Submitted by TimmyCatChores in MentalWellbeing

Hey Vern!

It's the paradoxes that get ya, buddy. You can't see what you can't see.

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If you pay attention to whether or not the media discourse you see has an objective actionable application in your own life, you'll see it is very rare that you actually get a useful type of information.

In a political oligarchy, the mainstream news doesn't exist to provide people with actionable information, except for the weather report. Mainstream media is an oligarchy propaganda machine. On the occasions it does suggest action, it does not suggest anything in the working-class interests.

So why do people watch? They believe they are connected. They believe their opinion counts. It's the TV mentality. It's the same as watching reality TV and celebrity gossip news.

It's an emotional narrative that fills certain psychological needs for social connection.

(See: 'participation mystique' “The further we go back in life, the more we see personality disappearing beneath the wrappings of collectivity. And if we go right back to primitive psychology, we find absolutely no trace of the concept of an individual. Instead of individuality, we find only collective relationship or what Levy-Bruhl calls participation mystique.” [Jung,Psychological Types, C.W. vol. 6, 1971, par. 12])

Of course TV is not a real connection, and neither is social media, but the brain is built to believe what it sees. It is built to make connections between ourselves and what we see.

(See: 'Mirror Neuron' A mirror neuron, or cubelli neuron, is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another. Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting. Suchneurons have been directly observed in primate species.")

Mainstream media is chewing gum for the brain, and the people love it, if they believe it. People who don't believe it, don't watch.

A youth on Facebook may have 1000 'friends', but that's not reality. The limit to human memory limits the actual personal relationships we can carry-on to about 100 people. Having 1000 friends is something that needs to be believed in order to feel real to the person.

Hyperreality is not knowing the difference between what is real life and what is a simulation. Social media is participation in hyperreality. It is cultural hyperreality of the addicted youth, and we are seeing this loss of genuine social connection to hyperreality is both devastating on the young psyche and devastating for the prospect of a democratic future.

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You with me Vern?

Well alright then.

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Our 'left' activism exists in the same modernist hyperreality as the mainstream to a disturbing degree.

If you pay attention to whether or not the 'left' discourse you see has an objective actionable application in your own life, you'll see it is very rare that you actually get a useful type of information. Sound familiar?

We see lots of opinions of what people should be, and what groups and individuals transgress our ideas of ethics and morality. On the left we see many subcultures; some conflict completely and some have a known affinity and connection; we see lots of discourse back and forth between subcultures.

I'm going to guess that about 95% of 'left' discourse is the participation mystique of youth development, and that about 5% of what you see will actually get people to make an action in the world.

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It's like I always say Vern: Any job is a job for critical thinking.

You know what I mean?

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snowflake wrote

i think so. it sounds familiar and i quite agree with your assessment :) Onward to Victory , Forever

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