It was suggested to me that I start a blog, and like the rest of us, I am highly susceptible to suggestive thinking. I have no idea what purpose this will serve, or what I will write here. Chances are it will simply be a collection of stream of consciousness writings. So let me apologize in advance to any of you that stumble across this thing for subjecting you to my various rants, mostly political.
So where to begin? Well I'll start by explaining the title. The line comes from Tool's Jambi. I thought it worked in that blogs are just a means to project your opinions onto others. And we never think we are wrong in our opinions, do we? So this blog will serve as my mountain upon which I give my sermons or something like that. It's not that I am preachy, although I can be, but sometimes blogs only serve to feed the ego (I will try to avoid this).
Like I said, this blog is a manifestation of suggestive thinking. Suggestive thinking is usually harmless (case in point: this blog), but it can also be disastrous. Let's pretend that you are a factory worker in some state in the Southwest. You work for a large multinational corporation which has decided that in order to save money its going to be moving the job you do over to Southeast Asia because the labor is so cheap. So you are laid off. "What the fuck?!" (that's you talking). You're pissed but you don't know who to be angry at because after all, the company did give you and your family pretty good benefits for a while there and you were able to buy your house and send your kids to school because of it. Nearby, there is a politician who really wants your vote. He feels for you, man, he really does. So he comes to your town and holds a rally and says to you, and others like you, that the reason you are out of work is because those damn illegals are crossing over the border and stealing everyone's jobs. "Hell yeah," you say.
And so you buy into a lie that helps you channel your frustration at something tangible. The politician gets elected. Everyone is happy right? Well except for the fact that there are lots of people buying into this and there has been a significant rise in anti-immigration violence in the U.S.
So suggestive thinking can either lead to blog creation or social unrest.
It's amazing to me how easily people are swayed in their daily lives, and how unaware they are that they are being swayed. As a personal example, I work in a cafe that sells mass-produced coffee and food filled with corn syrup, enriched flours, and hydrogenated this and that. What never ceases to amaze me is how people will order whatever it is that is on the back menu boards. On the back wall there is a three-part menu and six pictures of various items for sale. I figured out that between the various food and drink options there are literally hundreds of thousands of combinations people could order (if you want to count things like regular vs. decaf as a discernible difference), and yet most people will order whatever the pictures tell them to order. And once a month when all those posters change, so too do the popular orders.
Sure it's not like people are being duped into buying things they necessarily don't want, but if people are this willing to allow outside influences to dictate the flow of their daily lives, what are they willing to decide for themselves?
You should buy a peppermint mocha latte and a classic coffee cake.
You should blame the illegal immigrant for taking the job that your company actually just moved overseas to save money.
You should agree that Iraq is a threat because they have weapons of mass destruction.
You should get an iPod, everyone else has.
You should support Israel in her search for peace because she is our ally dammit!
And so it goes...
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