I think of ideology and almost immediately fear and government is flashed within my head. I think there comes a point when the way that we are brought up through and within the education system, church, being morale and an upright citizen is all part of a long process of the government to formalize for a consumption based life. Ironically we are consumers in sense of nature, but there comes a point when consuming for survival meets consuming by means of no purpose, but to fulfil society’s means. I’m not saying we are brainwashed, but it’s so evident and clear in my mind that politics, supply and demand and consumption is so important for the government.
How do they achieve this? It’s simple, the governments greatest tool, fear. Fear comes in many forms in this sense. One example being a personal example I experienced in a school in Ontario as a young grade 6 elementary student. A police officer came within the school and did a presentation for the grade 6 students speaking of drugs, alcohol and sexual activity. I remember him literally speaking very harshly about these, and in terms of if you use drugs or exploit alcohol you will amount to nothing and go down this rotten path. There is another example that seems to be a norm of society is if you don’t get the A’s in school or pass this course you’re going to fail and go down a similar road of failure and amount to nothing. This does not relate to the consumption aspect of my ideology, but the fear aspect. It’s a example that we are hard wired that if we don’t do this, we will become something negative, these threats that are abstract and absurd. I didn’t excel in 90’s within high school, but I sure as hell am not going onto some foul path that it would seem I was destined for according to these statements.
The fear and consumption aspect comes into play when we are talking about Y2K for example. This big scare because of someone’s lack of entering a few numbers into the computer is going to cause the whole world to go in a catastrophic chaos. What did we as a whole for the majority do? We consumed and what happened on 12:00am, January 1st 2000? Nothing, what a coincidence? Did they just effectively imposed fear to employ consumption. There’s also the idea that the media is just a mass tool to reach out to the world to impose this fear. The media has such a massive influence on what we do or think. This is taken directly and quoted from Marilyn Manson in the Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine:
“Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news, you’re being pumped full of fear, there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they’re not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl’s not going to fuck you, and it’s just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that’s what I think it’s all based on, the whole idea of ‘keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume.’” (Bowling for Columbine)
I think this is completely true, but in terms how I thought before when I would have felt indoctrinated by the media was I would simply agree with the media. It had to be correct right? It’s how we were culturally brought up to believe in certain aspects of life. It’s thanks to my love of film for opening my mind to research this amongst myself and my friends thought’s on how it pertained to them.
Works Cited:
Michael Moore. Dir. Michael Moore. Per. Marilyn Manson, Alliance Atlantis Films, 2002, Film. DVD.
