Book 4. Children - Teen Youth Guide

Book 4. Children - Teen Youth Guide

(Identity - Self - Respect, Indoctrination, Bullying, Internet Safety: Open Your Mind to Trust Yourself)

Youth Introduction

I saw a famous father-knows-best type of TV talk show host hyping his book about child and teen life advice on his show. I thought it’s good to be a positive force in society but if you offer advice that is incomplete, one-dimensional, wrong or follows some ideology you might have that is not freely thought-out knowledge that everyone can relate to from their natural intuition then you’re a self-righteous liar preaching stupid rules and ideas that go against people’s true natures.

This is not a cutsie youth advice book telling you to eat your cereal, go to bed early and be disciplined. That’s all one-dimensional advice that fails because it’s not who you are in your true nature.

I’m telling you to discover who you are in your pure essence. Don’t make the big mistake thinking that other people, namely system-sanctioned professionals and the Social Sciences Formal Knowledge Infrastructure have wisdom about life that you don’t know about. All the wisdom in the Universe is inside of you if you listen for it.

I went through the whole deal within society until I discovered that everything out there is someone else’s truth, mostly a lie. There are standards of absolute morality like The Ten Commandments and the idea that you shouldn’t take more than you need but that’s it.

My wisdom is knowing my own natural standard in life and honoring it. This is as good as it gets.

When someone throws artificial values at us, it messes weak, unenlightened people up which is virtually everyone under 23. You can be intelligent but most people do not get wisdom and enlightenment until they live alone for awhile to experience life and think about it day after day.

Just because someone gives you a stern look and pretends they’re a pillar of the community doesn’t mean anything to me because I know that what I feel and think is the same as every man feels and thinks.

You cannot deny who you are by nature. If you do, you will live a messed-up miserable life.

We shouldn’t deal with sex by saying be monogamous and that’s it because it’s not true but I won’t touch that here.

You live in your own head alone regardless of what social group or community you might think you’re part of. Everybody is a loner going through life alone most of the time. A lot of young people don’t know this. They give too much power to what the collective group says about them.

You should listen to the voice within. That’s the most powerful thing you own.

As long as you don’t break any laws, hurt people or animals or do anything immoral, your life is yours to do with as you please.

The problem is that a lot of young people buy into other people’s views of life plus they buy into the view of life marketed on TV.

This book will help open your mind to the truth which is that if you discover your true nature then honor it by releasing most of that natural energy inside of you everyday to do something good that you like to do and are proud of, you will live a much better life than most people.

There is a youth sex book in my "People Power" Love-Lust Superbook series of books.

I cover GLBT issues in my sex book, gay issue.

Volume 1. Be True to Your Soul vs. Follow the Massive Marketing Indoctrination Machine

Chapter 1. Pop Culture Entertainment Destroys People, Especially Young People

Basic Indoctrination

You start watching TV at two or three years old. There are all kinds of TV commercials there.

You probably start going to church at four years old.

I was freely following my true nature at five years old then I went to school where they channeled my life down into about ten subjects and taught me what success is according to capitalist standards.

We're all victims of massive brainwash whether we realize it or not. In fact, the system is so good at brainwashing us that many of us think we're free even though we've been led along to subscribe to the standard version of the capitalist American Dream without even realizing there are alternative options for people who choose not to follow this version of life.

First they sent you to school with their hidden agenda and tried to produce a good worker who assumed the system would take care of you as long as you played by its rules, namely get their version of what they call an education then get a dull job within the system with no forethought of exploring your life, finding out who you really are away from all that stuff and setting a course that comes from the pure part of you rather than just picking from among the options they offer.

School may have given me the three R's but they tried to destroy my soul in the process by channeling my mind into about ten subjects and that's it, neglecting other things I might have liked that didn't fit into their mold like hiking, nature, my personal whims whenever I got them, the esthetics of life, my interest in animals, archeology, ancient astronauts, Zachariah Sitchin's work, Dr. Gene Scott's work, UFOs, soulful pursuits, creative expression, musical rhythm, hedonism, sex, romance, money, real estate, business sense, libertarianism, the injustice in the world, the true politics of power, the adventure of life, health, medicine, the body, the stock market, computer skills, the exploration of the soul, the exploration of my physical limits through intense exertion, the search for euphoria, intensity and transcendence, meeting a wide variety of different people, seeing a wide variety of different places, trying different things for the experience of them, watching good TV shows and old movies, studying enlightened people of the past from Socrates to Edison on through to Timothy Leary, a study of man's great imagination in seeking out meaning through religion, sorcery, philosophy, New Ageism, politics, etc.

They taught me about monogamous love as the key to happiness but I later realized I'm a hedonist by nature which I talk about in my love book.

To control people, you have to get them to stop thinking for themselves. It's easy with pop culture entertainment. Get them hooked on wanting to be entertained by the latest cool stuff on TV and get them interested in following the lives of so-called celebrities.

Kids want to be cool like the "cool" characters on TV. Many never outgrow this. As adults, they try to imitate the "successful" people on TV rather than living their own lives listening to themselves.

They brainwash us to think that people called psychobabblists know more about our lives than we do and we should listen to them.

I say live for your own purity as a human being and don't buy into anything out there.

The Mass Mainstream Media Has a Piece of Most People's Minds

It is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.

Ed Bernays, the "Father" of Public Relations

Media outlets in general need to fill their airtime with content so if they're critical nobody will want to be interviewed by them or let them in to do stories about them, hence, the media has to be nice to politicians, business people, entertainers, etc. in order to ensure that they're invited to events and keep getting interviews when they want them.

This is generally how it works. The few journalists who seek the truth no matter what are generally categorized as nasties and nobody wants to give them an interview or appear on camera because they fear being ambushed with tough questions.

Some guy on a Canadian TV show called Culture Jam about a group of people down on commercialism said the media doesn't play up to the corporations, they are the corporations. Look at General Electric which owns NBC and Disney which owns ABC.

The people with the money control media access, make politicians quiver and suck up to them so they're the ones who control freedom of speech.

In the U.S., there are about four mega-corporations (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) who control all aspects of the media (TV, cable, radio, movies, books, magazines, newspapers) and because most are allied to each other via mergers and the same partial ownership interests in minor corporate entities, freedom of the press is effectively reduced to their collective point of view.

They meet together at their conventions and conferences and plot their strategies on how to further pollute the minds of the citizenry by further saturating your mind with the mass media. Mind you, some is good but most is over-rated cultural hype.

What real human being really gives a damn about shopping for trivial material things or all that home décor-home improvement crap I've been seeing saturating the airwaves over the past several years. Who gives a damn about little trinkets and what your room looks like?

It's all about them trying to put you into a mindset where you buy the stuff they advertise.

They report what they want. You can rest assured NBC won't ever report an injustice caused by General Electric nor ABC with Disney nor did they report the bill that was going through Congress that would have enabled the FCC to tax the airwaves meaning them. It was eventually killed by their powerful lobbying interests.

We live in a plutocracy not a democracy. The ones with the money control the power.

The ones who own the media control the minds of the people as Marshall McLuhen said, "The medium is the message" meaning most of us will internalize whatever they feed us on TV, radio, newspapers and on the big mainstream internet websites that cover what is trending.

Look at your typical newscast; three minutes of regional street crime; three minutes of world disasters; seven to ten minutes of superficial national and world politics, four minutes of weather; four minutes of sports.

Where's the corporate crime, the corruption, the greed, the pollution, the plundering of the economy by the rich at the expense of the little guy, poverty, homelessness, the voice of the regular people, freedom of speech, citizen journalism?

Who funds the news shows and the news networks? Look at the commercials. That's who runs your world, the capitalist quest for profit as opposed to the search for truth and the sharing of ideas.

In a free country, why do you need to get a license from the government to start a radio or a TV station? Ask the FCC or the CRTC for Canada. Why should anyone have to regulate the airwaves?

There is still free speech in America but what's the good of it if you can't get mainstream media access?

The guys and gals with their internet radio stations barely reach three percent of the mainstream audience. It ain't exactly like a major network.

What are the major TV networks about; pop star idols, cop shows, home décor, celebrity gossip, sit-coms, soap-operas, etc.

The mainstream media tries to make alternative viewpoints look stupid. If you don't believe me, read any story about Ralph Nader's life. This guy gets crucified for trying to do something good with his life.

Some loudmouth Democrats were trying to blame him for their election losses. He's got a right to run just like anybody.

They try to shame the people to conform to the status quo by putting out the idea that if you're not ambitious in the capitalist sense, not materialistic in the pop culture sense and don't aspire to look like some guy in an ad of a successful looking businessman talking into a cellphone or a gal in a tampax ad acting all bubbly and pretty like she's worth it, you're not cool.

This is power the mainstream media holds over the masses, the ability to define what's cool and what's corny. It does a massive effective job of controlling the minds and souls of most people in our society whether you realize it or not.

Where are the individuals who do not let this stuff influence who they are?

Most people are brainwashed clones whether they realize it or not or whether they will admit it or not.

For alternative thoughts, try aim.org (accuracy in media), grassroots.com, adaction.org and prospect.org.

Pop Culture Destroys People 1

Pop culture entertainment is marketing hype of meaninglessness.

The reason I hate pop culture entertainment is because there is much pain, suffering and need in the world while off in a corner you have these elitists prancing around acting like they're living large in some fantasyland full of material excess and frivolous dreams, laughing at the rest of the world.

How can any normal human being carry on in frivolous excess while there are homeless people in every city, close to where you live? It doesn't make any sense. There's something wrong when we ignore the plight of people in order to live in delusions of glamour which is a total fake job because your state of mind doesn't change just because you put on some jewelry, get a makeover and walk down some red carpet.

Some Native guy said if you take more than you need, you're stealing from someone. I believe in a sense of inner accountability which I write about in my book A Free Spirit's Search For Enlightenment. I believe that if a person crosses the line from living a basic comfortable modest life to living in excess, they are less than good and now on the road to selfishness, greed and even evilness.

To me, there is no grey area. It's a conscious act when you start to fill your life up with frivolous things you don't really need. This is what capitalist success is based on. I'm like Henry Ford or Michelangelo. No matter how much money they got, they never compromised who they were in their souls. They had contempt for material excess.

Gossip as in talking about other people like they do on the TV talk shows and the entertainment news shows is morally wrong for three main reasons:

1.) First of all, you're elevating other people to idol status. That's one of the ten commandments, thou shalt not have false idols which includes the modern day cult of celebrity.

2.) If you poke your nose into other people's business as opposed to following your own life with a unitary purity, it means you're not happy with yourself. If you were, you wouldn't bother nosing around in other people's lives. You're envious. You wanna see other people screw up as on tmz.com to bring yourself up a notch. Most importantly, you're not dedicating time to the most important things which should be your life, the people you care about and the state of world where plenty of people could use your help rather than you spending your time entertaining yourself with frivolous gossip of other people's lives.

3.) People imitate what they see in pop culture entertainment to destroy the pursuit of their own free, natural lives in the process. How many women are hooked on being trendy rather than being down-to-earth people? How many guys are trying to act like rock stars, rap stars or the star of an "action" movie?

I say get a life, your life. Don't concern yourself with what other people do. I know this will never happen because so many people, especially women, live as though they personally know the cast of characters in pop culture land. I know fiftyish women who are still living their lives through the pages of the National Enquirer, People Magazine and similar such publications.

These celebrities are intimate strangers. They talk about them as though they're friends with some of these pop stars and movie stars but in reality they're just transient images on a TV screen to be replaced by other images in a couple of minutes.

It's fun for them even though they're dishonoring themselves by filling their minds up with that stuff rather than actually doing something inspired or original with their lives.

Capitalist-corporate forces not only take your money by manipulating you into buying useless things you don't need but they also rob you of whatever might be beautiful, unique, natural and great in your own soul.

That's the society we live in, a bunch of pacified lost souls pretending they're cool based on what they saw on some TV show or some TV commercial.

Pop culture entertainment has transformed much of the human race in the developed nations from self-sufficient, active, independent people into a bunch of passive, overweight spectator-consumer wimps.

Beyond that, a lot of it has a negative effect on the way people think. A lot of people are violent partially due to seeing all the violence on TV, in video games and in movies.

A lot of people buy into some fake world of glamour, coolness and trendiness then spend their time and money trying to imitate some image they saw out there somewhere.

I watch a little bit here and there but it's an afterthought to my life. I'm not a fan of anything. It's just mild chewing gum for the brain at the end of the day when I'm winding down to go to sleep.

I was brought up to do things not to watch it on the tube. My father was old school. He was always doing things. He never watched TV much. He never went to a sporting event as a spectator. He was never a fan of anything beyond himself and the few people in his life that he respected and loved.

How can somebody doing something make me as a spectator feel euphoric, transcendent and inspired?

This is what the entire pop culture entertainment industry is about, you watching other people do things yet the bottom line is that nothing can compete with me living my own life if I want to experience the full range of intense human emotions and sensations.

Only I alone can elevate my inner being by moving with my life to release natural energy in a way that makes me feel great. Other people make me feel good through love, friendship and sex but I'm an active participant in that.

Music by itself doesn't do it unless I'm movin', either working out, dancin' around or trying to be romantic. If I'm laying down and I hear a piece of beautiful music it's like so what. The feeling is gone in a minute.

I never watch TV by itself. I'm always working on my computer while the TV is on in the background.

My point about all this is that sitting in one spot plugging into some movie, sit-com, video game, myspace or a CD can't bring your mood up to euphoric levels and stay there for several hours.

You can laugh at a good bit in a sit-com but after a minute it's gone and it's the same mundane you. It doesn't have the desired effect, to make you feel better for awhile, to elevate your state of being for at least several hours.

Euphoria comes mainly in one way, through some kind of inspired or sensual action to make you feel like you just blew a worthy load of life energy.

Everybody wants to feel good right now. The industrial machine is geared to sell you instant pleasure in the form of pop culture entertainment, junk food, porn, booze, drugs, home décor, new clothes, a new purse, hair color, etc. but it never works for longer than a few minutes because well-being and a sustained sense of euphoria can only come from self-respect which you only get by doing something you're proud of that makes you feel good.

For me, it's out of sight, out of mind. I don't plug into pop culture entertainment much because I think it's a low level toxin that takes people away from living by whatever might be original and inspired within themselves as individuals.

Pop Culture Destroys People 2

There are eight main reasons why I'm down on pop culture entertainment:

1.) Most of it is low-level crap anyway. To me, about 5% of all the new songs coming out do something for me to make feel like they're any good, I see about one or two movies a year that I think are any good and 90% of the stuff on TV is meaningless garbage.

2.) I consume pop culture at the end of the day to relax when I'm winding down but even then I still question what exactly does it do for anyone in the way of making them feel good, euphoric or inspired? All my inspiration and good feelings are inside of me. I create them myself. Sitting passively watching somebody else do something doesn't cut it for me.

3.) Pop culture celebrities are elevated to super human status. Who are these people? Most of them are manufactured actors spewing off rehearsed lines or singing a song, most of the time that someone else wrote. What's so great about that? It's not like you did something highly original, fascinating and inspiring, helped millions of people live better lives or anything like that.

It's not like the world needs another arrogant actor or singer thinkin' they're hot stuff while trying to act cute and modest. The cult of celebrity is crazy.

There are at least ten entertainment tabloid shows that report on the lives of these people who contribute nothing substantial to society beyond minor entertainment which doesn't give us preschool daycare centers or hospitals which is what we really need.

What about all the unsung heroes like doctors, teachers, school crossing guards, cops, nurses, social workers, bus drivers, activists and relief workers?

4.) We live in these delusiuns that if we become rich and famous as pop culture celebrities we will enter a special, elite divine state of consciousness superior to the regular pleebes.

This line of brainwash gives young people warped views about life. They all wanna be models and rock stars then get depressed when it doesn't happen. The world is in an urgent state and we're watching singing and dancing contests. There's something wrong with this collective mindset created by Big Brother.

It's like let the world self-destruct around me. I don't care as long as I got my stupid shows on TV every night and my big bag of chips. There are homeless people everywhere. We got hungry, sick and dying people in our own neighborhoods.

The world is too screwed for me to live in the oblivion of pop culture entertainment. I live to help myself live a better life and help others in my own way. There's too much pain and suffering in the world for me to pretend it doesn't exist while I live in some fantasyland of pop culture coolness.

I can't buy into this fake pop culture world all based on selling something frivolous geared to keep us trying to get a good feeling from out there rather than focussing on living solid, enlightened lives for ourselves.

In the Bible, one of the Ten Commandments is Thou shalt not have false idols. This includes human idols. True artists aspire to produce a great product regardless of the fame or money involved.

Why are so many airheads lining up to be American idols? Nobody seems to bat an eye about how this reflects how messed up our society is when every second young person wants other people to look up to them because they sing a silly song. Who's left to do the real work, save society or invent the next big thing? We should be praising real people doing honorable things as opposed to flakes doing frivolous things.

5.) A lot of people are deluded by pop culture entertainment. They don't realize it's all a put-on. That's why it's called the entertainment industry. Even the so-called reality shows start with a script then they fulfill it. They don't just randomly shoot until something good comes up. If they did this, they wouldn't have many shows because most people, even celebrities, live dull, even pathetic lives day by day.

By pathetic I mean that millions of people are addicted to something be it pills, street drugs, booze, chocolate, ice cream, porn, soap operas, etc. Most people are insecure about their weight, status, how tired they look, etc. and this is multiplied drastically if you make your living from your looks. You don't see the real dirty stuff on TV.

You watch some sit-com and you see these twentyish kids living in lavish apartment working menial jobs and you think the real

world is easy and everybody's walking around with these casual, fun, sarcastic attitudes.

This is massive delusion. Many young people have no scope of all the pain and suffering in daily life everywhere until it blindsides them and reality hits.

6.) I'm not a fan of anything except for myself, the few people and pets I love and I feel for the downtrodden of the world. There's something intrinsically unhealthy about being a fan of anything other than yourself and your few intimates. You should never put any human being you personally don't know on a pedestal because we're all fallible, we're all human and we're all dogs behind closed doors.

Nobody gets up everyday all bushy-tailed, bright-eyed, ready to help the world or from the point of view of the cult of celebrity, nobody gets up everyday, looking beautiful, feeling like a million bucks, being friendly and nice to the world. You have to earn your self-respect and good looks through sweat, especially after the grace of youth is gone at 30.

7.) The people running the entertainment industries take us for a bunch of chumps. They create their act then hype it up, manufacturing our ideas of coolness for us. We don't have much say in it. They manufacture what we watch and listen to and through hype, tell us who's cool and who's not. We're like a bunch of sheep who follow what we're fed.

They put a dancing show on TV then a poker contest and all of a sudden we got dancing and poker sweeping the country. I'm insulted by somebody trying to define my life for me.

8.) There was a community somewhere in the Rocky Mountains which never got TV until the advent of satellite TV in the 1980s then all of a sudden crime, violence, drug abuse and teen sex shot up dramatically. They concluded it was the result of TV.

Anybody who thinks all those violent TV shows and video games don't make people more violent is a fool.

Why are so many people frivolous as opposed to trying to do something meaningful with their lives?

The saturation of pop culture entertainment on the collective mindset has taken people away from being self-sufficient, unassuming and hard-working to want to strive to be fashionable, vain and live the easy fast lane life of glitter and glamour, be a star, whatever that is.

Millions of people are looking for this fantasy life created in the movies. They think it exists somewhere in real life. They waste their lives following it and trying to imitate it.

They don't know that no matter what happens or what you do, you're still the same you.

They think something out there is gonna take them over the rainbow to a never-never land.

They don't realize your capacity for happiness and sadness are within you. You create your life by how you live. The outside world can't help you much either way.

It's a tragedy how we've become so soft, pacified and dependent on others for just about everything, even listening to others telling us what to think and how to live. Pop culture entertainment is not harmless. It destroys many people's minds and souls.

I spend my life trying to release whatever is inspired and original within me. I don't waste it watching professional sports. The athletes care more about the money than any team loyalty or your feelings as a fan judging by how often they switch teams and the people just take it. I thought it was spozed to be about some feeling of team community.

You're all cheering for the same thing, to beat everyone and say you're special and superior even though anybody that knows anything knows that on any given day anybody can win a game, cooperation is better than competition in life and it's all about money for the sports franchises, not about some emotional connection to the fan.

They try to make it seem noble. It's all big business disguised as some phony emotional home team spirit. I wonder if some of these athletes feel contempt for the fans because they look like losers with no lives of their own coming here to watch these guys to fulfill some sense of emptiness within themselves.

If they were living great lives, they wouldn't feel a need to watch somebody else play some game that means nothing in the grand scheme of life.

Grow up. Help some poor kids or spend time with your family instead of being a sports fan.

If you really want to nourish your soul, go out and do something tough like walk or run twelve miles or volunteer to help out at a homeless shelter. That will make you feel better than watching anything could.

Very few movies do anything for me. The only two I can think of are Grapes of Wrath which was about the will of the poor and oppressed to keep movin' forward lookin' for a better life no matter what and Papillon, an adventure story about a guy who keeps escaping from a French penal colony in South America over and over again.

Out of all the movies I've ever seen in my life, they're the only two that stand out as inspiring me or moving me in some way. The Fountainhead and Clockwork Orange were pretty cool but I had to think about it to come up with them.

The rest are a massive wasteland of lost memories. I can't remember them. It's all meaningless, disposable, transient images.

America is not really the world leader in science and technology. Only a few people are the pioneers, doers and shakers in American industry. Most Americans are content to spend most of their free time as passive spectator-consumers of pop culture entertainment.

We should do things for ourselves rather than allow ourselves to be entertained to the point of obesity, Alzheimer's Disease and the downfall of our economy. If you don't believe me, watch.

Bread and circuses destroyed the Roman Empire, the decadence of the people in their desire to be constantly entertained. Why do I feel like Rome is burning while Nero is off playing his harp, oblivious to the serious state of the world?

Our entire society runs on oil. Oil is not just used for energy. It's used in the manufacture of many goods. It never ceases to amaze me why the people that run the show don't feel urgent about converting our entire infrastructure to alternative energy. All the Arabs have to do is shut the taps off to start a World War. It's gonna run out regardless of what they do.

What are we doing? Sitting here in ignorant bliss watching the next top model, geeks trying to be pop stars and the Pussycat Dolls.

If you don't think there's gonna be an accounting and rude awakening at some point in time, you're living in ignorant bliss.

America can plunge into a Depression like the 1930s. There's nothing divine out there that can prevent it from happening. If it happens, pop culture reality won't be able to help you.

The comfortable pop culture way of life is all set up for us. All we have to do is buy into it, work some job, eat good-tasting junk food, consume the stupidity in the mass media then buy the stuff the TV commercials tell us to buy.

If you wanna do something original and inspired from within yourself as an individual, you can't waste time plugging into this crap while the world is falling apart around us and we're oblivious to it as long as we can watch our favorite shows.

Anybody over 13 who asks anyone else for an autograph should examine themselves to try to understand why they think anyone is more special then them.

Comfort Food for Weak Minds 1

Trying to be cool is uncool.

The Lord said, "Do not make idols." Leviticus 26:1

All the Athenians and strangers there spent their time in nothing else but to tell or to hear some new thing.

Acts 17:21

The cosmic spotlight isn't pointed at you; it radiates from within you.

Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

I define who you are then I make you believe you're choosing it.

Marketing Credo

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults, with his own morality and language, his difference from the world of adults a source of pride.

Gore Vidal, Rocking the Boat, 1962

I resent being manipulated like that.

Christian radical talking about corporate pop culture

If beautiful art does not express moral ideas, ideas which unite people, then it is not art, but only entertainment. People need to be entertained in order to distance themselves from disappointment in their lives.

Immanuel Kant

You might think fashion is some "glamorous" industry where cool perople all come together to create cool clothes and prance around but it's all a big bunch of pretense. If something is really cool, why change it every six months in the name of fashion except to sell more meaningless product to suckers who buy into it.

They take these tall, skinny girls, put ridiculous costumes on them, they prance around some stagelike thing called a runway and they all pretend it's cool but it's ridiculous. Then some asshole comes prancing out calling himself or herself a "designer." Why don't you design something useful if you're really a designer? I feel like the kid in The Emporer's New Clothes if I ever watch a minute of it on TV.

In a media-driven, capitalistic world, pop culture has destroyed the purity of millions upon millions of unsuspecting souls because they're not wise enough to see that the large majority of this stuff is just generic crud as opposed to true art meant to make them eternal consumers looking for a thrill beyond themselves to titillate them for a moment or two not to mention the stars many have in their eyes about imitating some pop star or aspiring to be like some manufactured vamp on the cover of a teen-queen magazine in order to get famous, another lie that Big Brother dangles in front of us pretending it will fulfill us and give us peace but the only way you get peace and fulfillment is from within, not from strangers recognizing you and telling you how great you are unless, of course, you're a flake and you need this stuff in order to feel good about yourself for a minute or two which is about as long as it works for, if that.

For enlightened people, neither praise nor criticism phases them either way.

From my vantage point, pop culture has created one great mass of generic humanity among the weaker, unenlightened, brainwashed among us which is quite a high percentage of the general population.

I ask one question only, "Where is the soul (pure you) you were born with?"

Where is the manifestation of your divine spark that is you the individual and your regional culture with your kindred spirit friends in your neck of the woods as opposed to one massive Pepsi generation of generic conformity to some phony ideal of what's off the hook which is supposedly the latest phrase describing cool geared to make you spend your cash one way or another for a temporary thrill that can't come close to living life by following your soul, the natural, inspired potential that was placed in there when you were born instead of just being some generic pop culture clone like just about everybody else out there.

Big Brother has done a great job of making a lot of people think they're cool and original if they follow the trends put forth by the corporate forces creating this stuff in order to sell product.

It's kinda funny, a bunch of people suckered into conforming to Big Brother's version of cool and original who end up being a bunch of clones all thinking they're cool and original but they're really a bunch of suckers imitating what they see on the box which is reinforced when they all imitate each other.

Whether you yourself are an artist or watch the so-called artists in the pop culture world, you always know their worth by asking the following question, "Are you or they an honest artist doing what they truly feel is good and worthy from within themselves or are you or they simply pop culture clones trying to follow current trends to cash in and be recognized as a cool, fascinating person?"

A true artist does whatever it is they feel from within without regard for response from the outside world. They know that what they're doing is good, worthy and right and don't particularly care what the small minds of the world say about what they do.

A true artist puts you in touch with the transcendent and divine. Everything else is generic crap, i.e., pop culture, chewing gum for one-dimensional, brainwashed people.

Pop culture entertainment, through its portrayal of transient sensations of easy-breezy coolness and frivolity, has one purpose, to make you feel inadequate and inferior such that you buy the products the corporate machine is advertising there in an effort to bring yourself up a notch and be part of this glitzy standard of glossy people and glitter you see plastered all over the TV, radio, music videos, frivolous magazines, etc.

Some of these people spend two hours or longer in the make-up chair to create some fantasy look for an interview or performance.

My fantasies in my own mind are superiopr to all of them just like your personal fantasies should be more entyertaining to you than all this crud out there.

If you're the sucker who falls for it in order to get some warm, cuddly, fuzzy feeling of emotionally relating to the current cool pop culture product whatever it may be, then it's your loss that you're spending your time on some manufactured consumer entity that could care less about you beyond separating you from your money, being brainwashed by it instead of spending your time culturing your own life and the lives of the people around you, some of whom you presumably love as much as you love yourself.

Pop culture entertainment is a business venture created by corporate forces to entertain people in order to sell them something thus pacifying them and distracting them from pursuing their own lives as individuals.

Comfort Food for Weak Minds 2

Big Brother's main agenda is to create conformist working clones who go home after a day's work and absorb what they see on TV shows, music videos, movies, etc. so extensively that they get envious, feel inferior, accept the pop culture entities as the current definition of coolness, success and trendiness then become good little consumers who buy what they're told to in the commercials and ads that support all this stuff in an effort to be cool, trendy and reach this standard somehow.

The underlying agenda for corporate interests is to put forth the perception that the people in the pop culture arena who are on TV, in movies and on music CDs are more special than the average citizen out there so this becomes the standard of fulfillment and happiness to aspire to for all the empty, brainwashed people out there who think that there actually is a place in the real world where people are acting like they do in sit-coms, soap operas, TV commercials, music videos, on a fashion runway, etc. and everybody is having an easy-breezy, fun, frivolous, great old glamourous, affluent time together with nothing much better to do than to sashee around looking good, going shopping and checking out the tabloids to marvel at the "beautiful" people in People magazine.

The general line of thinking is that the so-called celebrities, who are a part of this glamorous facade of pop culture entertainment, are special, advanced, rich and blessed icons for the ordinary masses to envy then spend their time and money trying to imitate because this is what corporate-commercial interests have defined as where it's at.

They want people to feel inferior, insecure and inadequate such that they're constantly buying and consuming product in a neurotic effort to be a part of this phony-cool pop culture image that the corporate heads put forth as fly when the truth is that all this stuff might be comfort food for weak minds but for truly enlightened people, it's just a bunch of bull that does nothing for the way they feel inside to strive to live out their lives as the primally inspired, free beings they feel naturally within their divine eternal souls.

This is the big difference between an enlightened person and any trendy-looking, brainwashed pop culture clone out there.

The enlightened person has the sense within him or herself that they're following their true essence as an individual while the pop culture clone is just some lost soul looking to the latest crap on MTV or People magazine to give them some direction and a warm, fuzzy feeling inside that they're connected to these supposedly cool, happenin' prople by virtue of trying to act like them.

Enlightened people know that despite the façade most people like to put out about being free and independent, because this is part of the standard image of being cool (to act like you're free and original), the truth is that most people are brainwashed clones without any sense of originality or uniqueness within themselves, without any intense inspired action in their lives.

The second somebody starts talking to me about pop culture like some older girl I met who said she was in a May-September relationship like Demi Moore and Ashton Kutuur or whatever his name is, I know they're brainwashed souls.

I have contempt for people pretending to be celebrities. Ain't no such thing except for media hype. Ain't nobody's poop smells prettier than anyone else's so don't try to get me hooked on some phony fantasyland filled with gold-paved streets somewhere in pop culture land.

They're spozed to be special because they sing a song, dance a jig or spew out rehearsed lines in some sit-com or something.

It's not like they've done something original, incredible or helped the world community in a significant way which is why I don't get it, this brainwashing effect about how pop culture is so cool and happenin'.

If these people are our modern day heroes manufactured for mass consumption, no wonder the world is in a mess.

All you pleebes out there who envy the glossed up characters on TV and want to be like them are the inferior unwashed masses who don't measure up because you're not as special and talented as they are but if you spend your hard earned money buying all that hair coloring, those overpriced sneakers, fashionable clothing, those tongue rings and that eye make-up the corporate machine wants to sell you, you can get this feeling inside that you're worth it and fit into the tribe of cool people.

The problem is that nobody tells you and you don't realize it's all an illusion to sell products and give the people in the entertainment business the feeling that they are on the cutting edge of life which is all a lie because the product is almost always generic crap void of true highly inspired, original artwork.

Secondly, there's no glamourous place anywhere on the planet where a bunch of fascinating people are all hanging out having a great old frivolous funtime together because just about everybody in the pop culture entertainment industry has a huge ego who's trying to impress everybody else as to how advanced and special they are.

This makes them jealously cutthroat of anyone who looks better or can perform better and there are always a thousand people lined up behind any one of them ready to take their job if they can't hack being a so-called star.

I have nothing against the people who work in pop culture entertainment, most are just brainwashed victims trying to make a living and be admired by the unwashed masses.

I'm against the tremendous indoctrinating force it has exerted over much of the population, firstly, instilling itself as the purveyor of coolness, trendiness, wisdom and even enlightenment such that if you're not into the latest hyped-up piece of pop culture trash, you're somehow not with it, behind the times, corny, uncool but if you are into it then you're supposedly cool as defined by society.

To people like me, if you follow this stuff thinking you're fly, happenin' and on the cutting edge of life, you're not cool, you're a brainwashed clone thinking that by associating yourself with these pop culture entities being manufactured and hawked by big corporations that you belong to the hip, with-it, fly, cool tribe of society but you're really a sucker for wasting your money, time, mind and soul on it.

This is the lie that has kids, teenagers, adults and even seniors wasting their money on CDs, video games, DVDs, trendy clothes, overpriced sports cars, big houses they don't need, swimming pools they barely use, crappy, hyped-up movies, etc., most of which, in my opinion, aren't worth wasting the time to watch or listen to but the brainwashed pop culture clones take anything that's fed to them and parrot each other saying how cool it is because it's the latest thing being hyped up over the airwaves.

Comfort Food for Weak Minds 3

When people see other people wanting something that doesn't have a real, practical function in the world because it's made to appear cool, trendy and leading to pleasure, they soon start to want it too.

Universal law of pop culture marketing

An artist is ether a true genius or a more or less smart entertainer.

Giuseppe Mazzini

Where's the original spark in living your own life?

To me, sitting through a generic movie at a theater (95% of all movies are generic to me) is one of the dullest things around yet society has somehow made it seem desirable and cool.

When I was in the military, the boys used to go to the movies almost every weekend regardless of how crappy they were. After the first few times, it was over for me. I was more interested in living my own life than watching some lame crap on a screen in a dark theater.

A song has to have some manner of a natural melody and some spirit to it in an objective sense in order to be any good yet it never ceases to amaze me how they can constantly put virtually anything over the airwaves regardless of how crappy it is, play it over and over again saying how cool and advanced it is and soon enough it will be one of the top ten on the pop music charts and all the brainwashed suckers will be buying the CD or downloading it thinking it's the latest fly thing regardless of how objectively intrinsically crappy it is devoid of any simple melody which is what makes a great song.

Straight rock 'n roll, folk music and pretty well every musician over 45 can't get radio airtime or into the MTV music video rotation even though there are a lot of talented musicians who make good music but it's not right for the current MTV image of coolness.

The pop music industry is all about money and that means they have to package their "stars" into either a sexy, rebellious and/ or cool image in order to appeal to the major demographic of CD buyers, the 13 to 24 year old crowd even if the music is crap which it usually is.

Forget about the actual music standing on its own merits as a worthy artistic product. It's all about image.

Pop culture entertainment is not just a harmless form of escapism for much of the population where they relax and unwind at night after a hard day of work, school, etc.

It has become a substitute for people living their own lives as individuals by filling them up with this stuff so much that it invades their personalities and destroys their souls.

This is what everybody seems to be filling themselves up with so it's like a chain reaction. Weak person Johnny Boy thinks it must be right and cool to be a pop culture clone while a guy like me wonders if there are any pure people left, able to see past all this stuff to be who they naturally are, living their own lives as original, unique, inspired individuals the way they were born without trying to put some pop culture airs on about how funky, fly, happenin', cool, trendy, punky, witty, funny and sophisticated they think they are.

The corporate forces of the consumer world in general, not just the pop culture entertainment industry (since it's all inter-related designed to create consumer clones and sell poduct), have ingeniously indoctrinated the bulk of society to be a bunch of sheeple living comfortable, limited lives reading their frivolous tabloid magazines, watching their sit-coms, music videos and the latest movies being hyped up without even realizing they're being massively manipulated thereby wasting the finite time of their lives being passive consumers taken care of by the benevolent charms of Big Brother rather than actually trying to explore who they are as individuals through intense living on their own terms.

They choose, instead to be consumers of that fake world of glittery, soppy so-called entertainment which sucks out any spark of individuality, intensity and vitality for the experience of life that they might have been born with.

Even the so-called artists are a bunch of pop culture clones trying to imitate the current crop of pop culture flakes without doing anything original on their own which is what an artist is supposed to do.

If you're one of those brainwashed pop culture groupies who think that these people are so cool that you admire them as advanced, exciting and divine beings and strive to be like them as evident by all the people trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame on them idol-reality type TV shows, good for you but you're in for a rude awakening.

There's no place on the planet nearly as chic as the phony glamour scenario they portray through the pop culture entertainment business nor is there is any place where all the people are united as friends in a glamourous, frivolous headspace because most of these types of people are very insecure and competitive about how beautiful, talented and special they are so they're all worried and scheming about how to keep their image superior to that of others.

There are some genuinely nice, talented people in the entertainment industry but by and large everybody's insecure and scheming, hanging on by the skin of their teeth because they know how unoriginal and expendable they really are.

In any acting role, the director has hundreds of people to choose from, all equally qualified to do the job. All actors know this which is why they're so insecure, their fate is in the hands of someone else.

It's not like a true, pure artist who does whatever it is he or she does because that's who they are the way they were born.

An actor has to please the casting director, director, producer, investors in the project, etc. The few lucky ones who make it will achieve transient success then become the past flavor of the month as someone fresher takes their place.

A true artist does whatever it is they do because they must, because it's something inside of them regardless of feedback from the world either good or bad yet most people in the pop culture entertainment realm are manufactured clones, doing what the suits in the corporate office tell them to do, not expressing themselves as original human beings, true to who they really are.

They and their handlers create some phony, "cool" image glossed over with some phony façade of sexiness and run with it all the way to the bank for as long as they can because they know the public will get tired of their images soon enough and want another one to keep them entertained.

Music videos, TV shows, movies, amusement park rides, frivolous magazines, video games and all the consumer products they market as pop culture entertainment are geared to make you feel good but it's a transient kind of good feeling like a blip on a screen.

No sooner than you get one dose of pop culture pleasure than you move onto the next because it has no substance, it does nothing solid and positive for the spiritual-inspired-sensuous pursuit of life.

None of this stuff can remotely compete with releasing the natural inspired spiritual and sensual energy you have in your soul that you were born with which is why I know I live in a lost society surrounded by a bunch of people brainwashed by their culture, imitating pop culture icons and trends thinking they're cool as defined by the system.

Young people, in general, pride themselves on being original, rebellious and different but the hypocrisy is that most of them buy into the pop culture version of what's cool rather than being true individuals so what you got is bunch of young people perceiving themsleves as alternative, enlightened, cool, happenin' people on the cutting edge of life but what they really are is a bunch of conformist clones all doing the same corporate-induced things to assert their fake uniqueness, things like pretending hip-hop and rap is really great music, wearing tongue and eyebrow piercings, having a Nike logo on somewhere, wearing baseball hats backwards, wearing baggy clothes and so on and so forth, all stuff that they imitated from some phony place in the pop culture realm rather than saying screw all that brainwashing crap, I will be myself, do what I want and if it doesn't fit into current pop culture standards, so what.

I got my own mind, I live my own life. Nobody brainwashes me to try to get me to think that some punk-assed rapper is spozed to be some cool dude when he's really just a punk ass who got lucky that some corporate suits decided to hype him up as the latest cool person on the airwaves.

If you wanna see some good dialogue, check out the 1996 movie Bulwork. That bit where Warren Beatty does the rap in the TV interview was great stuff but I guess the movie never registered with the mainstream because it was too real which is bad for business.

See the 2001 movie Josie & the Pussycats which is a good parody of pop culture entertainment underneath its surface bubble gum appeal.

Books about pop culture are at #306.409 or E169 at the library.

Comfort Food for Weak Minds 4

And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made.

Simon & Garfunkel, Sounds of Silence

"Life in the twenty-first century finds us on a roller coaster: ups and downs to take our breath away and leave the whole world gasping. All the old truisms may be false; our two oceans offer no protection, and there is no place to hide. Everything nailed down is coming loose. We live by instant issues, threats, posters, and protests. We seem to be for and against so many things that we find most issues muddied. Just what are the issues? Whose side are we really on? Why are our former allies defecting? Why are we hated by so many? Plagued by earthbound problems, we move into outer space. The costs are enormous, and so far, the results are questionable. Our astronauts transmit back pictures of earth a small orb floating in a cosmic sea."

"Why do so few people vote, or cope? Are we sacrificing civil rights for the terrorist threat? And are the terrorists succeeding not only here but around the world? Where can we find new wellsprings of energy and faith? Can we find new heroes now that so many old ones are discredited? Can we clear out the junk not only from our attics and highways, but also from our minds? Civilize technopolis and make cities livable? I do not imply that our end is near; but our utopian dream of turning the globe into a free-trade shopping mall, commanded by dollar diplomacy, monitored by computers and technology, may be yet another utopian dream."

Probing Popular Culture: On and Off the Internet, Dr. Marshall Fishwick (2004)

Are you one of the fools who got sucked into the Harry Potter marketing hype and bought one or more of the books? It's not enough that there were 5000 fantasy stories about dungeons and wizards already in existence at your local library before Harry Potter ever came onto the scene but what makes Harry Potter so special among the oodles of fantasy stories out there? In my opinion, nothing but hype.

From another point of view, my entertainment is in my mind. It's very primal and cerebral. I don't need or want most of the fiction out there. It's substandard to my own thoughts yet who were all these brainwashed pleebes I saw on TV getting all excited about the release of some Harry Potter book.

Your life is that empty and dull that you're looking forward to the release of some silly fictional story to fulfill you somehow or give you some warm, comfortable feeling. No wonder I think the world if full of brainwashed pleebes. Get a life, your life.

I don't understand why the coolest thing on the planet is supposedly a bunch of pompous-assed people getting together to preen for the media to pick who the best artists are in the movie biz when at least 90% of all movies made in any given year are useless crap.

True artists in the pure sense of the word don't compete with each other for pieces of plastic or tin awards. They do their work and that's it. It has merit within itself away from the glittery pretense of the world.

And then the mainstream media outlets and the tabloid TV shows gush all over themselves hyping this stuff up. Is this a con job or what?

Are you that stupid that you play homey's game and fawn over this stuff, especially while there are kids somewhere starving while all this foolishness is goin' on?

To me, it's like the fairy tale The Emperor Has No Clothes. They're telling us that these people are supposedly the cool, glamorous people special enough to do this privileged job of making these crappy movies but if they were really cool, they'd give this phony pretense the finger and go off and do their own thing without playing this silly game of look at me, ain't I special.

I respect independent movie makers who make a movie to try to tell some kind of interesting story but I have no respect for some movie manufactured in a boardroom to contain gratuitous sex and/ or violence in order to sell tickets.

The typical person who wants to be a pop star thinks that the transient fame will fulfill them somehow kinda like I have arrived because I'm at these awards and they're showing me on TV as one of the elite tribe of humanity.

Where are you gonna be in a few years? You won't be there anymore because they will have gotten tired of you and moved onto the next fresh new flaky flavor of the month.

Are these people more special than you because they make silly movies or spew off rehearsed lines in sit-coms?

Somebody must be watching this stuff called the Academy Awards and every other awards show if they're still on TV year after year.

You're all suckers who fall for it, sucked into thinking pop culture entertainment is cool, happenin' stuff. Do something tough and worthy by yourself for yourself. It just might give you more self-respect than being another generic pop culture clone buying into all this crap.

True artists are blues players like Muddy Waters, B.B. King, Billie Holiday or Dutchy Mason who lived their whole lives for the blues and probably played in every blues bar on the continent, sometimes with as little as two people there for an audience but they did it because that's who they are as human beings.

Today in the entertainment business, it's mostly hype and glitz. There are very few who have the dedication and love of the process so much that they travel endlessly just to play in little dives all over the place.

In this modern era of technology, pop culture entertainment has replaced true art and religion to become the opiate of the masses by trying to titillate and entertain them with transient, amusing images that serve no useful function for the spiritual, sensual and inspired pursuit of their lives even though it serves a useful function for the corporate owners to make money by either charging the consumer for the pop culture product or charging advertisers to sprinkle their advertisements in amongst the programming they supposedly show the populace for free but it's not really free.

The cost is a weakening of a person's mind and soul. The more time you spend as a passive consumer of pop culture entertainment, the less time you spend doing something original, inspired, useful, loving or sensual with your life.

It leads to a denial of who you are as an individual. It wastes the valuable, finite time of your life, indoctrinates you to the corporate-capitalist agenda and to a general overall frivolous mindset about aspiring to be trendy and cool as defined by the system.

People, in general, who buy into pop culture entertainment and plug into it en masse are people who live such boring, uninspired lives that they sacrifice whatever individuality and vital spark they might have for their own lives in order to allow themselves to be spoonfed this pablum by the system.

Granted, some pop culture entertainment is true, worthy art. Personally, I'd say 90-95% is superficial, frivolous, useless product without even modest entertainment or inspirational value to me, 5-10% has objective artistic integrity or objective entertainment/ inspirational value.

An artist's job is to stimulate thought and create a sense of inspiration for some aspect of life but I rarely see it in the pop culture product of our times.

If it doesn't do this, to me, it wastes my time, does nothing useful and could negatively affect people by filling them with all kinds of unreal ideas about the frivolity of life and ease of violence to solve problems as with so-called action movies and every cop show out there.

Sit-coms and other shows like that make it seem that acting punky with a sarcastic sense of humor is a positive way to be. It gets the canned laughter on the TV shows so millions of brainwashed pleebes try to imitate it in order to appear to be cool and happenin'. It's monkey see, monkey do.

The reason I'm so down on pop culture entertainment is that a large percentage of the people I meet and currently know are pop culture clones to some extent with no true pure individuality, even older people who you'd think would be over that stuff.

When I meet someone for the first time, I subtly probe them for how much they own their own minds and their own time versus how much they've given them over to the pop culture world.

I'm looking for someone being real as to who they are versus someone putting on phony airs about how beautiful, worldly, trendy, sophisticated, educated, advanced or glamourous they think they are with some punk-assed sarcastic, stupid sense of humor they think is cool because they saw some snotty-assed punk in some sit-com act that way or at the other extreme, you got the serious, pseudo-intellectual media junkies parroting everything they see in the mainstream news thinking it makes them sound advanced, with-it, on the cutting edge of the intellectual precipice of humanity.

I don't come across people who see past all this stuff very often but when I do, it's like a breath of fresh air to see someone who doesn't let that media-driven world affect who they are, especially all those people who claim to be so down-to-Earth and sensible yet when you see guys wearing earrings, baseball hats on backwards, the latest "trendy" clothes, nose, eyebrow and tongue piercings and then every second girl coloring her hair, you can't help but think how fake, conformist and lost they all are while pretending to be so free, rebellious, natural and real.

Anybody can stick a piercing on their eyebrow or wear the latest jeans but it doesn't make you a fascinating, trendy individual. It just makes you another generic brainwashed clone.

The only truly original people are those who take inspired action from the soul for what they feel within themselves that's right, good, tough, intense and worthy and the number of people who are really like this, not just deluding themselves into thinking that they are, is a low percentage of the population.

What does hair coloring have to do with who you are as an individual? It makes you look phony not glamorous yet how many millions got taken in by the pop culture cliché of blondes having more fun, thinking they're some glamourous diva like Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield or some sultry porn star, who are, in reality, insecure, neurotic people trying to get some sense of inner worth from the outside world which is all wrong, to try to get your sense of self-respect from other people outside of yourself, selling your soul in the process, doing things that demean you to get approval from the collective mob of society.

The frivolous stuff within pop culture is harmless if you use it to relax and unwind for an hour or two at night like I do but ultimately, it does nothing positive for you but lull you into a spoonfed, couch potato, consumeristic, trendy-cool lifestyle, trendy-cool as defined by all those images you see in this pop culture world.

When I wanna be entertained, I don't want spoonfed canned laughter in sit-coms or music videos trying to imitate the current version of what's cool which seems to be hip-hop at the moment whatever that is.

I want something that I can walk away from thinking whoever created that did a masterful job, either trying to pass on some kind of inspirational message about life subtly in an entertaining way or creating a breath-taking, magnificent piece of work not this cheesy, stupid corny stuff they're packaging as entertainment to the mainstream audiences these days with most of the people brainwashed enough to lap it up and think it must be cool because everybody else says so like a bunch of sheep all following one another.

When you live in a world surrounded by pop culture minds which is most of the people around you, they're living in a cutesy, fantasy world of manufactured pop stars, stupid TV shows, frivolous magazines, the serious "talking heads" with their corporate-political agenda in the mainstream "news" programs and silly movies about supposedly cool people doing cool things one step above the rest of humanity.

The corporate, pop culture forces have dumbed us down so much that most of us indulge in this cheap thrill entertainment to the extent that we've lost sight of the essence that is us as individuals, the divinely inspired purpose of life if, in fact, it is divinely inspired, the meaning we give to our existence in general that enables us to live day by day as happy, complete individuals and our attempts to discover the Higher Forces of the Universe whatever they may be, either a Spiritual God, highly evolved extra-terrestrial beings or some other force as of yet undiscovered and not understood.

This is all we got as far as we know. I choose to focus on these things rather than let myself get taken away by all that pop culture pablum out there.

Comfort Food for Weak Minds 5

Where there is no creativity, they will revert to sex and violence.

Ex-TV producer talking about pop culture entertainment

Nike has become part of the psyche of our youth.

Concerned Christian

You're what God made you, not people.

Character Ira Hays (Tony Curtis), in movie The Outsider, 1961

Anybody who says TV, movies and music doesn't affect people's minds is a liar and a fool.

There are very few pure, inspired people living freely by soul anywhere on the planet. Most of us live limited lives brainwashed by the one trick pony capitalist-corporate world whilst deluding ourselves into thinking we're happy, successful, enlightened, complete, etc. but the thing is that we're living a lifestyle defined for us by the system which is more than likely not who we really are if we were to take a look at the primal-divine spark we were endowed with at our birth or even before then, at conception.

If you can peel this one-dimensional façade away to see who you really are in your free, inspired subconscious mind and live by it then you will see the real truth of the human condition in its naked state but until then, you ain't got nothin' on life despite all the crap from the world you delude yourself with.

Exploring your humanity, your ride of the human condition, as far as it will go is the purpose of life for enlightened spirits, to go into the unknown until you're satisfied that you've gone as far as you can go in trying to understand who you are as an individual then having the intelligence to know all you really own is your inspired spark for life.

Hopefully, it's vital and you know the game of life from here on in is to do whatever it takes to keep it that way and in the process, do something to help the human race in some way.

Comfort Food for Weak Minds 6

Are you an honest artist or a pop culture clone?

When the vision of Reality comes,

The veil of ignorance is completely removed.

As long as we perceive things falsely,

Our false perception distracts and makes us miserable.

When our false perception is corrected, misery ends also.

Shankara, Eastern mystic.

What's real; great art, artistic integrity, trying to feel transcendent, pop culture, money, fame, status, power over others, coolness as defined by the system, a vision for a better future, what?

Inspiration is transient. If I create the greatest piece of art in the world through a great novel, a great painting or a great song, so what.

It creates a momentary burst of positive emotion in some people then it's lost forever as they go back to their mundane lives because 99% of the people won't appreciate the message you're trying to convey anyway.

Where do pop culture and art meet if anywhere? The question is where's the beauty and spirit in anything?

If it's not there, it ain't art. Pop culture is mostly about manufacturing an image of cool and trendy to sell as much product as possible in an exploitative way not the pursuit of truth, beauty and perfection for its own sake as a worthy ideal with a universal meaning that can stand the test of time to inspire, entertain and enlighten people.

The only real artistic worth anything has is if it can inspire and/ or help people to try to live better lives or entertain them such that they get a good laugh or get so engrossed in the act that they're uplifted into another realm for the moment.

I can come across twenty pieces of inspiration on TV, the internet and in books every night which I do all the time but for someone like me who's already enlightened and realizes the challenge of life is to stay inspired, I need to see people struggling mightily for something in order to feed off their power.

I constantly have to keep replenishing the inspiration inside of me and ultimately it only comes when I create it by working my butt off releasing the natural energy in my soul.

This is a great milestone in the seeker's path to enlightenment, when you realize that anything you or any great artist has done before you only serves humanity if it inspires people to release the potential within themselves which very little artistic endeavor actually does.

If you can inspire people through what you do, great. If you can entertain them to see something magical, mystical, unique or fun in life, that's great too but the problem is that I very rarely see anything that entertains or inspires me much anymore.

In any event, the experience of absorbing pop culture entertainment should just be a minor amusement in your life to distract you when you feel like relaxing.

You shouldn't let yourself get seduced by the glittery, frivolous forms of entertainment the system offers because they have nothing on the qualities that really matter; culturing a sense of inspiration, peace of mind, love, romance and actually experiencing sensual pleasures in the flesh not just sitting back passively and letting some gadget pacify you in a mindless way.

Pop culture entertainment is generally not an attempt to capture the artform of the human spirit. It's like functional junk food, mostly marketing an image be it music, movies, TV, video games, etc.

There's very little true art left anymore, it's mostly about trying to project an image that looks cool enough for the brainwashed pleebes out there to waste their time and money on it to try to get some special feeling which never works because they're all transient images based on a manufactured idea of coolness, they can't do anything for the real inner you.

You might be some teenage girl hooked on a boy band or some guy identifying with a grunge band in your attempts to rebel and find a sense of identity, a young girl who wants to be like the latest manufactured sexy teenage girl-power pop star or some guy with a secret crush on some soap "star" but sooner or later it will fade away as you find yourself alone facing your life without all that crap around.

Most pop culture is generic crap, pumped out according to a formula to make money with very little forethought of trying to create a great work of art, rather just a functional entertainment product that keeps the masses occupied but doesn't really do anything substantial for them.

This is why I pretty well reject pop culture and the mainstream entertainment industry, because it doesn't do anything to enhance my life beyond chewing gum for the brain to mildly amuse me as a sidelight while I work on my computer and otherwise live my life.

About 5-10% of the entire pop culture realm; books, movies, TV, music, music videos, concerts, etc., gives me any pleasure, entertainment and/ or inspiration. Even then, about one percent of that moves me in any memorable way.

Most of it is just a mild distraction in my life because I'm aware enough to know that I must live out my highest vision of esthetic beauty in the flesh in order for me to feel something substantial whereas a large cut of the population are brainwashed into seeking their limited views of transcendence, inspiration, entertainment and their thrills from the pop culture realm which is why you will see big lines at the movie theater on Sunday with very few people actually striving to do intense active things with their lives.

Your job, if you want to live an enlightened life, is to take what's good from the realm of pop culture to entertain and inspire you and vehemently disregard the rest because if you don't, it will brainwash you, waste your time and crush whatever originality is in your soul as it already does for a majority of the population.

There are a few artists and entertainers in the mass media pop culture realm who actually create a quality work of art, entertainment and inspiration but the rest is not only useless but poisonous because it brainwashes you, pollutes your mind with frivolous ideas of their version of coolness, wastes your money and worst of all wastes your precious time as you give your life over to these media-corporate duds who want to turn you into dumb working clone consumers who sit back after work everyday, watch TV then spend your money on all that useless, so-called trendy crap they advertise there.

People look for a thrill to help them feel great or escape from their mundane lives for a moment but don't realize no movie, no book, no song or no event from the entertainment industry will ever give it to you. It's something you have to know inside and create all the time through esthetic-inspired living.

If you can inspire people and entertain them all at the same time, you should be able to make billions in the entertainment industry because you will have no competition, it's so crappy in general.

Even though everybody claims to have artistic integrity and not to have sold out to the corporate machine to make money by compromising their art, you can see the hypocrisy everywhere because the product is so bad.

Money is the game, not the inspired artist keeping his integrity who often ends up alone and starving so sooner or later just about anybody with any talent breaks down and sells their souls for whatever cash they can get, such is the nature of the entertainment industry in the modern world.

Most pop culture artists are puppets of corporate management, they don't blaze their own paths as the uncompromising visionaries they should be if they wanna be worthy of the ideal.

I saw the movie Daydreamer Believers about the Monkees which showed how unhappy they were as manufactured pop stars.

Why does every female singer have to come off like a trashy, frivolous vamp, even Celine Dion with that stupid commercial promoting her perfume, on a swing, trying to give a seductive look at the camera which doesn't quite work because she's a middle aged skinny girl who just doesn't come off as seductive no matter what she does.

It just ain't part of her essence yet there she was with that attempt to give a sexy pout to the camera trying to hawk her perfume. If that ain't sellin' your soul then what is?

They cast this ugly, skinny, fake blond as the supposed sexy one in a TV show about sex in a city and I'm thinking to myself who screwed up there. That's about as unwholesome and unsexy as you can get then she's hawking her own brand of perfume on some TV commercial trying to act like she's sexy and cool but she ain't got it goin' on.

You can tell in one look. You either got it or you don't. She is not a naturally sensuous person. She's neurotic and ugly to boot. It's all a manufactured pretense.

The world is going to hell with so many people in so much need and you got some people over here with nothing better to do than to come out with new brands of perfume and try to pretend they're on the cutting edge of life.

Or how about Shanainai with that phony smile on that greatest hits album? What's that supposed to do? Make me feel like she's a good, ole, warm-hearted gal who wants to be my friend or a vain, stuck up bitch thinking she's a star, sucking me in to support her elitist lifestyle by pretending to be a cool person? She's got a couple of perfumes out too.

If you don't do something that's not your own, it doesn't matter how much of a star you are out there, you won't be happy within yourself but I see a lot of flakes deluding themselves into thinking they are great talents until the public gets tired of their manufactured image then they're flushed away for the next new transient pop culture flavor of the month.

Do you remember Tiffany, the Bangles and Ms. Debrah Gibson? How long will our current pop star sensations stay on the radar? Britney is what she is away from her manufactured image as a sexy vamp pop star, a chubby, slighty stupid, generic, trailer trash, uninspired, mundane person. Watch how fat she'll be in ten years.

Whether a consumer or performer, you can't count on the stuff out there in the realm of entertainment and mass media to make you happy, give you pleasure, help you touch the euphoria of your highest vision of esthetic beauty or inspire you because it will almost always fall short.

You have to create your own euphoria through inspired action and good living and not expect some song, movie, celebrity or TV show to give you some magical feeling of perfection because even if it does, it will only last for a moment or two.

A few rare things might inspire you continuously for awhile but even they fade. You can only listen to Magic by Queen so much then it fades or watch movies like Pre once or twice then the inspiration is gone.

Comfort Food for Weak Minds 7

How many fools does it take to make a public?

Sebastian Chamfort, 1741-1794

I read a book about a couple of guys climbing Everest which was good to inspire me. Stuff like that is great for the positive inspired spirit of humanity but it's so rare because pop culture comes down to money and this oftens means sex and violence in the content not a pure story about someone living a glorious life of struggle, challenge, conquest and adventure.

You have to find that vision of esthetic beauty within yourself and live it out like Zorba the Greek did. Ain't no pop culture product in the world gonna give it to you.

When I was five years old and a dumb brainwashed kid, I wanted to watch Batman every week but by the time I hit teenagehood, it all started to fade and mean nothing to me.