Did the bromide “in the Information Age truth will rise to the top” really just sputter out so uselessly? Go stand in a crowd and watch people shuffle by. What are they carrying, are they staring into it as they ignore you?
I say we have been manipulated.
We have been captured and lulled into a state where we function, but we don’t intuit our surroundings and process the presence of others in a rational way. We have been forced to stand apart, 6 feet apart, we have been told not to gaze at other eyes while they are masked because it makes people uncomfortable. We have been told that our very breath will be death to others, so we must hide our faces, our best facet we use to communicate warmth, friendship, love through facial expressions as we speak. Those shiny phones, the windows to the 2.0 universe of wonder, have repeated those missives to us over and over and over again. It is a chant. “I know I had a reaction to the vaccine, but I know my condition would have been worse had I not had it.” “They needed to nudge us in the right direction, I understand that the drama, while stretching the truth, was needed.” “The wisdom of the crowd is inherently better than my own reaction and instinct.”
And now think about the fearful phrases “vaccine deniers should be forced to take the injection; they are preventing our recovery from the pandemic” and “your rights do not allow you to kill my relatives when you pass COVID onto them”. And “we are in this together, you should maintain social distance” and “mask up”. These phrases pandered to people’s fear and somehow empowered them. The anger still is directed at you. Recall standing in a crowd and watching people during COVID, were they friendly to you when you wore no mask?
And look at how many now merely film life, are gleeful voyeurs capturing assaults, destruction and mob rage on their phones and posting them to social media. Gone are the days where people intercede to stop others from being hurt. Yet on social media we hear the chant “words are literally violence.” People’s cognition has been stunted, damaged to the point where they walk, they speak, but they cannot reflect on their individual responses normally rooted in self-awareness. They cannot exercise their conscience.
I say we have been manipulated.
I say they have a severed conscience.