I'm no longer on the outside looking in
i didn't realize how tough it would be to get back in the blogging "saddle"... for one thing, i'm totally out of the habit of even thinking about blogging, so a number of days had already passed when it suddenly occurred to me that i'd decided to resume working on the blog... with that realization came the need to revisit the big questions, where to start and what to say...
this evening i was at the gym plugging away on the treadmill looking at the row of flat screen tv's arrayed for patrons' amusement while they're dealing with the boredom of repetitive exercise... it was the usual assortment of local and cable channels running the typical news, weather, crime serials, talk, and sports, all punctuated by endless commercials... often in the past when faced with such a deluge of american infotainment, and not necessarily even after spending a long time outside the country, i've felt like a stranger in a strange land, an outsider looking in...
my ah-ha experience tonight was the sudden flash that what's changed for me in the time since i stopped blogging is that i no longer feel that way... instead, i feel like i'm on the inside and all those talking heads are on the outside... it was suddenly very clear to me that our news and entertainment media are now very much out of sync with our reality on the ground, but, despite that, they keep pumping out their no longer viable and very tired "buy everything and buy it NOW," propaganda-filled messaging... i looked around at all the people sweating away and realized that, just like me, most of them had developed such an immunity to that kind of mental and emotional manipulation that it now only barely penetrates their consciousness... yet the people on the tee-vee keep yammering away, totally oblivious to the fact that they are now the outsiders...
there's a wonderful line from stephen king's dark tower series that is repeated throughout all the books... "the world has moved on"... for sure, our world has moved on and maybe, just maybe, the talking heads will notice that fact one of these days...
Submit To Propeller
this evening i was at the gym plugging away on the treadmill looking at the row of flat screen tv's arrayed for patrons' amusement while they're dealing with the boredom of repetitive exercise... it was the usual assortment of local and cable channels running the typical news, weather, crime serials, talk, and sports, all punctuated by endless commercials... often in the past when faced with such a deluge of american infotainment, and not necessarily even after spending a long time outside the country, i've felt like a stranger in a strange land, an outsider looking in...
my ah-ha experience tonight was the sudden flash that what's changed for me in the time since i stopped blogging is that i no longer feel that way... instead, i feel like i'm on the inside and all those talking heads are on the outside... it was suddenly very clear to me that our news and entertainment media are now very much out of sync with our reality on the ground, but, despite that, they keep pumping out their no longer viable and very tired "buy everything and buy it NOW," propaganda-filled messaging... i looked around at all the people sweating away and realized that, just like me, most of them had developed such an immunity to that kind of mental and emotional manipulation that it now only barely penetrates their consciousness... yet the people on the tee-vee keep yammering away, totally oblivious to the fact that they are now the outsiders...
there's a wonderful line from stephen king's dark tower series that is repeated throughout all the books... "the world has moved on"... for sure, our world has moved on and maybe, just maybe, the talking heads will notice that fact one of these days...
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posted by profmarcus at
12/04/2014
