Is God Or Television Guiding Our Minds?

We were given brains to think for ourselves. Yet there is so much information to sort through. We wind up dependent upon experts to analyze information and give us what we hope are truthful summaries.

Most of us have grown up trusting the government to provide us with accurate information since it has the resources and manpower to do research and analysis. Historically, we have reason to expect governmental agencies to be more reliable than not in giving us truthful information.

Consider how we have depended upon the Library of Congress, PBS, the EPA, ethics panels, investigators, judges and a huge net of government agencies and employees to serve our best interests and give us accurate and unbiased information. We depend upon them to work for the public good and, for the most part, they do not fail us.

And while Administrations certainly have made gross errors in judgment, we tend to think of unlawful power grabs as being the province of individuals such as Richard Nixon and Senator Joe McCarthy.

It is difficult, therefore, for most people to accept that we are in the grips of not just one person, but an entire government that is waging an unprecedented assault not only on truth and transparency, science and fact, but on America and her people.

This war was started 40 years ago as Republicans formed think tanks and sunk billions into figuring out how to control language, frame every issue their way, win elections based upon emotional spin and gain absolute power.

Our schools have been chronically underfunded. Our poor have not been educated so they can raise themselves up.

While Republicans with money think nothing of spending $40,000 to $80,000 per year on private schools for their children so they can compete, they object to public schools spending $10,000 per student while derisively leaping on public schools and underpaid teachers as being responsible for not being able to lift disadvantaged children up.

They care nothing about raising up poor or even middle-class children so they feel empowered and are able to contribute.

In short, we have not been challenged to think positively or to think in terms of uplifting ourselves or our nation. Government could do this, but this would make us less willing to turn to war. It goes without saying we are not taught conflict resolution.

Instead, we are encouraged to be separate and divisive by everything from our technology to the layout of our suburbs.

Science - the base of all our technological and medical revolutions - is discredited and a fight between religion and science has been nurtured to such a point that some people actually argue that dinosaurs are only 6,000-years-old and were transported on the ark. People are encouraged to believe evolution - the root of our medical and scientific advances - is disputable. And fully one fifth of our population - one in five Americans - thinks that the sun revolves around the earth, an idea that was disproved five centuries ago.

In short, nothing in our culture or constant programming - with the exception of PBS - teaches us to think - critically - for ourselves or do real research or rely on facts.

Witness all the absurd urban legends that are continually circulated on the Internet by gullible friends unable, unwilling or uncaring enough to check out if they are true.

Meanwhile PBS keeps being rescued from the budget axe by the slimmest of threads.

Obviously we are better consumers and a more pliant populace when we do not think for ourselves. Corporations subsequently spend billions on advertising campaigns to convince us we are thinking for ourselves even as they program our minds to their ends.

It's ironic that advertising is increasingly geared to make us feel special - to make us feel as though we are unique and making uniquely personal choices - even as it simultaneously herds us toward a powerlessness, herd mentality.

I write all these many words to you so you will consider this:

While it's tempting to blame the American people and tempting to blame people "who don't think for themselves" remember that we do not usually do what we are not taught to do.

And we in the U.S. are not taught to question the government or question anything.

We - this country's ordinary working citizens - are taught to want the latest technological advance, to shop and eat too much.

It is very difficult to see from inside this box.

Who sees himself clearly - or his country - from inside?

So when people are fed lies repeatedly, they tend to make their decisions on those lies and defend them.

Yet so much of what we take in, we do so while under a kind of hypnosis, while watching television.

Watching television puts us in a brain wave state in which we are very receptive to whatever we are watching.

From an article by Wes More:

"Herbert Krugman's research proved that watching television numbs the left brain and leaves the right brain to perform all cognitive duties.

This has some harrowing implications for the effects of television on brain development and health. For one, the left hemisphere is the critical region for organizing, analyzing, and judging incoming data. The right brain treats incoming data uncritically, and it does not decode or divide information into its component parts.

While watching television, the brain appears to slow to a halt, registering low alpha wave readings on the EEG. This is caused by the radiant light produced by cathode ray technology within the television set. Even if you're reading text on a television screen the brain registers low levels of activity. Once again, regardless of the content being presented, television essentially turns off your nervous system."

For the rest of Mr. More's article and to understand how addicted we are and how this addiction has resulted in programmers and advertisers programming and controlling you, see this article from www.familyresource.com.

For more on how the brain acts under hypnosis, read this article from the New York Times This Is Your Brain Under Hypnosis by Sandra Blakeslee.

We all have a need to feel we are in control and know what's really going on. None of us want to think we were duped, so some of us will fight to the death to defend the lies that we have been fed (but do not know are lies) and want to believe are the truth.

If possible, have compassion for those who disagree, who resist the truth, who don't "think for themselves."

Please affirm, in your mind, that each American - including yourself - abandons the need to be right and, instead, thirsts for the truth and finds it.

We must believe in the inherent goodness and intelligence in ourselves and each other. We must believe that the truth must out and that we, as a people, are getting ready to turn this nation around. We must believe there is more good in us than darkness and that the good will triumph.

These intentions are what will, ultimately, empower and save us as individuals, a nation and a world. They will allow us to align with God and do what is loving, compassionate, right and smart - as opposed to what we are programmed to do.

He hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. Isaiah 61:1

Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. John 8:32