Manipulation and Propaganda

I work in an industry where manipulation is mandatory. You must coerce people to share a desired perspective. It can be done artfully with good intentions, or maliciously with the intent to mislead.

People usually tell me that advertising has no affect on them. They believe they are too smart to buy into any of it. These are the same people who have dozens of favored brands which they hold in high regard and even use to define themselves. Some of the associations are based on truth, but many are based on a fiction that has been made believable. Regrettably, once a lie is believed with passion it is very difficult to extinguish and sometimes even becomes true over time.

Reality and our perception of reality are very separate things. Words and ideas can be twisted to our will, the truth altered until it is fiction. We have the ability to draw lines where none truly exists and to polarize ideas that needn’t be dualistic.

When we look back throughout history we find humor and horror in the naivety of many ancient ideas. We mock the nonsense and propaganda of past generations while bathing in that of our own.

Questioning the status quo has never been popular. The inquisitive will often meet with a bitter resistance. You will hear words like Tradition, Honor and Heritage. In the United States this rules our politics. Buzz words and lofty promises evoke more emotion than a realistic, logical approach. If you want to learn more about marketing, look no further than the upcoming election.

One day I would like to live in a world that encourages people to develop their own opinions and to value science over mythology.

We Americans are fortunate to have freedom of speech but if we are not careful, those rights will slip from our grasp. They will become ideas we say we believe in, but which no longer truly exist. We will grip our hands tighter around the idea, without realizing there is nothing there. It will become just one more lie we belive in.

"By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise."  - Adolf Hitler

God is (Abstract Noun)

Beauty, Love, Joy, A first kiss. You name it, someone has asserted it. The religious love slapping their god onto anything with a good PR rating. Peace? God. A sunny day? God. Morals? God.  Of course, they ignore that all of these things exist with or without their religion and in different cultures all around the world. It sure seems like a person’s admiration for God has absolutely zero impact on their quality of life.

Strangely, their God seems less than omnipresent once the conversation turns to the negative aspects of existence; miscarriages, cancer, natural disasters, etc. Really, the Big G has one hell of a racket going. He gets the credit for all the good shit and shucks the blame for all of the bad.

It is a magnificent and terrible shame that so many of us would rather write off the many phenomena of our universe as God’s Work, rather than pursuing an actual understanding of it. Religions give you all the answers, usually right there on paper. They serve to stifle curiosity and replace it with a form of vapid contentment.

So, am I saying contentment is bad?

If that contentment is derived from deception and logical fallacies, then hell yes it is bad. All of the beauty and awesomeness of the world, of the universe, exists independent from any theology. It is as it is, whether we choose to understand it or not.

And how is that? Because it is real and your religion is not.