As far as I can tell, the 'problem' is the huge gap between reality and what is generally accepted as 'true.'
I feel very much like the author of the post, as I imagine a lot of others do. I sometimes try and hold it all in my head; the government censorship, the people hating the censorship, the ever rising power of the hacker, the large sums of money spent on designer clothing, etc.
The only way I have been able to resolve this apparent paradox (how can everyone I know be so good when the world is so bad), is to recognize explicit, intentional, and calculated 'misinformation campaigns' are fully integrated into US society.
A strong, self-reinforcing (if everyone believes, it must be true) network of truth and lies is pushed as a zeitgeist; and some probably-genetic tribal mechanism gets the dissidents ostracized from the community when they are like, "no seriously.. just look at WTC7"
Having been "off" the boob-tube and most forms of "popular entertainment" for almost a third of my life now; I have noticed my world view splitting farther and farther from that of the average uninformed, top-model watching citizen.
I would expect a very strong correlation between consumption of popular media and totally-naive world views, including any world view that gives our regime the benefit-of-the-doubt.
I agree that our consumer culture is probably not a sign of enlightenment. But it is hardly true that most of the evil in the world stems from lies told by a conspiring and all-powerful elite. A lot of good has been done by cynical governments because the way reality works is that unintended consequences are so important. The world today is probably better for most than it has ever been.
I feel very much like the author of the post, as I imagine a lot of others do. I sometimes try and hold it all in my head; the government censorship, the people hating the censorship, the ever rising power of the hacker, the large sums of money spent on designer clothing, etc.
The only way I have been able to resolve this apparent paradox (how can everyone I know be so good when the world is so bad), is to recognize explicit, intentional, and calculated 'misinformation campaigns' are fully integrated into US society.
A strong, self-reinforcing (if everyone believes, it must be true) network of truth and lies is pushed as a zeitgeist; and some probably-genetic tribal mechanism gets the dissidents ostracized from the community when they are like, "no seriously.. just look at WTC7"
Having been "off" the boob-tube and most forms of "popular entertainment" for almost a third of my life now; I have noticed my world view splitting farther and farther from that of the average uninformed, top-model watching citizen.
I would expect a very strong correlation between consumption of popular media and totally-naive world views, including any world view that gives our regime the benefit-of-the-doubt.