The Noncomformist

The objective of mass societies and mass media, is to get everybody thinking and doing the same thing -- as ends in themselves, whether those activities and values are productive and effective or not.  The sole objective, is that everyone is onboard with it -- because that is what determines "right," and not any other truth or measurement.

That also is what exhibits the power of mass media and mass societies -- that they can get everybody to go along with that "consensus" -- as that agreement becomes the truth, despite any other indications otherwise.  That is the power of the socialization (indoctrination) to go along, to get along -- that many are convinced, is the "only game in town."  One simply must go along with what everybody else thinks -- and there is no else.

That's unfortunately the way exercise and conditioning activities have ridden to their popularity -- not that it works and is beneficial to their practitioners -- but that it has sold the most books and products advocating their approach, and recruited many more to their marketing scheme -- one hopes to be at the top of the pyramid in.  Whatever sells, is what they're going to do -- and there is no higher calling beyond that.

But for those for whom health matters critically and urgently, one has to distinguish commercial success and its popularity -- from the actual success of making that critical life and death difference, that profoundly alters the course of their lives -- even if seen only in retrospect.  Some of the most monumental and life-changing decisions one will make, will not appear to be so at the time of that momentous and fateful choice.  It will appear often as what one had to do -- because they had no other choice -- that turns out to be the best "decision" they ever made -- even if not meaning to.

Rather, it was the summation of all the other choices before then -- that made the present course inevitable, and irreversible -- good or bad.  It may have been the decision to never walk again -- because one felt too lazy to, and therefore lost that capacity entirely.  Conversely, one often realizes one has movement and that capacity, when one tries it for the first time and amazes themselves that they just performed the "impossible" -- as though that movement was made for them.  Shortly, they did not want to do anything else -- as their favorite activity.  It seemed so right, even if nobody else felt that way too.

In time, many others will feel that way also, but initially, one doesn't need that validation from others to know the joy and truth of such a discovery.  It is enough that one has discovered it for themselves, and for that, one is a very fortunate person in the world -- because they know that feeling and experience.  Many others unfortunately, do not grow up experiencing such a moment in their lives -- of utter fulfillment, but instead go through life in a perpetual haze, of never knowing anything for sure -- in the murky soup that has become their lives.

Nothing is ever as it seems, or so they were led to believe -- and they are always led, never being at the forefront of these discoveries.  They are always the last to know about anything, yet hope someday to be the first -- but that is all they can do -- is hope.  They are not out there, making the difference.  That is the consummate "organization man," though they fancy themselves as a swashbuckling independent.  They don't realize, all they have never questioned -- in their desire to believe, like everybody else does.  That, to them, is the promised land, the middle class paradise -- of being like everybody else, thinking like everybody else -- and to be precisely at the middle of every curve.

That is the tyranny of the masses -- and the mass society, that makes it clear, how one should be at every point and time.  Who determines that?  What does that matter?  It is enough, that everybody think it so -- for that is their only "truth," and not what each can discover for themselves, by themselves -- as the meaning and purpose of their own lives.