Manon Eileen – a Writer's Blog

Mass media are fooling you.

Yes, it’s true. It is, it’s constantly, horribly fooling you.

And you’re probably not even aware of it.

Mass media guides your knowledge of the world, taints it, even. It shows you only part of reality, the part the news editors want you to see.

Mass media tells you only what they think you want to know. Why? Murder, for instance, is not as common a crime as you’d think. Petty theft is so much more common, but it isn’t interesting, people don’t care about it. Murder appeals to people’s emotions, it creates fear, hate, anger. Unconsciously though, it appeals to them. Murder, or stories of plane crashes, pedophilia and all other “horrible” crimes, sell.

Mass media makes you stupid, because it tells you only of what happened, not why. Also, they share tidbits of irrelevant news: fire in this or that rural area, important person so and so got fired… But of what importance is this to you? Jack shit.

I could go on forever.

What people don’t realize is that the mass media, particularly televised news which allows for very few different opinions, is a prime example of entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less.

If you want to survive the 21st century, you’d do well to realize this. Don’t believe everything you’re told by seemingly “credible” sources (even scientists!). Dare to criticize - dare to delve deeper into the world. It’s hard and it takes some effort, but you’ll be better off. More knowledgeable, more insightful, and much less fearful.

A great example to illustrate what I’m saying here is the following.

In 2011, a news report (Dutch) stated that “chocolate is healthier than most kinds of fruit”. It should be considered a super food. It protects against cardiovascular diseases and cancer. The research? It compared cacao beans and fruit juices. Cacao beans? No one eats raw cacao beans. And nowhere was specified what kind of fruit juices they means. Fresh juice? Or the extremely sweetened juices? They also mentioned that as soon as actual chocolate is heated, nearly all good properties disappear. Interestingly, chocolate is always melted before it’s poured into casts.

Then, I noticed that this research was done by the Hershey’s health department. How exactly is this an independent source? Is it not entirely in their benefit to publish articles that “proof” that chocolate is such a healthy food? I bet lots of people justify their overeating of chocolate by saying it’s “super healthy”, well, it’s still not.

My advice?

Ditch the bitch. I did it. I think I’m better off. I still learn about the actual important news events through friends and family who do still read or watch the news. They distill the really important for me, quite organically. At first, it’s like you’re cold turkey-ing over an addiction, constantly feeling the urge to go visit news sites, watch the news in the evening… But trust me, eventually, you won’t even miss it anymore. And then you have more time for the more meaningful: reading good books (whatever you enjoy, but worldly literature is always more valuable!), doing your job (so many people refresh the news pages every few minutes during their work, it’s astounding), doing all the fun stuff you actually enjoy.

So don’t let yourself be fooled by the mass media. Be critical, and if you’re a true daredevil, stop your news intake altogether. I dare you.

Are you a news addict? Have  you ever considered how the mass media has colored your world? 

I’m very interested in your thoughts and ideas, please feel free to share them in the comments section!

District 9 (2009) is a science fiction thriller, starring Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope and David James, it was written and directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by LotR dude Peter Jackson.

Summary:

In 1982, a massive star ship bearing a bedraggled alien population, nicknamed “The Prawns,” appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. Twenty-eight years later, the initial welcome by the human population has faded. The refugee camp where the aliens were located has deteriorated into a militarized ghetto called District 9, where they are confined and exploited in squalor. In 2010, the munitions corporation, Multi-National United, is contracted to forcibly evict the population with operative Wikus van der Merwe in charge. In this operation, Wikus is exposed to a strange alien chemical and must rely on the help of his only two new ‘Prawn’ friends.

Watch the trailer of this movie here:

After I saw that trailer last year, I didn’t quite know what to think. This movie could be either REALLY bad or REALLY good. I’m happy to say I thought it was the latter (even if the ending’s a little crazy), but I heard many say they thought it was horrible. Ah, the fine line between loving and hating something.

What I particularly liked about this movie is that for once, the rest of the world was involved with the alien encounter. Many movies that are about alien “invasions” show only what happens in the US – which makes me, as a citizen of the rest of the world, doubt the movie’s credibility. Because come on, can you imagine an alien race only invading the US if it were bent on conquest? The arrogance (or ignorance or whatever you’d like to call it) of those writers and directors and otherwise creatively involved people makes me cringe. So, this movie is set in South Africa, which is a nice touch. No CIA, no FBI, no US military… But still lots of shooting and action, no worries.

This movie debates the arrival of an alien race and how the human kind would react to it.

How do you think people would react to an alien encounter?

Three months after the arrival of the aliens in 1982, their ship was entered, where the aliens were found sick and malnourished. They were initially helped back to health, then were sent to District 9, where they were put in camps what evolved to be not unlike the camps we know from the second world war – including the horrid experiments, excluding the mass murder.

It was interesting to see that even though the aliens weren’t necessarily evil, they were still viewed that way. They didn’t even do anything that could be seen as “evil” (or does causing “unrest” count as evil?). Maybe it was because the humans knew they had superior technology? That if it came to it, that they would be able to defend themselves if they got access to their mothership?

Do you think humans will always be as prejudiced as we are now?

Please share your thoughts!

Have you seen this movie? Did you like it or not? If you haven’t seen it yet, are you planning on seeing it?

Hey folks! I’m conducting another experiment. Today I’m introducing the “Weird Phenomena”, blogs on weird stuff that happen/have been seen around the world. I’ll post Weird Phenomena blogs on Tuesdays from now on. I hope you enjoy!

Click to enlarge

Look at the above image. What is it you see?

Clearly, there is a helicopter, a tank or maybe a submarine, a UFO (or zeppelin).

The Temple of Seti I

These hieroglyphs were found in the Temple of King Seti I in Abydos.

Some people consider these hieroglyphs as proof of time travel. Would the Egyptians have found a (now long lost) way to travel to the future? Or did we, people of today (or tomorrow) find a way to go back? If so, I wonder why we took military machines. The notion certainly is interesting.

Contrarily, others think these are retouched, photoshopped images, or that the original hieroglyphs were damaged by erosion and/or later adjustments. These people suggest that these hieroglyphs are just an optical illusion of modern looking things, that our brain “replaces” the hieroglyphs with something that looks recognizable to us, people from the modern day and age.

What do you think? Real or not real?

Personally, I don’t even mind whether it’s real or not. The idea alone is very cool. It’s good stuff to write stories about – time traveling Egyptians that visit us or us visiting the Egyptians and declaring war on each other. I wonder who’d win. I bet they would have created a way to neutralize our modern machines in one instant – or perhaps I’m wildly overestimating them. I’ve always admired the Egyptian culture.

What story ideas pop up in your head?

Who else is getting Stargate SG-1 flashbacks when reading the word “Abydos”? Lol.

First, look at the following pictures:

Count the black dots, if you can

Which top line of these figures is larger?

…You probably noticed you can’t count the black dots, because in fact, there aren’t any.

Kudos if you saw that the top lines of the trapezoids are equally large. Most people think the top trapezoid’s top line is larger!

Images like these always make me wonder whether what we perceive (by processing sensory information) is true or not.

(Have you ever played Guitar Hero? Afterwards, did you notice that wherever you looked, it seemed like the world was “floating away”?)

This video explains the psychology of perception brilliantly.

Please share your thoughts on human perception and what your experiences are!

The Greeks and Romans always thought that psychological disorders were biologically caused and so, they treated them like physical illnesses.

Hippocrates: already impressively close to the truth in 400 B.C.

Hippocrates, a Greek physician (470-366 B.C.) and many others contributed to a manual called the Hippocratic Corpus, on how psychological disorders could be treated like any other disease. However, Hippocrates and his associates didn’t stop there; they had the notion that psychological disorders might also be caused by brain pathology or head trauma and also, they had the idea that psychopathology could be influenced by genetics.

It’s quite interesting to see how close Hippocrates came to the truth. Many of his deductions have been supported in recent years. Hippocrates also recognized the importance of social contributions to psychopathology, such as the negative effects of family stress. In some cases he even removed patients from their families.

Galen: quite a humorous guy

The Roman physician Galen (approx. 129-198 A.D.) took the ideas of Hippocrates even further. He created a powerful and influential school of thought within the biological tradition of psychology that extended well into the 19th century.

Galen’s theory was the humoral theory, and perhaps the forst example of associating psychological disorders with chemical imbalance, which is a widespread theory still to this day.

It was initially assumed that normal brain functioning was related to four body fluids (or humors): blood (the heart), black bile (the spleen), yellow bile (the liver) and phlegm (the brain). Physicians believed that too much or too little of any of these humors would lead to disease. For instance, it was believed that too much black bile lead to melancholia (depression).

The four humors were related to the Greeks’ conception of the four basic qualities: heat, dryness, moisture and cold. Each humor was associated with one of these qualities. Terms derived from the four humors are still used today to describe personality traits. For example sanguine (red, like blood) describes someone who is ruddy in complexion, cheerful and optimistic. Melancholic means depressive, and a phlegmatic personality indicates apathy and sluggishness, but can also mean being calm under stress. A choleric (from yellow bile or choler) person is hot tempered.

Treatment of an excess of humors

An overabundance of any of these humors was treated by regulating environmental factors. They increased or decreased heat, dryness, moisture or cold, depending on which humor was out of balance.

In addition to rest, good nutrition and exercise, two treatments were developed. In one, bleeding, or bloodletting, a carefully measured amount of blood was removed from the body. This was often done with leeches. The other was to induce vomiting to treat depression (in Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) Robert Burton advised to eat tobacco and a half-boiled cabbage to induce vomiting).

What do you think of these theories? It’s interesting to see that these theories are already so old, but still so close to the truth. Of course, the humoral theory has become obsolete somewhere in the last two centuries, but people have always considered the theory to be true.

Also, isn’t it great that this theory had such a big influence of a part of our language, on how we describe personality traits?

Please share your thoughts!

Source: Barlow, D.H., & Durand, V.M. (2009) Abnormal psychology: an integrative approach (5th Edition). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.