Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a product of mass media. Just yesterday I was a regular guy with a creative side and a quick wit with all my left field references based on stuff very few people remember or thought they'd forgotten. I pull things from episodes of series' I might have seen once back in the 70s. This does not make me some kind of savant. If there's such a thing as having a mind too open, I believe I have it.
I used to think it was a strength to be able to consider and agree with aspects of both sides of any given argument or cause. I consider myself liberal and super aware of the sadistic wrong doings of my own government that many people just see as a way of life. The way corporations manipulate products, the economy, medicine and even our idea of politicians. Aside from branding of products and the scary impact and cross pollination of "health" and "happiness" based on said product, our very waking thoughts are 9 times out of 10 predetermined by corporate sponsorship.
This morning I was teaching my daughter the days of the week in English. I used a classic method of easy memory adherence. I sang the theme from Happy Days.
Sunday, Monday...Happy Days! Tuesday Wednesday....
And so on. It was then that I realized how much of pop-culture I have used to influence my daughters. How much brain washing I've undergone and am now passing it on to the next generation. This is the straw, which breaks the camel's back. I need to re-train my mind to be free.
An example of the flexibility of my brain might be the vast contrast in political views I have. On one hand I believe in extreme rights of human beings to live and breathe in a world that minds it's own business. On the other hand I have relished the idea of capital punishment. I've been in the closet about that with my liberal friends because it just doesn't fit with other parts of the agenda that makes me ME. I can intellectualize the barbarism of the death penalty and theoretically disagree...but when I think of someone harming a loved one, I get the eye for an eye instinct. I guess this might be a similar phenomenon to the Eliot Spitzer strangeness of cracking down on prostitution all the while getting a huge hard on about it. I wonder if I were raised in a wealthy family, might I have become such an example of conflicting actions on a power scale?
Today I know that when I leave the house, just about everyone I meet has been taught something about what I might represent. I am an American Jew, which to some might mean that I am a vicious murdering, Zionist consumer of trans fat nitrite bacon, eggs and burgers and freedom fries. The way I see myself is part of a package that I've constructed for myself since I began art school in 1988. I'm a ripped jeans wearing, creative and sensitive liberal who goes against the establishment and hasn't a single racist thought because I am of the "human race".
In reality I am a scared and lazy victim of mass media who can spew out a line from an episode of Good Times and make a room of people laugh...or not. I have a horrible time keeping organized and focusing on one thing at a time. I rarely finish anything unless I have a real project to work on. I have racist thoughts and have developed a short temper, little patience and a seething level of anger that has accumulated over the last few years as I have been out of my habitat, cut short of breath in a small town that I really have no business being in. I know it and the good citizens of Ribe know it too. I do not belong. I am not better or worse. I am different. I'm in the wrong cage. I am self absorbed, but a very good listener. I love people. I hate people. I do horribly on Internet IQ tests because I can't answer fast enough. I drink too much when I drink. I'm a notorious flirt. I've been eating too much. I waste too much time. I have a hard time finishing articles.
Wow. That felt really, REALLY good.
2 comments:
Get out of my brain!!!!!
Seriously, I have whole weeks like that, and most of what you say I can agree with, apart from the capital punishment thing, which I managed to exorcise from my belief system.
Great post. I wish I had the energy to post things.
Thanks Heidi. I hate the death penalty issue and I wish I could exorcise it as well from my system. I'm a hypocrite when it comes to the issue or a product of conditioning with the emotional aspect of it. I think the whole saddam hussein public lynching really helped me in hating the death penalty, but then it comes back to the emotional response to someone hurting a loved one. I know it's been pounded into me from growing up in the States, the scenario of "what if it happens to...", but I still need to shake that. I just put myself in that situation and..well I'm sure it'll dissipate. I guess my political action would vote against capital punishment, which is better than nothing. Kind of like those guys who say "I don't believe in abortion, but I wouldn't try and take away a woman's right to choose". I wouldn't want the government to kill killers, but I would take the law into my own hands:) Nah...I'd be too chicken to take a life.
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