In a particularly dark moment of my anxiety today, I started thinking about how shallow everything appears to be. I’m not talking about gossip magazines, though those have always been a fountain of surface level critique, but rather how everything from media to politics are a mile wide and a centimeter deep.
Our culture, and by that I mean western culture, has adopted this prima facie approach to everything. I worry, because it’s easy to distract people who engage in shallow thinking. It’s easy to steer them in the directions you want. When I watch the news, something I really don’t like doing on the best day, I watch with apprehension while story after story is reinforced with a distinct narrative that guides the viewer through it to a conclusion presented by the program.
I had to be hyper aware to see it, but when I’m having a severe anxiety attack, I am beyond hyper aware of everything. The same pattern is in our social media, our entertainment, it’s everywhere. It’s a culture filled with shallow propaganda, and it concerns me because that makes it dangerous for anyone who deviates from the “norm.”
Right now, my anxiety is still running strong, and everything feels off.
I reached the point some time ago where I could see the underlying framework of how our society works. As I mentioned in the “Obey” reference in a previous post, it’s a nightmarish scenario, and I’m not sure what I can do about it. My empathy is a curse in that respect, because I love people, but I don’t know how to handle all of this. I’m not sure what to do about it.
See, I feel that people have been taught not to think too deeply, that things are black and white, that too much consideration means you’re untrustworthy. You have to be quick in your decision to pick sides. As someone who is constantly working and reworking thoughts and ideas in his head, and is introspective to the point of near debilitation, that does not bode well for me.
As I said, I just don’t know what to do.