Each economic ‘strata’ has it’s own realities, realities that are shared across the board. Logic dictates that there are very few wealthy people, a large number of working stiffs and a growing number of the ‘chronically unemployed’ (which are people that can only find work some of the time.)

There are those who owe and those to whom it is owed. If the general perception were that people are having a hard time paying their bills, it’s easy to see which end of this spectrum would get a headache.

Thus the media, paid by the people who are owed, is under an obligation to report that everything is wonderful, even if your reality says otherwise.

So the next time you tune in to catch up on what’s going on in the world, consider not only what you are told but why you’re being told this particular piece of the story and wonder about how much they didn’t ‘see fit’ to tell you.

You’ll be better informed for it.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner