When I grow up, I wanna be an ideologue — a card-carrying member of a group that issues bumper stickers and blinders to its members in exchange for unthinking blather within a clear, easy framework. Just think of all the time I’d save!
It’s kinda like pre-packaged, processed food. Just serve it up online, and let the gorging commence; no straining or filtering required. The shapes and sizes vary, but there’s a flavor for even the most selectively narrow minds.
How about racism? (This is an easy one.) One merely has to set the filters to “monochrome” and toddle away toward stupidity. Plenty of seating in that dining room still…
Or perhaps you’d prefer to dine from the recently popular, pre-packaged George Bush box? The dietary applications can be broad, but at its most basic, it elevates the man to supernatural status: he either walks on water or has a barbed tail and horns.
Then there’s the partisan box. If an event can be turned into an opportunity to increase power for one’s party, it’s a good thing by its very nature; benefit — or even relevance — to the world (and the people in it) is utterly irrelevant. No nutritional value at all, but apparently highly satisfying.
There are bland, pre-packaged boxes for everything. Do you think a newspaper is biased one way or another? You can build an entire world around proving it. Is there a country trying to take over the world? Off you go, into your box! And the mind boggles at the possibilities inherent in the religious boxes…
When one already has the answer, there’s no need to question.
Unfortunately, if one’s diet is limited to these toxic meals, the poisons may ultimately overwhelm the brain’s natural ability to cleanse and purge. Synapses slow, and eventually stop firing; isolated parts of the mind, starved for oxygen, begin to die.
Mind-scurvy.
Ah, for the simple life. Just leave your brain at the door…
Ahhh, now this is interesting! I am still trying to figure out exactly what you are trying to say, but I can sure tell that it doesn’t fit into any of those oh-so-convenient ‘boxes’ - by Jove, I think you may have managed to p*ss off every single faction in the whole political universe at the same time!
I’m not sure that this is completely unavoidable, however. Mankind tends to gather in communities (that is, groups with something in common) - and one person’s ‘common-sense approach’ is another’s ‘idealogue-ism’. Especially when the whole process of obtaining/maintaining power is involved.
~EdT.
Might I play devil’s advocate?
It’s easy to offend ideologues, racists, partisans. How do you offend the open-minded? (Hint: I’ve already begun.)
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