God, Self, and Mass Media
By RD
Everyday we have to listen to a myriad of conflicting opinions about everything important to us. Where can we turn to find the comfort only the truth can offer? Some seek God for answers, some look to their self impressions or gut feelings, some turn to their favorite biased mass media news program. Let’s review our three sources of guidance: God, Self, and Mass Media to see which one has the greatest impact on our beliefs and decision making process.
Before we consider God’s existence, I think it may be wise to consider our own existence first. Once we have a handle on who we are; we can give God a fair shot. If God exists or once existed, wouldn’t God want it this way?
Once we know ourselves and our God, we will see how these play secondary roles to the influence of mass media on our collective conscious as a nation.
WHO AM I?
I exist to the extent that I know existence.
I know that I am a product of my genetic attributes and my environmental influences.
I accept that 50% of who I am comes from my genetic makeup and 50% comes from my environmental conditioning. Later you will see why the percentages really do not matter.
We have no control over our genetic makeup; so, 50% is a given portion. We have almost no control over our first 18 out of 75 years of our environmental conditioning. This means 62% of who we are (50% genetic and 12% of our conditioning) is in-fact totally outside of our control. This leaves 38% of who we are open to variation from the world during our lifetime. This variation is caused by the influence of everyone else in the world and every bit of recorded knowledge available to us.
During our adult life, we can chose to seek out new people, new lands, new countries, new information, learn new languages, cultures, philosophies, religions, technologies, and question the 62% we were handed to start with. We can also choose to accept one of the two extreme positions of God =1 per the holy book or God =0 per the Atheists and wonder why neither of these really seem to satisfy like a Snickers bar.
Depending on our fixed 62%, we may or may not even be able to think about this subject. We also can choose to avoid and deny everything outside of our established conditioning to avoid having to struggle with changing our established beliefs.
So, let’s look at the big picture of what is available to us and what we can and cannot expect to understand about the world we are a part of and what we can and cannot choose to include in 38% of our self identity.
Certainly the largest factor in determining our self identity comes from our geographic location. The people we meet, the lands we walk, the culture we experience, the language we use, the information we have access to is mostly dependent on where we happen to live on this planet. I find that the single most important element of our definition as adult individuals that we actually have some control over is our freedom to choose our sources of information. Freedom of speech and access to the truth about people and events is paramount to the growth of a whole society.
LAND
We have a globe of about 144 million square kilometers of land mass. We tend to live our lives out in a small area of maybe 100 square kilometers or 0.00007% or 7 millionths of the land. We won’t fully experience 99.99993% of the land. Let’s not even consider that 75% of the earth is covered in water and what might lie in and under it. Since, our land is unnaturally divided into 192 countries, let’s simplify the geographic limitation to the country we happen to live in. So, we all have very limited pictures of the turf we live on.
COUNTRIES
Our land is divided into 192 countries and we tend to live out our lives in one country. Visiting another country as a tourist on a tour bus for a week is better than reading a tour book; but, this really does not count much towards knowing life in another country. So, we won’t experience life in 95.5% of the world’s countries, we will only experience life in 0.5% of the countries. Every country has a unique culture and history and a wide variety of social, governmental, and belief systems. Which countries do we choose to live in or learn about and why? Again, as individuals we are very limited in our view of how most foreign people live.
PEOPLE
We have over six billion people to learn from today and we won’t meet or communicate with 99.9999 percent of them. Knowing 0.0001% or 6,000 people would be knowing one millionth of the current global population. Of course simply knowing someone does not come close to having them as a family member or close friend. Sometimes we find out we don’t really even know our friends and family members very well.
Also, estimates say over 106 billion people have been born on earth; so, we will never have a chance to meet the 100 billion who have been born and have passed away before we had a chance to meet them. All we can know from the 100 billion dead is compiled in our very limited and biased historical knowledge base. So, which 1 to 6,000 living people do we chose to know or learn about and why do we choose them? Which of the 100 billion dead people do we chose to learn about and why? Once again, we are so very limited in our true understanding of other people outside of our tight little sphere of contacts.
LANGUAGES
Man has had over 6,000 languages to deliver and interpret everything. We tend to only fully understand one language or 0.017% of all languages. Again, we cannot honestly expect English to fully capture all ideas, concepts, and thoughts as well as 6,000 languages can.
INFORMATION
We have a global information and historical knowledge base of over 65 million books (not to mention all the newspapers, magazines, films, video tapes, sound recordings, databases, etc...). An avid reader and consumer of knowledge may be able to read 8,000 books or three books a week for fifty years. This would amount to 0.012% of the current book titles which of course is growing at an exponential pace. We would consume an even smaller percentage of all the other available media; let’s conservatively assume a super human could conceivably have a capacity to consume 0.0001% (one millionth) of all available information in his or her lifetime. Just how smart do you think you are now? Does your holy book really fill in the other 99.9999%?
Additionally, at least 10% of all the available information (most of the latest information) is hidden from the average person as top secret or classified or intellectual property available only to those who can pay for it or who have special rights to access it. So, we are mostly limited to the well filtered and low profit information available to the public domain.
So, what books do we read and which media outlets do we choose to inform us and why?
Another way to look at this is to say out of the very recent 1,000 years of recorded history and living experiences, one cannot know more than 0.0001% or 8.8 hours worth of this information. Let’s not forget that 99.9999% of world events were never recorded and much of what has been offered to us as history is really only the winners side of every war man has waged against himself since he could take notes.
Considering all of the above factors, most of us will live our entire lives in one country, speak one language, and associate with a small number of people. We also tend to go to the same few mass media sources for our information. Since everything else is essentially fixed, our choice of information sources is the most important area of freedom and self choice we have. Unfortunately, our mass media sources are now the owned and controlled by an elite few global conglomerates. The goal is to attract the most viewers and keep them buzzing around in a cloud of confusion and misinformation. TV is truly the ultimate form of control over the masses. Philo Farnsworth, the man who invented television went to his grave wishing he never discovered how to broadcast images; he saw what men were using it for and would not allow a TV in his own house.
We simply must accept that we cannot know the vast majority of truth about man’s history and current reality. We must open our minds to new sources of information and make decisions on facts, logic, and lived experience and not allow those who run the television to do our thinking for us.
Now it should be obvious that once we reach adulthood, most of who we are is never going to change and a good chunk has essentially a finite number of highly visible and well filtered choices to consider in our quest for finding the answer to the questions: Who am I? Where is God? What is the truth?
Without freedom of speech, of press, of religion, and assembly and without free access to truthful information, we cannot make choices in our best interest. We cannot have a fair shot at knowing who we are, yet alone who anyone else is. We are forced to accept what the TV and government and corporation tells us about ourselves. We have to choose the lesser of opposing evils in every major political, financial, and moral decision we face. We never even notice that there is always a man behind the curtain laughing as he counts his ever growing income and assets while we blame everything wrong with America on the left or the right. We totally lose site of who we are as united American’s.
Our corporate, political, and religious leaders all bury us in propaganda, advertising, and the road to salvation. TV shows, radio programming, movies, newspapers, school books, and consumer products are more and more emanating from one mouth as the global conglomerates take ownership of every aspect of the information supply chain.
The majority is left believing our land is the best land, our country is the best country, our language is the best language, our leaders are honest and caring, and the news station we watch is the best source for information. We start believing that everyone else can be understood by a few broad stroke labels such as liberal or conservative, Christian or atheist, Democrat or Republican, Patriot or Terrorist. No additional information, knowledge, or understanding is required. Most of the thinking is done for us and we just need to choose “A” or “B.”
All this misinformation does nothing but divide people into two equal and opposing camps thus eliminating any hope for “We the People” to come together, rise up, and control the wealthy elite minority that controls all aspects of our life on this planet.
We are reduced to making decisions based on emotional hot buttons that fit with our religious teachings or our acceptance and identification with one of the broad labels used to describe us. We have become slaves and easily herded sheep through misinformation and our freedoms are stripped away without our even noticing.
So, now ask yourself: Who am I? Do you have a list of labels to identify with? Do you think you could ever answer this question if most of the information you pay attention to is provided for maximum viewer ship through market segmentation and not maximum truth?
WHO IS GOD?
Unfortunately, most religions teach us that we need to know God in order to be saved. Not just any God; but, the God that is neatly predefined for us in the widely accepted holy books. We are to simply believe these books were written by God and they have never been altered during the course of man’s bloody war torn history. It’s all in the book, just open, read, and believe and there is no need to search any further.
Likewise, atheist books teach us that there is no proof that God exists and again there is no need to search any further. Once we take either of these polar positions, we severely limit our perspective by placing these filters on everything that comes to our mind and senses that disagree with these definitions. Could these views be all wrong? Could we be missing something?
Well, to answer this we first have to remember how little we know about the world, our very own 0.0001% of reality is not much compared to all we do not currently know about the world and the vastness of space, time, and possible other dimensions surrounding us. Certainly to know God would require at least acceptance of the measurable fact that we as individuals are not much smarter than single cell life forms when compared to the body of all known and unknown knowledge. Socrates would agree with this position, don’t you think?
I would suggest we first define what God is before we try to determine God’s existence. Otherwise we will be looking for something we may never find. I define God is in the 99.99999999% of all things unknown to us. Every time I learn something about myself or our world or the people in it, I find another tiny piece of God. Every time I connect with someone new, I see something clearly for the first time, or change my mind set about something previously engrained; I experience God. Does this description make any sense to you?
God is the history that connects all recorded and unrecorded time. God invisibly connects all the living and dead and yet to be born together in a stand of DNA. God is larger than time, space, and matter and smaller than atoms and quarks. All these are limited and inconclusive pieces of an infinite puzzle. Only through questioning, listening, and reflection do we get closer to the truth about anything.
God is too vast and complex to find in a handful of ancient holy books. It is time for the average person to look beyond the ancient holy books. It is also time for us to cast off the chains of our corrupt new age mass media. The television, radio, newspaper, and magazine have taken away our ability to tell facts from fiction and truth from lies. I call these mediums the weapons of mass media and they are the most destructive weapons ever know to man as they destroy logic and twist the truth for billions of people in all corners of the world.
Placing limits on ourselves or God is an insult to the intelligence given to us. Intelligence allows us to ask why over and over and over until a logical and universally acceptable answer is given. To immediately arrive at a black or white answer about complex issues and people is not thinking, it’s accepting labels provided by people with a bigger agenda. An agenda to divide and conquer people, slap labels on them, and sell them some product, service, or opinion. Things like: War is good and peace is anti-American; tax breaks for the rich are good for poor and working people; weapons of mass destruction are bad except if we own or sell them; debt is bad and credit cards are good; people on the left are stupid, bleeding heart, tree hugging hippies; people on the right are self-centered, heartless, rigid red necks and on and on.
Yes, the truth, the real you, and god can be found under all the labels you wear and paste on others. Only through questioning and discovery of truthful and unbiased information sources can you enjoy freedom and oneness with God and peace within yourself.
So, it should now be clear that who you are is mostly dependent on where you are in the world and the information you are fed. We can’t beam into anyplace we want to live or start speaking any language we care to speak; so, the only readily changeable part of us is where we choose to go for information. If our source is biased and full of propaganda, we have no hope of finding the truth, inner peace, god, or a peaceful coexistence with our fellow man.
The F.C.C. seeks to protect us from profanity while allowing broadcasters to lie and spew propaganda, false advertising, and to report news in the form of sensational sound bites by newscasters who employ every known fallacy into their stories.
Our political leaders spend hundreds of millions of dollars on sound bite advertising to tell us how bad the other guy is and what a wonderful world it will be when they take office. Their speeches are nothing more than well crafted fallacious arguments. They look and sound strong and reassuring and people tend to agree only because of the party label they wear. The false logic used in political speeches is mostly unnoticed by the masses.
This is the Age of Information and he who controls information, controls the world. Mass media is the Shepard of our collective conscious. The role of individuals is to believe in mass media propaganda. The role of the ancient God is to demand obedience and acceptance of man’s station in life and to seek his reward in the hereafter or suffer eternal punishment.
For mankind to evolve, we need a new information system that is more than a tool for the elite to keep the masses at odds with each other. The TV is not our God and our teacher. We need to let everyone use their intelligence and freely access as much education as they can handle. This would invigorate our economy, increase productivity, and raise the standard of living for everyone.
Stay tuned and we will be right back after this message from our sponsor.
By RD
Everyday we have to listen to a myriad of conflicting opinions about everything important to us. Where can we turn to find the comfort only the truth can offer? Some seek God for answers, some look to their self impressions or gut feelings, some turn to their favorite biased mass media news program. Let’s review our three sources of guidance: God, Self, and Mass Media to see which one has the greatest impact on our beliefs and decision making process.
Before we consider God’s existence, I think it may be wise to consider our own existence first. Once we have a handle on who we are; we can give God a fair shot. If God exists or once existed, wouldn’t God want it this way?
Once we know ourselves and our God, we will see how these play secondary roles to the influence of mass media on our collective conscious as a nation.
WHO AM I?
I exist to the extent that I know existence.
I know that I am a product of my genetic attributes and my environmental influences.
I accept that 50% of who I am comes from my genetic makeup and 50% comes from my environmental conditioning. Later you will see why the percentages really do not matter.
We have no control over our genetic makeup; so, 50% is a given portion. We have almost no control over our first 18 out of 75 years of our environmental conditioning. This means 62% of who we are (50% genetic and 12% of our conditioning) is in-fact totally outside of our control. This leaves 38% of who we are open to variation from the world during our lifetime. This variation is caused by the influence of everyone else in the world and every bit of recorded knowledge available to us.
During our adult life, we can chose to seek out new people, new lands, new countries, new information, learn new languages, cultures, philosophies, religions, technologies, and question the 62% we were handed to start with. We can also choose to accept one of the two extreme positions of God =1 per the holy book or God =0 per the Atheists and wonder why neither of these really seem to satisfy like a Snickers bar.
Depending on our fixed 62%, we may or may not even be able to think about this subject. We also can choose to avoid and deny everything outside of our established conditioning to avoid having to struggle with changing our established beliefs.
So, let’s look at the big picture of what is available to us and what we can and cannot expect to understand about the world we are a part of and what we can and cannot choose to include in 38% of our self identity.
Certainly the largest factor in determining our self identity comes from our geographic location. The people we meet, the lands we walk, the culture we experience, the language we use, the information we have access to is mostly dependent on where we happen to live on this planet. I find that the single most important element of our definition as adult individuals that we actually have some control over is our freedom to choose our sources of information. Freedom of speech and access to the truth about people and events is paramount to the growth of a whole society.
LAND
We have a globe of about 144 million square kilometers of land mass. We tend to live our lives out in a small area of maybe 100 square kilometers or 0.00007% or 7 millionths of the land. We won’t fully experience 99.99993% of the land. Let’s not even consider that 75% of the earth is covered in water and what might lie in and under it. Since, our land is unnaturally divided into 192 countries, let’s simplify the geographic limitation to the country we happen to live in. So, we all have very limited pictures of the turf we live on.
COUNTRIES
Our land is divided into 192 countries and we tend to live out our lives in one country. Visiting another country as a tourist on a tour bus for a week is better than reading a tour book; but, this really does not count much towards knowing life in another country. So, we won’t experience life in 95.5% of the world’s countries, we will only experience life in 0.5% of the countries. Every country has a unique culture and history and a wide variety of social, governmental, and belief systems. Which countries do we choose to live in or learn about and why? Again, as individuals we are very limited in our view of how most foreign people live.
PEOPLE
We have over six billion people to learn from today and we won’t meet or communicate with 99.9999 percent of them. Knowing 0.0001% or 6,000 people would be knowing one millionth of the current global population. Of course simply knowing someone does not come close to having them as a family member or close friend. Sometimes we find out we don’t really even know our friends and family members very well.
Also, estimates say over 106 billion people have been born on earth; so, we will never have a chance to meet the 100 billion who have been born and have passed away before we had a chance to meet them. All we can know from the 100 billion dead is compiled in our very limited and biased historical knowledge base. So, which 1 to 6,000 living people do we chose to know or learn about and why do we choose them? Which of the 100 billion dead people do we chose to learn about and why? Once again, we are so very limited in our true understanding of other people outside of our tight little sphere of contacts.
LANGUAGES
Man has had over 6,000 languages to deliver and interpret everything. We tend to only fully understand one language or 0.017% of all languages. Again, we cannot honestly expect English to fully capture all ideas, concepts, and thoughts as well as 6,000 languages can.
INFORMATION
We have a global information and historical knowledge base of over 65 million books (not to mention all the newspapers, magazines, films, video tapes, sound recordings, databases, etc...). An avid reader and consumer of knowledge may be able to read 8,000 books or three books a week for fifty years. This would amount to 0.012% of the current book titles which of course is growing at an exponential pace. We would consume an even smaller percentage of all the other available media; let’s conservatively assume a super human could conceivably have a capacity to consume 0.0001% (one millionth) of all available information in his or her lifetime. Just how smart do you think you are now? Does your holy book really fill in the other 99.9999%?
Additionally, at least 10% of all the available information (most of the latest information) is hidden from the average person as top secret or classified or intellectual property available only to those who can pay for it or who have special rights to access it. So, we are mostly limited to the well filtered and low profit information available to the public domain.
So, what books do we read and which media outlets do we choose to inform us and why?
Another way to look at this is to say out of the very recent 1,000 years of recorded history and living experiences, one cannot know more than 0.0001% or 8.8 hours worth of this information. Let’s not forget that 99.9999% of world events were never recorded and much of what has been offered to us as history is really only the winners side of every war man has waged against himself since he could take notes.
Considering all of the above factors, most of us will live our entire lives in one country, speak one language, and associate with a small number of people. We also tend to go to the same few mass media sources for our information. Since everything else is essentially fixed, our choice of information sources is the most important area of freedom and self choice we have. Unfortunately, our mass media sources are now the owned and controlled by an elite few global conglomerates. The goal is to attract the most viewers and keep them buzzing around in a cloud of confusion and misinformation. TV is truly the ultimate form of control over the masses. Philo Farnsworth, the man who invented television went to his grave wishing he never discovered how to broadcast images; he saw what men were using it for and would not allow a TV in his own house.
We simply must accept that we cannot know the vast majority of truth about man’s history and current reality. We must open our minds to new sources of information and make decisions on facts, logic, and lived experience and not allow those who run the television to do our thinking for us.
Now it should be obvious that once we reach adulthood, most of who we are is never going to change and a good chunk has essentially a finite number of highly visible and well filtered choices to consider in our quest for finding the answer to the questions: Who am I? Where is God? What is the truth?
Without freedom of speech, of press, of religion, and assembly and without free access to truthful information, we cannot make choices in our best interest. We cannot have a fair shot at knowing who we are, yet alone who anyone else is. We are forced to accept what the TV and government and corporation tells us about ourselves. We have to choose the lesser of opposing evils in every major political, financial, and moral decision we face. We never even notice that there is always a man behind the curtain laughing as he counts his ever growing income and assets while we blame everything wrong with America on the left or the right. We totally lose site of who we are as united American’s.
Our corporate, political, and religious leaders all bury us in propaganda, advertising, and the road to salvation. TV shows, radio programming, movies, newspapers, school books, and consumer products are more and more emanating from one mouth as the global conglomerates take ownership of every aspect of the information supply chain.
The majority is left believing our land is the best land, our country is the best country, our language is the best language, our leaders are honest and caring, and the news station we watch is the best source for information. We start believing that everyone else can be understood by a few broad stroke labels such as liberal or conservative, Christian or atheist, Democrat or Republican, Patriot or Terrorist. No additional information, knowledge, or understanding is required. Most of the thinking is done for us and we just need to choose “A” or “B.”
All this misinformation does nothing but divide people into two equal and opposing camps thus eliminating any hope for “We the People” to come together, rise up, and control the wealthy elite minority that controls all aspects of our life on this planet.
We are reduced to making decisions based on emotional hot buttons that fit with our religious teachings or our acceptance and identification with one of the broad labels used to describe us. We have become slaves and easily herded sheep through misinformation and our freedoms are stripped away without our even noticing.
So, now ask yourself: Who am I? Do you have a list of labels to identify with? Do you think you could ever answer this question if most of the information you pay attention to is provided for maximum viewer ship through market segmentation and not maximum truth?
WHO IS GOD?
Unfortunately, most religions teach us that we need to know God in order to be saved. Not just any God; but, the God that is neatly predefined for us in the widely accepted holy books. We are to simply believe these books were written by God and they have never been altered during the course of man’s bloody war torn history. It’s all in the book, just open, read, and believe and there is no need to search any further.
Likewise, atheist books teach us that there is no proof that God exists and again there is no need to search any further. Once we take either of these polar positions, we severely limit our perspective by placing these filters on everything that comes to our mind and senses that disagree with these definitions. Could these views be all wrong? Could we be missing something?
Well, to answer this we first have to remember how little we know about the world, our very own 0.0001% of reality is not much compared to all we do not currently know about the world and the vastness of space, time, and possible other dimensions surrounding us. Certainly to know God would require at least acceptance of the measurable fact that we as individuals are not much smarter than single cell life forms when compared to the body of all known and unknown knowledge. Socrates would agree with this position, don’t you think?
I would suggest we first define what God is before we try to determine God’s existence. Otherwise we will be looking for something we may never find. I define God is in the 99.99999999% of all things unknown to us. Every time I learn something about myself or our world or the people in it, I find another tiny piece of God. Every time I connect with someone new, I see something clearly for the first time, or change my mind set about something previously engrained; I experience God. Does this description make any sense to you?
God is the history that connects all recorded and unrecorded time. God invisibly connects all the living and dead and yet to be born together in a stand of DNA. God is larger than time, space, and matter and smaller than atoms and quarks. All these are limited and inconclusive pieces of an infinite puzzle. Only through questioning, listening, and reflection do we get closer to the truth about anything.
God is too vast and complex to find in a handful of ancient holy books. It is time for the average person to look beyond the ancient holy books. It is also time for us to cast off the chains of our corrupt new age mass media. The television, radio, newspaper, and magazine have taken away our ability to tell facts from fiction and truth from lies. I call these mediums the weapons of mass media and they are the most destructive weapons ever know to man as they destroy logic and twist the truth for billions of people in all corners of the world.
Placing limits on ourselves or God is an insult to the intelligence given to us. Intelligence allows us to ask why over and over and over until a logical and universally acceptable answer is given. To immediately arrive at a black or white answer about complex issues and people is not thinking, it’s accepting labels provided by people with a bigger agenda. An agenda to divide and conquer people, slap labels on them, and sell them some product, service, or opinion. Things like: War is good and peace is anti-American; tax breaks for the rich are good for poor and working people; weapons of mass destruction are bad except if we own or sell them; debt is bad and credit cards are good; people on the left are stupid, bleeding heart, tree hugging hippies; people on the right are self-centered, heartless, rigid red necks and on and on.
Yes, the truth, the real you, and god can be found under all the labels you wear and paste on others. Only through questioning and discovery of truthful and unbiased information sources can you enjoy freedom and oneness with God and peace within yourself.
So, it should now be clear that who you are is mostly dependent on where you are in the world and the information you are fed. We can’t beam into anyplace we want to live or start speaking any language we care to speak; so, the only readily changeable part of us is where we choose to go for information. If our source is biased and full of propaganda, we have no hope of finding the truth, inner peace, god, or a peaceful coexistence with our fellow man.
The F.C.C. seeks to protect us from profanity while allowing broadcasters to lie and spew propaganda, false advertising, and to report news in the form of sensational sound bites by newscasters who employ every known fallacy into their stories.
Our political leaders spend hundreds of millions of dollars on sound bite advertising to tell us how bad the other guy is and what a wonderful world it will be when they take office. Their speeches are nothing more than well crafted fallacious arguments. They look and sound strong and reassuring and people tend to agree only because of the party label they wear. The false logic used in political speeches is mostly unnoticed by the masses.
This is the Age of Information and he who controls information, controls the world. Mass media is the Shepard of our collective conscious. The role of individuals is to believe in mass media propaganda. The role of the ancient God is to demand obedience and acceptance of man’s station in life and to seek his reward in the hereafter or suffer eternal punishment.
For mankind to evolve, we need a new information system that is more than a tool for the elite to keep the masses at odds with each other. The TV is not our God and our teacher. We need to let everyone use their intelligence and freely access as much education as they can handle. This would invigorate our economy, increase productivity, and raise the standard of living for everyone.
Stay tuned and we will be right back after this message from our sponsor.
posted by:
|
Portland
|
