The Brainwasher

“All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values” – Marshall Mcluhan

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”- Malcolm X

The ‘mass media’ is a weapon far more powerful than any weapon on earth. All other weapons force a person to either surrender, get injured or in extreme cases to lose his life. The media is the only weapon that makes a person surrender and at the same time also takes away his life, without the person even realizing that slowly but steadily his beliefs and values are being compromised and shattered.

If we glance back at the road of our ‘mental evolution’, we would realize that much of our perceptions have been molded and crafted by this weapon of mass influence. The media tells us what to wear; the media tells us what’s cool and what’s not cool; the media tells us who is right and who is wrong; the media tells us what to eat and what not to eat; the media teaches us how to talk and how not to talk; the truth is, that media and therefore, whoever is controlling the media, has been controlling and influencing our perceptions, our beliefs, our values and consequently our whole life.

The media has been injecting us with venom ‘little by little’, always enough to keep us in a trance and not so much at any one time to make us scream. It assesses the amount of poison being accepted by us through polls and adjusts the flow accordingly. Slowly and steadily it intoxicates our conscience and builds a wall around it, for the conscience is its only enemy. Once it traps our conscience, the battle is then too easy. It questions our perceptions and the beliefs that form those perceptions and gradually replaces them with new beliefs and new perceptions. Without realizing, our culture ‘evolves’ into a totally different culture.

Ever wondered why every new generation is worse than the passing generation? Why the acts that were considered immoral by the previous generations are considered normal by the new one? Why every passing generation resort to wearing less and less clothes? Why the world is becoming more corrupted day by day? An analysis of the ‘evolution of media’ would reveal you the answers to this so called ‘controlled mental and cultural evolution’ of mankind.

Ahwale Duniya

Aalim bana hai jahil,
Jahil bana hai aalim,
Yeh kaisa zamana hai, ya Rab!,
Kai dewana bana hai haakim.

Jamhotiyat nai bakhsha hai,
Yeh nizam dehriyat ka,
Kai paise ki parestish per hai aaj,
emaan insaan ka.

Ki wafa ki umeed,
Us bewafa sai,
Jo ibn-e-adam kai roop main,
Aks hai shaitan ka.

Karta hai kia tu shikwa,
Bhari mehfil main, Arsalan,
Yeh sab tu karam hai,
Tere apne aamaal ka.

LIFE – Take the F out and its all a LIE

Life does not honor promises. One moment she is with you, inviting you on a never ending journey, promising immortality, serenity and bliss, the next moment she just disappears leaving you broke, crippled and forlorn.

We spend a major portion of our time planning and working for the life ahead, not knowing whether the ‘life ahead’ is a reality or a deception; not knowing whether these colors are real or just an illusion. Every morning we wake up and walk this road of deception not knowing when we would fall into a trench. A trench that would end it all; a trench that would make all our assumptions invalid; a trench that would be a beginning of a life that never ends.

This life is a whirlwind of emotions. One day we are happy, confidant and sure, the next day we are sad, frustrated and confused. We spend our lives trying to figure out a way to be on the ‘happy, confidant and sure’ lane, only to later find a sign signaling ‘closed for maintenance sorry for inconvenience’. We present theories, conceptions and misconceptions about our idea on how to lead a perfect life when we ourselves are not sure whether the road ahead is smooth or wrecked; whether that bridge will bear our weight or collapse; whether that ‘perfect’ exists or not.

This sometimes makes me wonder, why do we still plan and prepare for something that does not exist; why do we still follow life when we know she will deceive us. Perhaps, we are all blind; oblivion to the fact that this is a delusion; a fallacy fed into our vulnerable system; a lie passed around for centuries. I hope and pray that we could all open our eyes before our train crashes, for then it would be too late.