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Dealing with constant manipulation in western society. How do you do it?
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Thinking is difficult, introspection requires work; as such most of us, including me, grab for what's easy. What I find interesting about what the OP is describing is how these things come to be in society and the mere fact of their existence perpetuates and compounds their existence in society. What one's sees in society is reflective, is a mirror of what society holds dear. This may be bad or good. This could even bring into question free will. If one's actions can be so heavily influenced (and one's actions and decisions most definitely are) is there free will? Feelings, emotional thinking, familiarity of existing norms, what is considered beautiful and ugly and many more ideas; the "norms" of society, influence us heavily. Did you vote for the guy or gal based on a detailed reading of where they stand on the issues or did their face fit an established idea of fitting a certain role? Did they appeal to your emotions? Or do you feel a certain resonance, a familiarity with them or their party? This is but one example. All this points to how our decisions are not predicated on reason but rely heavily on emotions and established norms and practices in society. The implications are astounding
Our control (if that exists) is confined to essentially ourselves, this we can influence as well we should try. For me it's my practice.
Hate to make the world seem more bleak, but consumerism is rampant in non-Western industrialized societies too. Arguably more so... skin-lightening cremes and facial-shaping devices are all the rage in Asia, where attaining the "perfectly" shaped face with the "perfect" light skin tone is a big deal. S Korea has one of the highest rates of plastic surgery in Asia.. Buying brand-name things is quite important to most of my Chinese and Korean friends.
So it's definitely not just Western society.
My advice: carve out your own niche, your own part of life. Hang out with people who don't buy into the consumerist mindset. Stop watching as much TV, or at least avoid watching the ads. Avoid the mall. Stuff like that. You actually have quite a bit of control over your media consumption and consumer habits; focus on your own sphere before lamenting about the sphere we live on... it's too big of a task to take on and will likely end up in existential angst.
Consumer society is what it is, and will always be there luring you into buying what you don't need_ or making you believe you need what you actually don't need.
If you're grounded in your inner calm and can decide by yourself what your actual needs are, it's just static in the background.
Yep! in my 12 step program we say (especially at first) "change people ,places and things". If your having trouble not drinking don't hang around in a bar or with old "friends" who drink. We have choices to limit exposure. We don't begrudge alcohol or anyone's right to it. Its just not for us. We are not changing the world just our perspective.
I get it I should take care of my own garden first and be the change I want to see. I just hate the feeling that people aren't treated right IE inequality... it just doesn't sit right with me and is hard to let go and focus entirely on myself instead.
On a different note I should clarify that I'm not attempting to generalize western society as more manipulative then others, it's just that I have never been to an "eastern one" so this was the only real example I could share. I have no doubt that it's apparent in the east as well though.
@vinlyn
I'm sorry but your source about oil must be way off. America is a hidden empire feeding off of recourse rich country's and give very little in return for such recourses other then banking loans which plummet said country in huge debt. Capitalism doesn't give crap about morals if there is money if you think otherwise you're being very naive.
I give data. You give opinion.
I'll stick with data.
To the OP's assertion about oil, maybe were not there for oil.
Exerting one's influence globally is also good for business.
War is good business all around.
Worrying about your own stuff doesn't mean throwing everything/everyone else out. But you'll find that when you focus on your issues, it clears the space for you to clearly see where and when you can make a difference in the issues of importance to you. When you don't take care of your issues, your mind first, then you don't even see the issues clearly and you certainly can't easily see the direction to go to help. Taking care of you means clearing and training your mind. It helps you in all ways, including what to do about inequality and so on. You learn how to truly worry about what you can make a difference in rather than feeling hopeless about the world at large.
Just be aware as I feel some of us are, that the mind is manipulated by existence itself as well as the more obvious cultural and other environments we respond to . . .
We can be aware that certain situations, people, arisings 'press our buttons' - others just pass over them with little more than casual awareness.
Do we have a choice? With practice. :wave:
The rocks are the path. The Stupa is the Grace.
_/_
Without the rocks how would we experience
The potential of being born human?
"It seems like there is no break from it, why is honesty and integrity so rare in this world
I don't want to constantly block out the mental noise caused by all these damn adds and whatnot. It's a shame that the real potential of the human character is covered up by this much nonsense"!
Namo Amitabha Buddha _/_
@Asbestosbuddha, No, the rocks are not the path.
The rocks are "other people/things that annoy us".
Rather than try to effect a change in them, or alter things 'outside ourselves' to make ourselves feel happier, ( with reference to the meditation mats, and the bundles of cloth, in the tale) we must look to ourselves and modify our approach to protect our Mental Attitude, perspective, View, Intention and Concentration.
We must 'put our sandals on' and protect ourselves as sensibly, logically and practically as possible, in order to ensure that outside influences do not cause us sharp pain, discomfort and halt us on our path....
Like the rocks just the way they are.
Greed, poverty, sickness, suffering and death cannot be ignored.
Instead of protectIon, the sandals are the Eight Fold Noble Path.
Those "rock things that annoy us" through Right Understanding, are like reflections that teach us.
Without them there would be no Dhamma for how then would have Siddhartha Gautama gone out from his easy life before?
As a house holder, I am grateful for the opportunity to experience the Dhamma first hand.
I look to the "Stupa" for guidance.
Don't complicate things: take things as they are, without necessarily attempting to disect them into what they are, what they mean, what the effect is, why it is thus and how it could be otherwise. Or not.
Buddhist practice, for me, can be summed up in three things:
Attention, Mind the Gap, and Simplify.
There comes a time when you just have to put the heavy, cumbersome and frankly overloaded backpack down.
I hate spending money so advertising doesn't really work on me anyway...
same here. Except I don't have the money in the first place....! * LOL!! *
Same here. I like to travel down the Dharma path light. Too many ideas / assumptions / intellectualizations cloud the mind and unnecesarily crowd the landscape.
Some people must be far more susceptible to advertising than I. I don't remember the last time I watched an ad and then decided to buy something. On the other hand, I often look for "neutral" reviews of products online.
I do coupons for groceries, but rarely buy anything just because there's a coupon. I might try a different brand of some type of product I typically buy.
Advertising's job is to hook you...but it's up to you if you allow yourself to be hooked.
It's hard to protect kids from advertising, which is more where my challenges lie. Everything on tv marketed to them, and then everything in stores placed at child-level. obviously, as a parent, I just say no. But I don't appreciate the targeted marketing, and the addition of popular kid cartoon characters to sell what basically amounts to as junk food. It just adds another layer of annoyance I have to deal with when we go shopping with the youngest. He doesn't watch much tv, but what he does turns him into a walking billboard. Today we stopped at Shopko for some bleach and he asked for yogurt. We generally get him greek yogurt for the lower sugar content and higher protein, but this was go-gurt with Dora on it and goodness could he recite gogurt ads word for word. We still did not buy them.
When I used to live in a bigger city, the food ads were harder for me. Now, it's a non-issue because we only have DQ and Subway here. But when we lived elsewhere, a commercial for McDonald's or whatever can, and did, send me out at 10pm in my pajamas to drive 10 minutes to get french fries. Still my fault of course, my responsibility. But I'm glad to not have to fight it now, lol.
The thing to remember about all the evil advertising of the world is, it wouldn't be there if it didn't work. If they weren't getting rich of marketing and selling their products, they wouldn't do it.
Not only is advertising aimed at children dangerously insidious, it's also greatly sexist.
And let's not even go to Christmas!!
Some advertising here in the UK, is regulated so as to NOT appear during children's TV time.
Wise words @lobster; for some the stuffing will be knocked right out of them when they approach the cushion with right respect; coo shin they will call the ART that is medita'shun', and the cool fool that perseveres, will be the boo da!
It's saddening to see so many people believing that I ment manipulation purely in sight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra How can you even approach manipulation when done in this manner?
If you want people to understand exactly what you mean, you have to say exactly what you mean...You didn't mention until now that what we were all talking about (including you) wasn't what you meant? Am I missing something?
Do programs like that still exist? I don't know. I don't believe for a second there aren't things our government (and every one else's governments) do that we don't have a clue about. But thanks to people like Snowden, those programs are much, MUCH harder to keep secret these days.
That said, I can't deal with what I don't know, and I can't do anything about it. I focus on what I can see and know, and what I can (if anything) do about it. I try to raise my kids to be compassionate human beings who won't participate in those kinds of programs and hope others do the same. It doesn't do much for me to think about "what if THIS is going on? What would I do about it??" because I have enough going on that I actually do know about and can take action on.
The list that is what is wrong with the world is long.
The list that is what is wrong with me is also long.
I can change me, not so much what is wrong with the world.
I think as you practice and inquire it is maybe easier to see the fraud, the deceit , the mechanisms of power for what they are.
Maybe it's the BS one grows up with, were a nation of laws, were civilized , we try to do good, democracy etc.......maybe it's a shock to understand that governments exist by force and coercion. They always have.
There are several things I don't like and find oppressive that most folks are oblivious too. Our drug laws have made the US number one in prisons!! We have the highest incarceration rate of anyone!! What we get is all the collateral damage and expense that arises from our new prohibition, we have created whole groups that wont be able to find work, they end up back in the system, much less the damage this creates for their offspring who then will gravitate to such a lifestyle that made them lose their parents in the first place and on and on it goes. It's in the millions. This has decimated whole communities and is especially hard on black and Latino communities in this country. There are several more issues that are involved here, the private prison industrial complex and the money they are making as well as massively broadened powers for police (they also reap financial benefits from these perverse laws), not good for democracy....I digress.
What I wanted to say was be aware, be rational be critical, ask why but in the end if you are constantly placing these problems in front of you it will become burdensome-because you are constantly engaging problems you cant change. I think this can have a debilitating effect.
All the best to you,
Todd
After reading the article you (finally) posted...well, I had heard of some of this before. But what really stuck in my mind was, "MKUltra plays a part in many conspiracy theories given its nature and the destruction of most records."
Billboards are messages from the world (or mandala) of consumerism and many other mandalas such as 'fast food' or sense pleasures in general. So we just have to face these billboards and let them go just as empty thoughts.
The Ops article is freaky. Maybe I was targeted?
Jeffry there is no way to tell, the point of these experiments is that it should be able to happen in public eye without the subject or others knowing. I mean any abnormal behaviour is listed as mental illness.
I have spent a lot of time searching numerous sources outside of the very few news orginization and they all share the exact same story's with tonnes of evidence including documents, even pictures of children which I are too horrible to post here. Everything that questions government is called a conspiracy theory these days so I really view that term as an offence to human intelligence. I'm not trying to convince anyone, if you want to know more you have to search the information yourself. Question things you are told! Connect the dots yourself!
@karasti that program still exists but went underground. Google EMF brain stimulation for more information. The same technology is involved which is being used to control planes by thought. Which has been publicly announced in the scientific community very recently (http://www.iflscience.com/technology/aircrafts-can-be-controlled-thought)
"NSA Signals Intelligence uses EMF Brain Stimulation for Remote Neural Monitoring (RNM) and Electronic Brain Link (EBL). EMF Brain Stimulation has been in development since the MKULTRA program of the early 1950s, which included neurological research into radiation (non-ionizing EMF) and bioelectric research and development. The resulting secret technology is categorized at the National Security Archives as "Radiation Intelligence", defined as "information from unintentionally emanated electromagnetic waves in the environment, not including radioactivity or nuclear detonation". Signals Intelligence implemented and kept this technology secret in the same manner as other electronic warfare programs of the US Government. The NSA monitors available information about this technology and withholds scientific research from the public. There are also international intelligence agreements to keep this technology secret.
The NSA has proprietary electronic equipment that analyze electrical activity in humans from a distance. NSA computer generated brain mapping can continuously monitor all of the electrical activity in the brain continuously. The NSA records and decode individual brain maps (of hundreds of thousands of persons) for national security purposes. EMF Brain Stimulation is also secretly used by the military for brain-to-computer link (in military fighter aircraft, for example)."
So the technology is there. It has been known that NSA has technology 15 years ahead of us. They have a record that isn't excactly clean and is known for covering up experiments on the US people. I find it very unwise and even dangerous to consider all these things a conspiracy theory. If this is all a big joke... so what? Nothing will happen... but what if it's not?
Recognize this-
"With our thoughts we make the world."
The Buddha
Including what you are telling us?
So let's say, @Woah93, that everything you are saying is 100% fact. Now what? My mom has been reading on up whether severe weather is caused by the government for economic gain. I asked her the same thing. Now what? She continues to live her life, there is nothing else she can do. If you are in a position to bring information to light, or to make changes, then by all means, do so. If not...you are better off (IMHO) making changes in your own life. Donate meditation cushions to prisoners, sponsor a monk or nun, eat more vegetables, start a garden, do some yoga, rescue a turtle who is trying to cross the road...whatever you can do.
There is something to be said for introducing people to information that might be new to them, so for that, I thank you. But to the point of being anxious or worried or feeling like you constantly have to deal with it (per your title of this thread), that seems a bit much to me.
As the sayings go,
If you can do something about it, why worry?
If you can't do something about it, why worry?
And my all time favorite,
Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but never gets you anywhere.
Why am I thinking of Chicken Little?
Quote of the week.
Everything is a matter of perspective, we can look at the world and think, wow this is all wrong. Or we could look at the world and think everything is as it should be.
Remember who decides how the world should be? We would all be wrong. It's our constant trying to fix the world that has gotten us here.
Don't try and fix what's not broken! Everything is mind. Only YOU can see things differently, but only if you want to!
Hey Woah93 i do feel yer, & it is like you say it is..But what if the whole world was designed as a test for us all?, an assault course/training ground/test to see which side we choose to stand....I live in the UK & the media is obviously trying to depress us, & all the soap operas & news are negative etc..So it was simple for me i stopped watching the T.V, & i stopped watching the news etc..There's hardly anything at all that anyone can do about international news anyway, so why bother watching it?..So it doesn't matter what is happening in the world today, the only thing you could change is how you react to it all..Don't let it get you down because none of it was your fault, we was "all" born into this system of working/slaving for money & land which was stolen before we was born....Iv'e actually worked in almost 40 countries around the world, & know for a fact that honesty & integrity are not as rare as you think..You won't see it in governments & politicians or mega rich people, because they had to be dis honest & have zero integrity in the first place in order to get where they got....Maybe it's all this "nonsense" that actually brings out or defines our human character, maybe it is just a test after all.
My brain was stolen by the government and replaced with an exact copy :crazy: .
And now back to the rocking horse. Hi Ho Silver . . .
I'm not telling you anything
But I ask you this... Why is google investing in military purposes?
I dunno... Is this a quiz?
What's the prize....?
Let me add that I'm not anxious or worried or fear mongering BUT I was trying to present a view that while all these things are great, technology and the like, corruption AND conspiracy is present in every part of society and that includes government. Thinking that the government consists of happy people who just want to take care of you and will do everything in the name of your wellbeing is naive. What can you do? I think knowledge is power and knowledge guides you in the choices you make. THATS why i choose to research this stuff.
What are you worried about?
I'm worried about freedom declining at an alarming rate...
>
In all my born days, I have never yet met a single person, capable of thought, who thinks anything remotely like this.
>
That all depends where you live...
Given that you live in a European democratic country, your worries are largely unfounded, in comparison, shall we say, to your living further east. Middle- or Far- I'm thinking....
That is not true. What happens in the US directly influences europe and vice versa. Country's and politics influence one another that's common sense.... As a matter of fact it HAS been on the news here that the NSA in the US is spying on EUROPEAN citizens as well as americans. Why are my worries unfounded and how does it depend on where I live?
In this link General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA even admits they KILL people based on their data. Again... how are my worries unfounded?
http://offnow.org/2014/05/23/rare-truth-nsa-agency-habitual-privacy-violator/
I don't know how anyone could come to the conclusion that the government is full of happy people who want to take care of others. They seem pretty utterly miserable if you ask me, especially in the US.
I think every single country has problems. Some more than others. But it's good to keep perspective. Maybe the government is checking up on what you are looking up on your cell phone. But at least they aren't looking away while your family stones you, or sentencing you to death for your religious beliefs, or kidnapping an entire school's worth of children to sell off to terrorist men. At least when your children go to school, there isn't much chance of them being shot in the head while they ride the bus. So yes, there are always things to work on. But considering the conditions that a large number of the world's people live under, most of us here are pretty lucky. That doesn't mean we should ignore bad behavior by our own countries or governments. But how many of your complaints can you attribute to the famous #firstworldproblems? At least you have the freedom to research things, and to ask questions and to live your life on your terms, for the most part.
Let's see. What have I been prevented from doing that I want to do? Hmmmm. Nothing.
Let's see, although I don't agree with it, states are beginning to loosen up on MJ use.
Let's see, in almost half the states now gay people can get married.
Let's see, most federal nominating procedures are based on primaries instead of backroom politics.
Yup, no doubt about it. Freedom is rapidly disappearing.
Oh come on. Nations -- even allies -- have spied on each other for centuries. It's just the way it's done now has changed.
Sabbe sattā sukhi hontu
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@Theswingisyellow
The problem is that the private sector is just as corrupt as the government. Doesn't the private sector own the government?
Just watch from 01:23