I’m sorry, but I have to say that the side of the globe that we call home, in North America, is one confusing and sometimes frustrating place. When I turn on the T.V., the images that are projected in front of my eyes seem to be dictating what reality should be. I mean, advertising from T.V. ads, to billboards on the street, to little cell phone ads posted in front of the men’s room urinal seem to want to just break me down. And I get very frustrated with it. I often think why so much of our resources and energy as a population is spent on things like producing and consuming ads. It really makes me think that as a population we are being broken down mentally, not only by ads but the foods that are being advertised to us.
From the time when your mind is first developing into adulthood this breakdown of the mind has been allowed to occur. For example, I’m 24 years old, and I remember when I was in high school about six or seven years ago, the halls were filled with candy and pop machines. The cafeteria’s main dish was small, medium or large fries and students were hired to run a candy store in the school. I can even remember when Mellow Yellow was reintroduced; they were giving away pop cans of the stuff in the school parking lot. Doesn’t this seem a little odd knowing what that shit does to your body? We are told many times over again that those high amounts of sugar and cholesterol do a number on our bodies physically, but what about mentally? The field of Psychology recognizes that something like chocolate is a psychoactive substance and just like coffee or any other illegal drug it literally influences our moods and the way we think. So why is it all over the hallways of our schools? It just doesn’t make sense to me that in the battle for territory between chocolate and fruit, chocolate won the schools. It could have been any other way, but this is the path we’ve chosen to take. This is the way things have been allowed to operate.
Advertising in schools is another thing that frustrates me. I have to bring up one short thing. I hate it when I go to use a college washroom, and the ads are right in front of my face on the wall above the urinal. The advertising people know that that wall is the only way I can face at that most vulnerable moment. So they feel that they really need to take advantage and seize the opportunity to shove another ad into my life. Ads are everywhere. I know it’s nothing new but even when we drive there are ads on the sides of the roads. As if the ads on the radio weren’t enough. If using your cell phone while driving is illegal, so should ads be on the roads. Isn’t it all so distracting? Not only from driving but the other things that really matter in life rather then cell phones and milk.
I also get this strange feeling in the pit of my gut that makes me think that the government (specifically that of the Canadian and American breed) isn’t doing what it can to achieve some kind of balance. If the powers that be want the best for the masses why don’t they put a stop to the mental assault that each mind goes through everyday. And free up that mental capacity for more productive, and just maybe more compassionate matters. On the other hand, the idea of a population that is so wrapped up in the reality that has been created for us, to the point were we don’t ask questions (or the right ones for that matter), seems to be the way governments want it to be. I’m just suggesting that maybe the governments that we give so much our power to everyday, isn’t working for the public anymore. Is it too much to say, that as a “citizen” I feel that because of the state of western society, and not to mention many characteristics of our culture, that government just isn’t functional as it stands?
The only other perspective I can take on things is that maybe everything is going according to plan. Maybe, like George Orwell portrayed, the government allows this constant meltdown of public consciousness for a reason. Just maybe the elite of the western civilization is conditioning a society to never question authority, to never think outside that box and always do what they’re told. Who knows what’s next, maybe the government will want to know our every move? It’s just a perspective.
