Old Age

In the senior years, having lived their lives in a world of disinformation, that is more than 60 years of being disinformed and disinforming, they simply don’t notice the difference and everything becomes part of life itself so to speak. The funny part is how the media manage to convince them that being old is a bad thing, like if it where a disease of which they must be cured. The thing is you can’t cure old age; for starters, it isn’t a disease.

The pharmaceutical and beauty products industries have taken advantage of this state of weakness by “selling” the idea that they will retrieve their youth. And that of course is attractive, it is the way to hook people and convince them to buy products that at first glance appear to be miraculous. There is not such thing and they simply postpone the inevitable. Through deception the media manage to convince seniors that these products are the cure to old age, when what they offer is simply a better quality of life.

Due to insecurity, a lot of people search for something to believe in, especially when death nears. Religion  has always been and is a big business, its institutions make millions and do not pay taxes. Religion is based on little or no facts, religious institutions abuse and transform religions to gain control of the people’s fate and profit monetarily from it. And as Don DeLillo said: “Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what others see, the thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We’ve agreed to be part of a collective perception”.

 

Adulthood

In adulthood, we occupy positions of leadership, we commence to work and start getting in touch with the “real” world. We finally learn how to manipulate disinformation at the same time that we are being disinformed. We detect power and we harness it by disinforming so as to gain more power. The higher you go the more disinformative you become. The media plays an important role here since we can now be part of it and, in a way, we are disinforming ourselves. The media is gaining more power, it acts according to its own interests, that is, to what that suits them economically. The combination of media and power enables a tiny handful of moguls to employ resources to dictate what is published and what is not, who is hired and who is fired. Rupert Murdoch once said, as a response to the Hitler Diaries published in the Sunday Times that turned out to be forgeries: “After all, we are in the entertainment business.”

So, where does the money lie? In the audience. And the most effective way to obtain an audience is not by informing the truth, but by informing the audience what is wants. The audience is more than happy to be disinformed; they’ve grown accustomed to it. Believing in all of the information provided to us without even question it or investigating about the people who provide us with this information makes us fall into a spiral of ignorance that is hard to leave. So…we stay.

As a result we have a sort of mind filter that switches on every time we receive information, if we are entertained we take it, if not, we don’t. We now live under the concept of ignorance is bliss, the less we know about our own misery the happier we are. We crave for the misfortune of others, and the further they are related to us, the more we are motivated to feel entertained. We free ourselves of guilt by feeling sorry for others, but in the end we are happy that we are free of suffering.

Adolescence

The disinformation begins, as we have seen, since we are children, but then this becomes a “vicious circle”, in which lies not only are made for illusions, protection and control, they become part of our daily life to the degree that we get used to it and we cant reveal it. Unfortunately, today we are no longer just disinformed by people around us and by the mass media (film, radio, television, newspapers, magazines, etc.), But also through the social networks and advertising. Teenagers are fond of spreading gossip and rumors, and eventually go changing the versions, or they simply spread a totally made up thing. Thus…disinformation.

You could say that adolescence is the introduction to mass media. The mass media, when seeking to sell their products, which range from clothes and food to people and lifestyles aim especially to teenagers. Teenagers are looking for their identity, and the media give them one.

Likewise, the mass media have been shown to affect a broad range of adolescent health-related attitudes and behaviors including violence, eating disorders, and tobacco and alcohol use. As teens we are aware of this mass media intrusion in our lives, and we embrace it. We don’t mind being numbed by corporations, as long as they provide us with what we want: IDENTITY. So, even though we are conscious of our surroundings, we chose to go with the flow, or, more likely, go with the masses.

Childhood

Ever since we were kids, we have been subject to lies or, to put it in a “nicer” way, we have been subject to a certain omission of details or truths. It all starts with questions: why is the sky blue? How does an ATM machine work? What is death? And so on and so forth. For example, one of the most typical questions is: Where do babies come from?

Our parents, with all the good intention, decide to modify “a little” the facts so that our fragile minds wouldn’t suffer any permanent and irreversible damage. So, we go through most of our childhood thinking that babies come from bees and flowers or are the product of love and that they are delivered by storks, and many different versions that go along these lines. There is also all of those myths and legends that our parents present to us as a form of “entertainment” you could say: The Easter Bunny, the tooth fairy, and of course (the biggest fraud of them all), Santa Claus. And all of these fictitious characters are just one big fabrication to keep the kids busy, make them happy, make them be good…

Next, we learn how to disinform, by knowingly saying things that are false: lying. Lies go from blaming someone else for something you did to saying that you daddy is an astronaut (when, of course, it isn’t the case), or saying you like someone that you don’t like, or even blaming the dog for eating your homework.

So, why lie when you are a kid? At that age you can get away with pretty much anything. We lie for our own benefit, to be liked by others, to smoothen a certain situation, to be in good terms with society, etc. In the end we try to create this environment where everything is OK.