Ire In The Age Of 
Doom-Posting, Pt. 2
By Jon Hall

In PENICILLIN No. 3, I wrote that the symptom of a “programmed” (see also: “brainwashed”) mind is someone that still flocks for comfort under blanket terms like “left vs. right”, “democrat vs. republican”, “fox news vs. cnn”, and so on.

Preying on the vulnerable sensibilities of consumers they brainwashed, media companies manufacture hyper-sensationalized headlines hardwired to shape and form the opinions and views that comprise the political beliefs of their audience. 

A feedback loop if you will.

Politics has long been the primary bait media companies utilize to distract and occupy minds with, therefore politics is illusionary. A veil of smoke and mirrors with tantalizing, mesmerizing colors.

Consider this… the voting booth is often attributed as the only passenger any actual potential working-class Americans have in making changes to society.

 

Obviously: this column is meant for beliefs – even entire ideologies – to be questioned and criticized so “what-if’s” and downright absurd-sounding hypotheticals shouldn’t offend nor be met with any narrowminded perspectives.

               

“What if” we posit that voting isn’t any apparatus of change, instead labor.

The working-class controls the physical manpower enlisted in businesses of billion-dollar corporations nationwide. The working-class acts as the middleman between the American elite and their grubby piles of cash.

Yes, shove a copy of Das Kapital in my face and tell me this is nothing ground-breaking. What one might fail to realize is that the act of thinking critically itself may very well be.

            It’s true, there is no new thing under the sun. Men have thought, pondered, and philosophized on, well… everything for millennia prior to this current moment.

            For the thousands and thousands of years that have transpired, along with the discourse that occurred, one must contemplate that no matter what – perceptions or treading old ground be damned – the generations preceding us were not afraid to think.

            Nowadays? People do their best to get out of doing any thinking... Netflix. Hulu. YouTube. TikTok. A veritable endless dirge of content for anyone, anywhere.

            Everyone has willingly numbed their brains to the point of total apathetic calamity with their dopamine of choice.

Whether it be politics, entertainment, music, art, film, fashion (merely skimming the surface of potential areas of interest), there is truly something for everyone to drown themselves in…         

               

Well? Did you notice how I began to speak in blanket terms and absolutes? It’s persuasive, especially so If you don’t even know what to be on the lookout for.

These no-compromise hypotheticals so blasély established as factual reality by media companies are if anything far more dystopic than 1984 or Brave New World contemplated.

We are living amidst a society enraptured in the throes of “Plato’s cave”. So many (but not all, by any stretch of the imagination) have cozied up and mistook the dank and rough cave walls for grass under their feet, transfixed by the orchestrated and theatrical shadows dancing on the wall before them, hypnotic.

Others, dear reader, like me and you – are starting to notice undeniable truths. Others cannot as easily ignore and shove away the bitter reality sentenced to those held prisoner in the artificial society we’ve been chained to.

Some are beginning to leave the “old world”, and its fear-mongering tactics, behind.

▲ Still Just A Rat In A Cage ▲ by Temple ov Saturn (Joan Pope)