The World Is Selling You Yourself & It’s A Lot Shorter Than You Think
If you too believe this point, welcome, all of us as individuals have created a machine called society, which has gotten more and more out of hand and now creates us, well lesser versions of what we could be.
Now, with that fact out of the way, let’s dive into this ocean of thought.
I was listening to a podcast the other day (the past 2 weeks I’ve been consuming and learning so much through the different ones I listen to) called The Creative Muscle, where they talked about a concept called media literacy.
For those who don’t know media literacy is essentially a way of thought or awareness about the media that you are consuming and it’s effect on you and how you behave. Those with high levels of this know how to understand information across all forms of media by quickly disseminate the biases and agendas from which the media stems.
All of this is important because every single day, whether realized or not, we are being sold to. Think about it. When reading an article from Fox News or CNN they are selling you a relatively singular viewpoint (for those who only listen/read to the one side of the argument that each portray are actually fooling themselves when they think or say they are “informed” because to be informed means that all information across the board has been digested and understood to help you make the best decision possible).
Or, when listening to Spotify and an ad comes on, because you don’t want to pay for the premium versions, you are being sold to by specific brands to buy something. Every time.
The act of selling is an unavoidable construct of the world in which we live. Simple tasks like. strolling through the streets or driving through highways leads to billboards or storefront promotions trying to sell you on something.
Now, all this selling may not have an immediate effect on on our conscious but subconsciously it chips away at us.
One of the most subtle instances is, the sales of culture and what certain types of people, no matter the category that they fall in, should do and believe.
Of course, there are times when it is blatant but most times they are small things, like remarks in your favorite tv show, lyrics from a song on the radio or the verbiage from the headlines of The NY Times.
All of these instances are points of sales of view points and over time if you hear them enough they begin to take root in you and reshape you. Instead of you thinking for yourself you cash in your own viewpoints for those you’ve been sold to, time and time again, without even knowing it.
Every time you cash in your own ideas and viewpoints instead of thinking for and of yourself, you become far less valuable. You become shorter. And even scarier, you become more like the society that has influenced you instead of a force that influences it.
It is all of our jobs to build a society that we are all proud of. We, myself included, complain about things we don’t like within our respective societies and blame others but one of my favorite quotes states this:
“For we blame society, yet we are society”
That statement has never been truer than today. The society that we inherently blame, we are. We created.
So it is all of our responsibilities to stop, so easily being sold to, and make deposits into our own thoughts views and beliefs that we have formed on our own, and use them to influence society for the better.
Our lives depend on it and so do the lives of those to come.
Sincerely,
