Consumption and Consequence - Accountability in Modern Life
Kim.E examines the extensive flaws in modern society, concentrating on processed and contaminated food, polluted water, manipulative advertising, and a plethora of mental health issues. She criticises the medical and pharmaceutical industries, education systems, and governmental and religious institutions for perpetuating control, greed, and corruption. Kim.E urges individuals to take personal responsibility for their contributions to societal problems, and emphasises that true change begins with self-awareness and proactive, constructive responses rather than passive acceptance.
The Mirror of Responsibility: Reflecting on Our Role in the World
There is not a lot of good that can be said about the "Western" world or the "Westerners" of today. Almost everything we consume is processed and mostly non-nutritious with toxic additives, colorants, taste emulsifiers, genetically modified products, and synthetic agents that enhance shelf-life, but certainly don´t lengthen ours. Most of the fresh produce we consume is unhealthy due to soil contamination, pesticides, chemicals, packaging, and transportation, all of which begs to question its freshness. The tap water we drink is contaminated with chlorine, fluoride, and heavy metals, which doesn’t really matter because we prefer alcoholic beverages or sodas devoid of nutrients that are packed with refined sugars and chemicals. Our children are poisoned from birth because of the consumer choices we ignorantly make, and our blind trust of the manipulative marketing slogans on all the packaging.
We are surrounded by advertising that promotes sex, consumerism, addictions, idolatry, and unhealthy products like fast foods, confectionaries, pharmaceuticals, cigarettes, vape products, and alcohol. I have yet to see massive advertising campaigns promoting healthy eating habits, sunrise yoga, and meditation in nature. We live in an economy that can´t have people getting too healthy and zen because shareholder profit is all that matters, and shitloads of money can be made on consumerism, idolatry, disease, poverty, war, and suffering.
Most of what we consume mentally, emotionally, and physically contribute to addictive behaviours that lead to ill-health, obesity, cancer, and other serious diseases. Mental health issues such as auto-immune diseases, ADHD, bipolar disorders, depression, and anxiety are rather common and part of modern-day living. Natural remedies are scoffed at and vilified because the extremely powerful Pharma industry earns astronomical profits off sickness and not health, while indulging in the ardent support from corrupted science and bought-and-paid-for politicians and lawmakers. The friendly medical doctor is an avid supporter of prescription drugs that often cause more harm than good, but who cares, sick patients want a get-better-quick pill now, and have very little time nor consideration for any future long-term side-affects. Once disease-ridden and incapacitated, such patients regret too late as they wallow in self-pity and desperately ask: “Why me? What did I do to deserve this?”
We have poverty, starvation, genocides and human disasters in resource-rich countries that are massively indebted to the corrupt West, its world banks, its massive corporations, and its organisations that intentionally exploit economies, workforces, and national resources in the name of shareholder profit. We have education systems that are designed to control and indoctrinate our children, destroy their creativity, their critical thinking, and their self-esteem. Our children are moulded to become part of the economically enslaved workforce with 40+ hour weeks controlled by bosses who also determine their free-time and holidays and define their worth with a minimal monthly salary and a dangling carrot that says - Work even harder to earn more!
We have mainstream and social media that controls the narrative and free speech, and consistently feeds the world with half-truths and false information which most people believe without question. We have corrupt governments, bureaucrats, police forces, and justice systems that cannot be trusted, and all thrive on over-taxing and intimidating their citizens who are purposefully kept in perpetual financial survival and fear of authority. Our leaders lack integrity, empathy, accountability, and have a service-to-self mindset that nurtures their greed, their need for power, and their great desire for prominence.
We have the Military Industrial Complex, the CIA, and other 3-letter/secret agencies that covertly fund, train and arm insurgent terrorist groups to destabilise regions and overthrow governments, so that wars can be started and astronomical profits can be made by providing all sides with munitions. These actions are supported by politicians, who loudly preach about the right to defend oneself, the significance of democracy, and the importance of taking radical measures to stabilise regions and save indigenous peoples from annihilation. Most naive citizens are supportive of such flagrant, political half-truths because they care deeply about democracy, security and saving human lives. Once livelihoods have been decimated and massive human suffering has been established, the same evil that initiated the wars, fly in as superheroes to earn massive profits on the humanitarian aid offered with false altruistic intentions.
The world religions indoctrinate the masses, promote idolatry, subservience, and discrimination, and then kill, maim, impoverish, and destroy in the name of their religion. We have world organisations, like the United Nations, its numerous agencies, partnerships, and collaborations with bankers and financiers, that control the whole world to benefit the shareholders of massive corporations that have monopolised all industries and every aspect of human life.
We have social division on all levels with a divide-and-conquer mentality in politics, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education and lack thereof, gender, life choices like vaxxed or unvaxxed, personal opinions, and so much more. All the atrocities, the evil, the corruption, and the manipulation of our world have been purposefully created, initiated, and prolonged by mankind, and reflect the darkness that dwells within those who are engulfed by the insatiable desire for greed, power, and fame.
This horrid picture of our world and the despicable reality many are forced to survive on a day-to-day basis just cannot be denied, yet we accept it all with a "That's just the way it is!" on our lips, as we practice daily gratitude for the comfort and stability we are fortunate to experience. Oh yes, we know who the culprits are, and we constantly judge, blame, and complain about them. If they weren’t the way they were, and if they didn't do what they just did and did what they should do instead, then the world would be a much better place with happier and healthier people. But what about the role you, yes YOU, play in all this? We are so quick to shift the blame, yet we conveniently fail to recognise the responsibility we have in the awful reality of the world we live in?
Responsibility is our ability to respond, so how do you respond to everything I have already mentioned, and by respond, I don´t mean complain, I mean to actually do something? You probably drink your tap water without question, and automatically purchase all the processed food on supermarket shelves for you and your family members without first doing your research. Instead of changing your lifestyle habits and working on your addictive behaviours, you turn to the pharmaceutical and weight-loss industry to alleviate your ailments, which if anything, weaken your immune system. You blindly trust doctors and professionals in medicine and science, or any educated person with a university degree or a grand title.
You fail to make your own consumer choices because your decisions have already been made for you by marketing campaigns, whose adverts you love to look at. You eat up all your food because you are a glutton, although your excuse is that people are starving, so you shouldn´t waste any. You send your kids to school and never question the authority, the morals, or the tactics of the teachers and the educational system.
You often doubt the ability and intelligence of the youth and just want them to be normal, but never question what normal means to you, or who or what determined what normal actually is, or why your normal should be relevant to anyone else. You also want your children to get a normal job just like you, even though you work very hard doing the same mundane tasks year in and year out for a minimal salary.
You are quite happy if those around you remain in the hamster wheel of financial survival and live a frustrating, unhealthy existence that inevitably leads to a sick old-age with a desperate wish for a painless death, because at least you have company as you binge on your consumer poisons and addictive behaviours. Instead of working on your emotional skills, you attempt to find the perfect partner on a dating app, or you choose to remain with the one you have even though your relationship is everything but exhilarating.
The definition you have of yourself is based on your education, your job, your position, your title, your material assets, your wealth, your religion, your spouse, and anything else that will place you above others. You discriminate against others and justify decisions made to enforce power, control, and death to others in the name of your religion, defence of your country, your culture, or your people. You are part of the intellectual class that believes you have true knowledge, whilst you disregard and dismiss any information that goes against your personal beliefs and your perspective.
Because knowledge was not only the greatest asset to have during formal education, but also determined your success or failure, and nurtured your sense of worthy-enough and not-worthy-enough, you pride yourself on what you know and go to great lengths to prove you’re right and everyone else is wrong. Even though mainstream media is a medium that has been used for propaganda and emotional manipulation for eons, you admonish the fact that if consumed at length, you will be programmed to believe the desired narrative, and your thoughts will not be your own.
If you were stripped of all your achievements, your labels, your definitions, your ideologies, your money and your material assets, would you be able to describe the person you are, the intrinsic values you have, or the unique service you have to give others? Probably not! Most people are so disconnected from who they truly are because they fail to acknowledge the person they have become, and choose to lose themselves to striving and surviving instead.
Before wondering about where your future is going, just like a GPS, you must first figure out where you are right now and what got you to the place you’re at. Take responsibility for who and what you have become, acknowledge how your thoughts, decisions and actions contribute to the reality you strongly criticise, only then will your exhilarating journey of self-discovery begin.
Your response to EVERYTHING you are confronted with in your life really matters. Have you ever considered what kind of role model you are to everyone else around you? What about the unhealthy and unhappy impression you may leave behind, the impact your words and your judgement have on those you interact with, the affect your lack of honesty, morals, and openness have on people, the permission you give others to remain ignorant and cowardly, the influence your narrow-mindedness and arrogance have on others, the consequences your superficiality, self-denial, consumerism, and addictive behaviours have on those around you, and more importantly, the repercussions of your lack of critical thinking and the normalcy you feel towards a rise in corruption, crime, divorce, homelessness, broken families, ill-health, addiction, death, poverty, and starvation?
You are the only person who can make a massive difference in own your life. Judging others by pointing fingers elsewhere is a rather successful diversion and aversion tactic that nurtures your failure to see yourself with blatant transparency. Take a brutally honest look at the reflection in your mirror. The person you have become is unashamedly obvious in your eyes, your facial features, your wrinkles, your posture, your body weight, your skin texture. Look at your life with reflective soberness. What level of quality, fulfilment, and happiness do you experience daily?
Your physical, emotional, and mental reality is a reflection of your personality, the state of which you hold full responsibility. The way you live, look, think and feel reflects the culmination of conscious or subconscious decisions you made in response to specific emotional situations, many of which have not been resolved. Not responding to something by ignoring it instead is also a decision and a response, and certainly not the solution.
The world and all its atrocities is a reflection of you and your support thereof. Your lack of response inadvertently reflects your unequivocal support thereof. Your lack of knowledge concerning all perspectives and not just yours, is a reflection of your ignorance and arrogance. The changed, better world you yearn for with peace and harmony begins with you becoming a changed, better person who has worked on your unresolved, emotional issues, your racism and your discrimination, and has discarded your labels, your definitions and your ideologies, or anything else that separates and dehumanises people, so that you can become the decent, heart-centred person who does good deeds for those who desperately need it. Collectively, it ends with all of us, but it ultimately starts with you.
BLOG DISCLAIMER
Time is an invaluable asset. Thank you so much for sharing yours with me.
Kim.E xx
Credits:
Artwork | Creative Writing + Editing | Recording + Editing: Kim.E - IsNotSo.com
Disclaimers:
This article serves the sole purpose of providing the reader with information without the intention to discriminate against, promote or influence the opinions of others.
Kim.E is an ordinary person with a personal opinion, and has written from her perspective and level of knowledge. She considers herself to be neither a professional nor an amateur in any field. This blog is for information purposes only.
Kim.E is not responsible for the accuracy of the information she has researched. It is the sole responsibility of every reader to pursue and explore their own channels of information to either confirm or reject what they have read.
