Reading Between the Lines
Because of the amount of deception and manipulation one can now be exposed to, the need for becoming better skilled at detecting it, has caused the evolution of more highly developed skills to accelerate-- often beyond what is being taught, because the creativity of doing so, can only be matched by those who are creating the skills to detect them -- that haven’t existed before. But rather than this mischief being done at the marginal edges of opportunism, they are more likely to be practiced by those in the positions of highest trust, often as the sanctioned "lawmakers," to spin things beyond any semblance to reality.
Astute observers often note that the event they attended and the one reported, seems to have very little resemblance of one another -- even as though they were in parallel universes, while ostensibly occupying the same time and place. What seems to matter, is what the reporter wants people to think happened -- rather than what actually happened, and many do not seem capable of distinguishing the difference. It is just that they want you to believe whatever they want you to believe -- and whether that is true or false, is not a major consideration at all. It may even be called “irrelevant,” “immaterial,” and “inconvenient.”
It may even be now, that the deception is the objective -- and not the determining of the truth of any matter. That is considered “old-fashioned and boring; it is the ”hype” that fascinates and entertains. The more of it, the better. That some can manage not to touch base with reality for even one moment, is regarded as standard operating procedure in many business and social arenas. And that is particularly true in the fields of politics and the media, as well as health and fitness -- which a few may recall that initially, was the whole justification for their being.
There is also a certain thrill in not getting caught at these deceptions that convinces one of the superiority of their intellect and worth. However, deep down, there is also the desire to be found out -- to be known truly as who they are. Not to be known in this way, is the worst of all fates -- even to be being discovered as a phony. That is what a few can understand -- that the need to be known authentically, even if it is not the person one wishes they were, is the categorical imperative of any life. That is finally, knowing oneself -- even as who one is.
That truth sets one free -- in a way that continuing to live a lifetime of lies undetected, can never do. That is to be stripped of all ones delusions and self-deceptions -- which is actually the unanticipated success of any life. It doesn’t matter how one gets there -- as it matters that one does get there.
It is not the effort in getting there that is transformative; it is simply “being there,” no matter how one got there. The wrong education, is the teaching that it is the “effort” that makes it worthwhile and ennobling. As long as there is effort to become something other than one is, there can never be the realization and actualization of who one already is -- and therefore, no fulfillment, no matter how much one has achieved. That is the silence -- between the words. That is the state of the art in reading and writing -- between the lines.
posted by Mike Hu @ 1:57 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
The peculiarity of my writing -- from just about everybody else’s, and deliberately so -- is that I don’t tell anybody else what they should think, but rather, what I think. That really is what the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America is all about -- the right to speak one’s own truth, and not the right to impose one’s truth on everybody else -- as has come to be the abuse of communications, and particularly, the specialty of the mass media to control.
That was NOT the intention of the First Amendment -- or of communications -- to tell anybody else what to think. That’s why political correctness, calling itself “liberalism,” is the greatest threat to free thinking in these times. Those calling themselves “liberals,” all think they have a right to tell everybody else what to think -- as though they were granted that right, in the Constitution of the United States of America, or by virtue of their high education. They have the same rights as everybody else -- to make up their own minds about what they think.
That is the liberation of the human mind and spirit -- that has become lost, in mass media and marketing. Everybody thinks they have a right to tell everybody else what to think. And so we are no longer free anymore. But once we see these things clearly, that is our liberation -- and not all the words and thoughts that enslave us.
That which is the hardest thing to see, is that which is everywhere, all around us, in everything that is said. An intelligent world is not one in which one person does the thinking for everyone else -- but when each person thinks for themselves.
A lot of the old mainstream media participants still think that it is their objective in life to become the next Voice of God -- like the Walter Cronkites of old.
They still cqan't get over that the world doesn't have a need for these self-appointed news czars. As most head off into the twilight, they're dragged kicking and screaming, "What about my legacy? Where are the monuments to my greatness?"
Fame, especially undeserved and unearned, drives many people mad. They think just because they have qualified for the next step increase mandated by the union contract, that they earned it on their own merits.
A lot of control freaks (bloggers) write me from time to time, to advise me that I can't write most of the comments to my own posts -- especially while doing so under my own name. They think comments are OK as long as I post them under some other alias -- to show that my thoughts are validated by some other, or at least to deceive that they are written by some other. That's what they think is the protocol for blogs -- at least in the old mass media mentality, of using imaginary "anonymous sources" to justify everything they make up.
I write for my own benefit and clarity -- and feel it is fair to add the comments that my writing has further inspired -- which is a very unusual development that one can generate their own thinking -- and not just be the objects of the manipulation and indoctrination of others.
This is the post-mass media mind being created in these times -- that unfortunately, many of the old minds, cannot make the transition to -- mainly because they were successful in the old game, in the old ways -- and so they are reluctant "to die to the old and be reborn in the new." That is a very important lesson in many great spiritual practices.
Those who learn one thing and then stop wanting to learn anything else, anything new -- but then only demand that everybody go back to the old, are rightfully doomed to irrelevance and extinction. That is the way of the world -- and all the wishful-thinking in the world, is not going to change that.
There is a precedent in academic writing -- to have footnotes that further explain every possible point -- which gets in the way of a smooth reading of anybody's work. A better idea was simply to append the work -- at the end, called the appendix, which is also an update on one's thinking since the original was written.
It is tempting to simply erase the original work and rewrite it (beyond editing for clarity) -- or erase it entirely, so that one can always seem to have been infallible -- and thus can claim, they always knew then, what they know now -- in perfect hindsight. That's usually done by the most devious using the mass media machinery of old -- to enshrine themselves as the media icons of the age.
It was simply, the original version of the "American Idol," that already, is looking so, so tawdry and obvious.
When writing is instructional and valuable, the first person who should be the target and the beneficiary of it, is the writer themselves -- but if he only waits for the approbation from others to make it worthwhile, one has missed the point and purpose entirely.
Actually, all bloggers self-impose their own standards -- and that is the most important information they have to communicate.
Given ultimate freedom, each has to define their own standards -- and a few will create them beyond the old standards, which is under stress -- because they’re not good enough for the new world, and not just “new media.” In this new world, it is very important for the observer to understand themselves -- their prejudices, their conditioning, their education -- because if they don’t, think that everything they observe is “objective,” rather than a projection of who they are, and their wishful-thinking.
The person who is most confused and prejudiced, thinks what he sees is “reality,” rather than their own limitations of understanding -- and sees it as their calling in life, to impose those limitations on everybody else, in order for themselves to be on the top of the socio-intellectual-economic hierarchy.
The well-known “liberalism” of most journalists, is this desire to be well-known, around important people, and thought to be “right,” as the driving impulse of their lives. Lately it can be seen, that many of these self-designated media icons, dispense with the subjects of their stories entirely, and proclaim that what they have to say, is more important than what the President might say. So they have no interest in what the President is saying -- but only in what they have to say, and their own opinions -- because THEY are more important.
It is the journalist’s disease -- reaching its most fatal manifestations in the persons of the Helen Thomases and Dan Rathers -- running around the world demanding of everyone the ONLY great question of importance in their minds, “Do you know who I am?” And if so, why are you treating them like everybody else?
Mainstream (mass) media did create this sickness of delusions of grandeur of unprecedented proportions -- that accounted for many of society’s problems -- in thinking that anything one wants to say and thinks they can get away with -- is the truth. Or that the truth is simply what they say it is -- because they are “certified” journalists, as the new priests of the truth.
The relevant question is, “How do we know, what we think we know?” For most people, that is what somebody else tells them is the truth -- or now, what they hope somebody else will believe as the truth. And they inquire no further.-- and say nothing else is possible.
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