HOW MODERN MEDIA POLITICS IS AFFECTING US
IT’S TIME TO CHANGE CONFRONTATIONAL POLITICS
By Gilbert Quinones
Modern media and politics can be dangerous to our overall mental well-being. The overall effects and how it affects our mental health can sometimes go unnoticed. I hope this article gives you perspective and that you will share it’s message so that others can become more aware of the different media outlets’ motives. Awareness is the start to creating change.
Subliminal messages work. This has been proven time and time again in marketing that diverts our daily attention. Think about it, if I were to say “I’m loving it” you would immediately recognize the tune as a McDonald’s commercial. Regardless if we choose to buy a product or not, the marketing of products influences our subconscious.
There are certain countries in the world that play propaganda music and every household in that country is required to listen to the propaganda from a government-controlled radio. If you are fortunate to live in a country that does not require you to have a government controlled radio in your home, then you have the choice of what propaganda you are willing to receive.
Our modern media-political system has evolved to a propaganda system of constant subliminal messages and it is this type of broadcasting that sometimes goes unnoticed. We all have government-controlled radio stations all around us. They are in our pockets and almost everywhere we look.
Sometimes I miss the simple times. Answering machines, leaving notes on a door when no one’s home. VHS. Now that communication is instantaneous, how has this affected us?
It is my hope and dream that one day we will be able to watch the news with information intent and not the anchor with a subliminal motive. You have to first recognize there is a problem when trying to create a solution. And it starts by recognizing what has happened in modern-day media politics and how it is affecting us.
Contents:
- What Makes Us Competitive?
- NEWS: Would you like a Small, Medium, or Large dose of hysteria today?
- The Left-Right Game
- The Divisive Outcome
- Being Connected In 2021
- Our Identity Is Under Attack
- You Have To Be Wrong, For Me To Be Right
- Mental Health Awareness
- Returning Stronger
What Makes Us Competitive?
Is it developed at a young age? Are there competitive attributes embedded in our genes to make us strive to be better than our peers?
I think about this deeply and wonder if the competitiveness aspect we share is sometimes counterproductive towards the mental health of civilization when it comes to politics in the media.
Think about when democracy in the U.S first began on July 4th, 1776. It was during simple times of life. Information traveled slow and there was not as much room for political hysteria.
If you could travel back in time and talk to the founding fathers of the U.S. and tried to explain what the future would be like, they would not have understood, without them thinking it was witchcraft.
During those days, they clearly understood that we needed a different democracy that abolished the king royalty aspect of governing. They understood that this leads to dictatorship and that we needed a government that would protect its citizens from tyranny.
I am grateful for their thoughts and innovative thinking during their time.
But it may be time for people to reevaluate. I believe it is time to reflect and consider how to improve our current system of government on how it interacts with the media.
NEWS: Would you like a Small, Medium, or Large dose of hysteria today?
Hysteria shots aka: “fear porn” is what politics has evolved to today.
Politicians’ messages are generally all the same.
“I have hope.” “I have the answers.” “I’ll fix all your problems.”
This is a constant loop of scarcity, attacks to their opponent, win, repeat. This is passed to every term, from generation to generation.
I believe that the majority of the population is so caught in this formality of politics that most of us do not even realize this pattern and have accepted this as the standard.
I sometimes wonder when watching the different news networks, why do most people have the good guy bad guy mindset? In some of my earliest memories, there was always a good guy vs a bad guy. Has this always been the desire to always be fighting the bad guys?
The Left-Right Game
I remember the video below in elementary school. When I see people fighting about their differences it reminds me of the Sneetches. Stars or no stars.
Should I think left or should I think right? We have evolved to choosing sides to justify our core values of thinking. It was until these last few years that I really realized due to our instantaneous communication in society, that this has become part of the problem.
The media’s involvement in the political system needs to be reevaluated. At times I dislike being able to see things with so much clarity but unable to instantly change things. How do we regulate the media’s own political motives without interfering with the first amendment?
I will not give up. I refuse mediocrity thinking in its purest form and I will make a difference to help change the world. Whether it’s 10 people, 10,000 or 10 million. I write these words in the hope they fall on the ears of people that will decide to spread the message.
It’s the people that decide what they want to listen to and it starts with awareness.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Imagine if you could travel back in time and speak to our founding fathers when they were creating our democracy, what would tell them about our future?
There will be a divisive outcome in the end.
Below is an example of explaining the future to the founding fathers
“Hi, Mr. George Washington and all the founding fathers. I commend you for influencing others to not adopt a system of monarchy for the new world. In the future, people will learn to harness the energy in the air and convert that energy into communication.”
“Although the republican and democratic system will be highly effective for the next 200+ years there will come a time that it will begin to be counterproductive towards a healthy society.”
“During this time people will carry small glass windows in their pockets. These devices will contain the world’s energy in all forms of communication. The result will make everyone more advanced but it will also come with great disadvantages that are detrimental to people’s mental well-being.”
“The energy that will be projected throughout the world will always lead to the divisive outcome.”
“I encourage you to write provisions in the governing laws that express to the new world to maintain its democracy and anti-monarchy. But also express an amendment that regardless of political parties .. the objective of all government representatives core values should be to not compete but rather lead with principles that are conducive to a prosperous country.”
If you don’t create a system of government that guides the parties to work together, they will eventually evolve to always having a divisive outcome.
Being Connected In 2021
There is a difference in being heavily involved in politics in 2021 versus the past. It has effects on our overall mental health.
Thirty-five years ago, if you wanted to talk to someone by phone you sometimes had to leave a message on their answering machine when they weren’t home.
When you wanted to watch the news, you would generally tune in at 8pm or 10pm. If you chose to watch the news network, it was by choice.
In 2021, it no longer works that way and is rarely a choice that you can select if you want to watch politics or not. It’s in our inbox, our phones, our text, in nearly everything we watch or interact with, there is constant hysteria and subconscious political messages.
Although informative, there is an aspect of this that is counterproductive to a healthy society because it leads to constant hysteria.
Being connected in 2021 is embedded in many people’s nervous systems. The constant broadcast of information is a result of a technological progression that our founding fathers would not have understood when they first formed our democracy.
And because of this, I believe it is time to take a step back and realize it is time to evolve our thinking so that it is in alignment with the world we now live in. We need to understand how being connected is affecting us.
Our Identity Is Under Attack
Why is it that people get emotionally upset when it comes to our differences in political preference? This hurts my heart to see the problems in the world due to different opinions about politics.
I’ve come to the realization that this is a result of people attacking others’ sense of belonging. People want to feel a part of a culture and political beliefs have become a part of many people’s core values. When you have principles that make up someone’s belief system, it creates an identity for that person’s sense of belonging to that belief system.
Because of this attachment, disagreeing with someone’s political beliefs is similar to attacking their identity. Imagine attacking someone’s culture of where they are from. This would be highly offensive because we identify where we are from as part of our identity. This is why I believe the left and right way of thinking has become an obsolete method of thinking. Because people have a sense of belonging and will, and always will, feel their identity is being attacked when it comes to politics.
You Have To Be Wrong, For Me To Be Right
This is the mentality that civilization today has evolved to in the U.S. and many parts of the world.
A win or lose mindset, trapped in its own game that is counterproductive to the world’s prosperity.
I have a great deal of respect for Steve Job’s strategic philosophy when he went back to Apple and they were 90 days from bankruptcy. During an interview at the D5 Conference in 2007 he was asked for details of how he was able to turn Apple around from nearly going bankrupt to one of the most successful companies in the world which now has a two trillion dollar valuation.
Job’s said it was destructive to have a win or lose competition with Microsoft. He was quoted earlier saying, “Destructive relationships don’t help anybody.” When asked to elaborate on the substance of this statement, his answer was clear…
Jobs answered, “There were too many people at Apple and in the Apple ecosystem playing the game of, for Apple to win, Microsoft had to lose… and it was clear that you did not have to play that game. Because Apple wasn’t going to beat Microsoft. Apple didn’t have to beat Microsoft, Apple had to remember who Apple was, because it had forgotten who Apple was.”
I believe this is a perfect example of what modern-day confrontational politics has become.
The “you have to be wrong, for me to be right, win or lose mindset” is what politics in the U.S. and many parts of the world has become. We need to eliminate the right or wrong and win or lose culture. We need to learn to value the importance of our political diversities and evolve our obsolete way of thinking.
Politics have evolved to spending more energy attacking the other party versus using that energy to project to the world their vision of prosperity.
Steve Jobs knew that in order to revitalize its company’s culture it had to evolve its obsolete thinking. We need to do this same thing in politics.
For me to be right, you have to be wrong, is a primitive mindset and we are better than that as smart humans.
Diversity Broadcast Loop
The diversity broadcast loop of consistent confrontation in the media is something that most would not have expected. How could we get stuck watching a loop of constant broadcasting of confrontational communication?
I often ask myself if many people realize the pattern of what is happening but I think the gradual changes over the years have become “the normal”.
Mental Health Awareness
Being connected and addicted to technology is probably something most would not have thought was possible.
It’s embedded in many of our subconscious and in the depths of our nervous system. There is a saying about putting a frog in boiling water that it would jump out of the pot immediately but if you put a frog in room temperature water and slowly boiled the water it would remain until it cooked to death. Although this is said to be a myth, I think the concept as an example is effective when trying to relate how we can become accustomed to things and what is happening to some people’s mental health.
It is safe to assume over the gradual period of technological progressions that many people have become connected to technology at an unhealthy level, slowly without releasing the effects it has had on our overall mental well-being.
Returning Stronger
It is my hope and dream that people will read these ideas and gain perspective. It is my hope and dream that people will remember what it feels like to love their neighbor regardless of their choice of politics. To smile when you see a stranger regardless of their political belief. To feel no differences in our belief system that will separate us from the love we have for each other.
I hope that you take these words and pass the message.
I hope and dream that one day soon, we will all learn to love our differences and change confrontational politics, so that regardless of our political beliefs, politics never divides the people that we love ever again.
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
– Nelson Mandela
