Not ‘Amused’

Yesterday I shared a song on the theme ‘Amused To Death’.  Today, in fact just now – triggering me to write this – a compelling thought came to me.  

It’s not that we, this species, humanity, have amused ourselves to death (that would only be true of a minor component anyway – unless the ‘shadows around the TV set’ are a reference to all what would be left after a nuclear holocaust), but that the amusing of ourselves is only a symptom. A method of dealing with (by obscuring what really ails us) the hurt and pain we have inflicted on ourselves – and it is certainly self-inflicted) by allowing ourselves to be deceived by others. 

Yes, we have deceived ourselves to death.

The song of course is still good, and reflective of the superficial or super-facial facts.

It didn’t have to be that way.  We could have fought the deception, sent it packing, destroyed it.  But we chose the comfortable way.  The way of acceptance that things are the way they are and there is nothing we can do about it.  We deceived ourselves and covered up the crime by self-amusement.  The theatre of the trivial.  The gradual decline towards operating at the level of the lowest common denominator. Bathing ourselves in the languid pool of shallow-thinking.

All through history there have been men – mostly men – who have sought to gain advantage for themselves.  Mostly not by legitimate means.  Mostly not with any care as to how what they did affected other people or other things.  To a certain extent we are all guilty of that.  Perhaps it is in our genes.

The methods used by the selfish and greedy cover all of the possibilities.  No crevice has been left unexplored to gain advantage.  They range from telling lies as a means of influencing others ideas or distorting the truth including the historical record, through theft, blame, pretence, bullying, distortion, extortion, and on to physical harm and murder on a unitary or grand genocidal scale, with many more underhand tricks in between. Our inventiveness and imagination towards trickery has known no bounds.

And we all have accepted that. In fact we have relied on that, as a result of not being properly prepared to recognise it for what it is. Occasionally raising objections when things got a little tight or our comfort was disturbed, the waters being somewhat rippled. Objections which usually meant it was necessary for us to be beaten down and shown our place.  We have been beaten down throughout history, mercilessly, by the deceiving rogues, and not just us but all our forebears before us.  Until now we are so domesticated that we generally deserve the title of ‘sheeple’.  People who simply follow instructions, with never a thought of dissent. This is the exact situation we find ourselves in today.  Relying on governments who time and again have failed us and have again failed us in this present time of need.  Relying on world leaders, most of whom are unfit to lead even real sheep.  Relying on a system purpose-built to keep us in line and to be utterly dependent on it.  

If we die now, and many of us are and more will – whether from a virus or what follows in the disintegration of an ‘amused to death’ society, it will be because –  

We Have Deceived Ourselves To Death.