Are You Living a McLife? And Would You Like Some Fries with That?

From World Wide Hippies: http://www.worldwidehippies.com/2012/02/27/are-you-living-a-mclife-and-would-you-like-some-fries-with-that/

Mitchell Waldman

2012 February 27

WorldWide Hippies-Just think about it. It’s 2012. And most of us are living fast food, junk food lives. Oblivious to what’s out there beyond the fast food information sent to us by the big media corporations.

Take our news – most of us get it from the mainstream media – we see only what the big networks want us to hear about what’s going on in the world, the news which is brought to us by, for the most part, big entertainment corporations. They don’t want us to know what’s really going on in the world. And when someone comes in to threaten to take down the junk food vendors (anyone remember Wikileaks?) they’re taken out efficiently and quickly, so everyone believes their seeming discrediting. And what about all the sources, the news you’re missing? The international tragedies going on on a daily basis that don’t involve us, our corporations or oil interests?

Take our music. Who do you listen to? Who the big labels want you to hear. Which is damned few. (And those who look good and, these days, can dance, apparently). How many exceptional artists are there out there that have never and will never hear of because the big labels didn’t buy it and won’t sell it to you?

What do you read? What the big publishers want you to read. That get the reviews in the New York Times Book Review. That have all that advertising and PR money behind it. And how many awesome writers are there out there that you will never read because you never knew they existed?

I could go on and on. How many small merchants have been put out of business by the corporations which keep buying and merging with each other and keep getting bigger and bigger? How many neighborhood hardware stores are left? Independent car makers? Neighborhood bookstores? Neighborhood grocery stores? Damned few, and getting fewer every day. While the big corporations send half our jobs overseas, and the politicians wonder why the unemployment rate is so big.

So, why is this all happening? And how did we get to the point where we live McLives, experiencing life only through a bunch of mirrors and lights, experiencing only an illusion of what the world is really like? Because we’re busier than ever trying to make it, trying to survive. . Because we are spoon-fed by Big Media to buy what they’re selling. (It’s in their interest that we buy what they sell.) We don’t have time to sift behind the surface of what we’re fed on a daily basis. To question what they feed us. To go searching for the fuller, greater world out there of words, products, and ideas. Dammit, we’re all too busy trying to keep our heads above the surface to do much more than stumble home, flop down on the couch with our frozen TV dinners, open a Budweiser or glass of box wine, and turn on the Tube to relax, to rest our weary, worried minds.

Continue reading at: http://www.worldwidehippies.com/2012/02/27/are-you-living-a-mclife-and-would-you-like-some-fries-with-that/