Topic: Boycotting the hype
I've noticed that issues and events often come up in the media that seem to demand your opinion. There's something about the way these topics are presented that forces people to take a side and to start debating and/or gossiping immediately. The strange thing is the sense of urgency transmitted with these news items. It seems like the point is to make sure that when you hear a story about the latest celebrity dirt or controversial ethical question, you must not think too deeply about it, but must react immediately with your position. No research is to be done, no time of reflection is to be had, and no related issue is to be discussed--the story is designed to make you open your mouth and speak reflexively.
This sort of thing happens on the internet, too. Stories spread like viruses, and threads at discussion forums balloon up with opinionated posts and heated debate. I'm not referring to Noble Realms, as we generally do not take things at face value. We know we won't get ridiculed here for asking questions. This breaks the whole spell for whomever is pouring these items into the collective consciousness. But at other large forums where people are afraid of stepping out of line, you'll generally see a huge explosion of polarized but completely uniform opinions when one of these "stories" breaks. Everybody scrambles to state their opinion with a post that expresses their indignation with the "other side".
For the past few years, I've been engaging in a silent boycott of these subjects whenever I spot them. Sometimes I slip up and respond, but usually I just ignore them. When someone brings up Janet Jackson, Paris Hilton, Terri Shiavo, gay marriage, abortion, or any suspiciously polarizing issue, I just try not to respond. No matter how you react to someone who is stuck in the dualistic black/white paradigm, you lose. Only when you can bypass the face value of the story and discuss things like its symbolic significance, its misdirectional purpose, its usefulness to the powers that be, and other hidden components, do you actually stand a chance of learning anything. Otherwise, the information will use you for its purposes.
It seems to me that one of the purposes for these stories is to periodically "shock" the social organism that is the modern human communications network in order to see how it operates. It's like injecting radioactive dye into a person's bloodstream so that their circulatory system shows up better in an x-ray. When the story is injected into the mass mind, the powers that be can analyze the way it travels from person to person, from system to system, across all demographics. This is useful to them for many reasons. It shows which nodes are most efficient at spreading propaganda, which subjects are most useful as carriers of propaganda, how fast it spreads, who is immune to it, how it mutates, how long it lives, what its lasting effects are, and probably a lot more. As the media shifts from monolithic TV news outlets to the fractured system of blogs and social circles of the internet, it's important for the powers that be to understand how this complex system works. If they get locked out, they lose control.
On the personal level, I think it's healthy to avoid discussing these "engineered" stories with people in the dualistic mindset because of the polarizing effect it may have on you. Of course, if you are strong enough to avoid getting sucked into a debate and losing energy, and if you can use the discussion to dissect the person trying to infect you with his paradigm and the system that infected him, then more power to you! Just look out for any wrong assumptions that the information may be using to get a hold on you--such as the assumption that you have the whole story.
Is anybody else engaging in such a boycott? What are your thoughts on the meaning of these memetic stories that explode every few weeks? How are they constructed? How do they infect? How do you stay immune?