Battlefield: Freedom of the human mind

I have been asked recently, (and many times in my life) if I felt free or not, and honestly every time, each time I heard the question, I had to admit that I don’t know what such an all-encompassing word, really means. Nor am I of a mind to have someone (ironically) dictate to me what it should mean to me, though many errant and misguided people have tried.

The word “Freedom” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

Here in America, people, men in particular, have evolved an idea that freedom is riding with your girl, on a Harley, wind in your hair, on your way to have beer and good times with other rebels, who reject “Society’s rules” or we think of living an unmarried, or unattached life as free with constant partying, and No financial worries.

Marketing companies have been onto this since the 40′s and have marketed “freedom“
and”freedom of choice” into nearly product that was ever commercialized. To business, our “freedom to choose” means their windfall profits.

Regardless, people crave what they perceive as ‘freedom“.

It is one of the great secrets of the entertainment industry, that people are attracted towards entertainments,  mindless, or not, because entertainments, free up their critical thinking, long enough to relax, engage in some fantasy, dream play, and child-like letting-go of control that all humans seem to crave from time to time.  Entertainers also know this, making ever more and more lavish spectacle, and like waiters at a restaurant, serve up to society, whatever society at that time thinks of as ‘freedom”. Entertainers not really revolutionary so much, as they are merely sensing an already existing need in the public mind, and pounce upon the collective psyche, with exactly what is missing.

Examples of this ever-changing American ideal of freedom, can be found in how different movies, music, and arts, are now, from how  were even 50 years ago.

50 years ago, (around the time I was born) Movies were about heroism, and patriotism, and, secret agents, foiling the spy plots, and innocent romances, with slightly “naughty” implications, and justice, and  freedom were mainstays of most of the movie industry.

The occasional “social commentary” movie (Guess who’s coming to dinner, “the Graduate” and the Manchurian Candidate are some examples) was there, but nothing like what was  soon to come.

In the 60′s while political unrest was fomenting, serious political statements in pop music and culture, had not quite caught on yet in mainstream American Music or radio.  (the industry made sure it never would again, too)  Many of the songs were about love, stories about America, tales of spooky happenings, and this was all set against a backdrop of music in the united states that consisted of R&B, Modern Classical pop, Brazilian Bossa Nova, Acoustic Folk, (which along with R&B, was one of the first genres to directly challenge the status quo) and English pop music, along with some older torch songs,  big band, and Brill Building epic songwriting. You might be amazed at the lyrical innocence of the times, just look at some of the song titles. This music had some rebel spirit in it from the 50′s and 60′s but as Bob Dylan said,  change was-a-comin’

Later when a new generation of American youth directly challenged and confronted their elders ( I was present on telegraph Ave. the day this picture was taken)  on matters ranging from personal morals, and sexual mores, to how the country was being run, advertisers once again rushed in to create products for them too, including Hippie Products, Black Power Products, and “revolutionary” products.

In the 1970′s the industry, and corporations in America sensing a changing trend, rolled out their best and brightest, spending hundreds of millions on commercial studies, watching our habits, seeing our fears, and then supplying us not only with commercials that highlighted out concerns, but then also offered a solution. Suddenly revolution was commercial and Cooler than ever before.

It worked like gangbusters. And it has until this very day, where generation after generation of young people are more than willing to let someone else tell them who or what “cool” or “right” is.  It’s sad because I have a lot of faith in youth, yet these days, this particular generation in my area especially, seem enslaved to icons, and ideas they do not even know the origins of.  That is, if they don’t rebel against those, and become conservatives themselves out of disgust for their parent’s posturing.

Suffice it to say I don’t think that children should be indoctrinated into any politics until they have learned the art of critical thinking. (same could easily be said for 99% of all adults)

because, this is not freedom.

All of these products, and promotions, and movements, and ideas, as always, gave us the impression that we were making our own decisions, living our own lives, and being individuals.  And it was a lie. Decisions made from fear, misinformation, lies, corporate interests, and simple lack of information, are not “self will”

They are self-deception. I am involved in dozens of these daily, as is nearly every person I know, and the only difference I can see between them and I, is that I am aware, that I do some things for wholly superstitious reasons, like banking, eating certain foods, believing in certain sciences, and disbelieving in others. Some I know a little about, some I know a great deal about, but the truth is that I don’t now everything about any of them. I am working on this. I do not wish to die in ignorance, of a reality that is often difficult to define, so I am not under the impression that I am “free” either.

The Freedom merchants:

Then there was also, and still is today,  the phenomenon  of what I now call “mimics”,  people who pretend they are leftist, or hippie, or about revolution, or black power,  or whatever, who come and get involved in some “movement” for sex or power, to make money, or manipulate and use people for their own personal reasons.

Mimics also exist in great numbers on the right. On both sides, they are usually the most hardcore, and outspoken of evangelists for their causes, and the most “radical”. They often sport the most obvious clothing, possessions, and style themselves in the most obvious language and manners, as a way to draw attention to their “revolutionary fervor” when in reality, it is a pose, purchased at a store, along with their propped-up, issue driven “politics”   I include political groups when I say “Advertisers” or “corporations” because every political group is looking to sell you something, and wants you in their ranks regardless of how inappropriate that might be to your actual spiritual or political disposition. Once again, this cannot even remotely be called “freedom”.

I would say the entire corporate, religious, and political world, is together , a “mimic” of itself, and of human values in general. Entities do not, and should not drive human values. Human values should drive those entities.

Example: People like the so-called “Revolutionary Communist Party” (RCP) in my hometown, who once even recruited me when I was 16, before I realized they were a mind control group with no real respect for me, my freedom, nor my youth, or  ideas.

They use images of “Che” and Early Black civil rights activists, (for an almost entirely upper middle class, mostly white membership) and also capitalize on a permissive attitude on the part of Liberal Parents  to recruit, brainwash, incite, and control teenagers who know nothing about politics, freedom, or critical thinking.

Then they get them into direct confrontations with Marines, Police, and other segments of society that they deem “conservative”, and  many of them actually are, however that does not warrant mind control over children, and using their feelings of wanting to be cool, and rebellious against them, for your own purposes.

Here is a video clip from a right-wing website, whose politics I am not in agreement with. However it is one of the only sites that will show this teenage mind control process through political and emotional advertising in action. I show this, because while I believe my readers know of my functional left-leaning politics, that they sometimes ignore perpetrators of mind control right here in our own backyard, and in doing so make us not only a laughing-stock around the world, but also mentally and politically abuse children who do not know what they are doing, and are acting solely on their own youthful energy and drives, and are being misdirected by the people in question.

It is a process that has nearly completely destroyed the left, in favor of leftist theater, usually directed by out-of-towners who came here for exactly that purpose.

This is not freedom

Once again, these advertisers know something about us, that we often do not admit ourselves. We thirst for what we believe is “freedom” without ever once having really decided for ourselves, free of influence, free of suggestion, and free of commercial persuasion what “freedom” really means to us, on our own.

I mean they should know better than us. They spend billions of dollars a year now studying us, (even the right and left-wing political groups as well) and we, don’t even stop to ask ourselves what freedom means in our time alone. It’s clear who the expert in that exchange will be.

Then there are religious  groups of every kind, who employ the same strategy, but with awesome afterlife, and apocalyptic implications, threatening our very souls to be dammed to an eternal  state of pain and suffering. Now That’s effective advertising!

I think the coming years will be a test of people to freely think for themselves, against the backdrop of a world that encroaches from every side on their minds, the minds of their children, and on their freedoms to think,  feel, or speak as they choose. The threats will come from the right, the left, up the economic ladder in the form of commercial mind control, from down the economic ladder in the form of felling guilty about being middle class, and being told you are revolutionary because of your birth, and always, the most visible threat, coming from corporations, politics and religions.

The dis-corporated “free zone” of the mind:

If you get a chance, sometime, sit down by yourself, no cellphone, no book, no television, no distraction, and ask yourself what freedom is to You. What does that mean, and how does it differ from just being able to do whatever you want whenever you want?

Write it down. think about it. you. your own ideas? are they really? can you separate what you have been taught from what you actually know? or what you truly feel?

Are you really free?

Freedom, for me, is a feeling. I have no proof of it. I possess no hard and fast definition of it, and no one can dictate it to me, or persuade me unless I want to be persuaded, no threats, mental games, “cool” factor, or other ploys designed to control my thinking will influence me. It took a whole life to get here.

Freedom. what does it mean to me? I don’t know yet, but I call tell you one thing.

I’ll be the one to decide what it means for me.

Piero Amadeo Infante. 2011