How media manipulate us

Manipulation. What is being manipulated? This happens when we end up believing, in a way or another, that some things are good for us even though they actually go against our own interests. How can you say that such a nice word as freedom is not good? Everyone wants to be free. If someone comes to us and asks us: do you think that anyone should be completely free to do whatever they want, with no constraints at all? We would immediately say yes. But we could get as an answer: Well, then, because I am more powerful than you, idiot, I am free to kick you in the ass. This is an example of being manipulated, when someone believes in something that actually goes against their own interests without realizing it.

Yesterday in the class someone said that the problems of a CEO are more important that those of people who don’t get enough funding for education and deserve, for this reason, more attention by the media. This is because he wants to become a CEO. I hope he does. But what if Obama decides to cut all the funds for public universities and give them to the CEO and he has to pay a huge amount of money next year? And he would like to protest but they are all focusing on the CEO problems? Probably the only way for us to understand injustice is when we actually experience it. And because TV has manipulated our brain so that we tend to believe that our interests are the same as the rich and the famous, we believe that who is less wealthy has got less right to be taken into account, is worth less than the rich and the famous.

Ii is like if I said that Britney Spears has more right to have her problems taken into account than a poor girl because this is what TV has made me believe. But what are the chances that I become Britney Spears when I grow up? Let’s say 95%. And what about that 5%? What if something unexpected happens and I lose my money because I get ill and I have to give everything I have to the doctors, or Obama suddently and unexpectedly tells me that I have to pay a huge amount of money for my education? Then If I am just a little bit reasonable I have to take into account that 5% and admit that both if I become Britney or not I should have the same rights, my problems should be considered worth it being listened to just in the same way.