Lots of Thoughts

"We are the target market
We set the corporate target
We are slaves of what we want
We are numb and amused and
We're just used to bad news and
We are slaves of what we want"

What I love about Switchfoot is that they are always setting the bar higher, always reaching for the stars and always challenging us to move away from comfort, luxury, and complacency, and to delve into the unknown, the mystery, and the wind of the spirit (at least that's how I interpret it into my own current perspective).

Here they bring up some very interesting thoughts. Lots of people blame the media or advertisers or whatnot for screwing up this society. If they don't say it out loud or actually acknowledge it as an opinion they hold, they at least feel it in such away that there is some amount of bitterness toward the world, toward corporate America, for feeding us too much junk. But keep in mind, they do so, not because they hate us and want us to suffer, but because they are going to do everything in their power to find out what it is that we want and sell it to us to make a profit. So who are we to complain if we buy what they're selling. Are we slaves to their system? No, we're slaves to ourselves, we're slaves to our wants, and we're not supposed to be that way. It hits closely with things I've been thinking about, in terms of addictions. In "What the Bleep" they claim that we, consciously or subconsciously, actually create situations in which we can experience the emotional reaction that we are addicted to. To illustrate this, they showed a girl swinging around and causing a server to spill a wine glass all over her bridesmaid's dress, at which point she moans and wails about how she knew something like this would happen to her and how such things always happen to her. A lot of us would be skeptical, saying, clearly she wouldn't purposely flail her arms around for that express purpose. The tendencies of physiological, emotional states cannot be so powerful as to foce fate to such a purpose, to create her reality for her. But what if they're right? What if the things that happen to us happen because we expect them to happen. Not so much that we expect it, I guess, but because our bodies are addicted to the feelings we get from them.

We're numb and amused and used to bad news. Is that true? Instead of getting up and changing things for the better, do we become addicted to the stink of bad news? Do we crave it? Do we crave disapointment and failure just as much as we feel the ache of that missing something that's eatiing us up inside because we know we're not supposed to be this way? Do we go through withdrawals when we start to emerge into something greater? I know sometimes I feel a sense of nostalgia for what I considered "deep" feelings, ones which were heavy and morose, self-pitying and self-deprecating. As I attempt to put such thoughts and feelings behind me, I start to feel superficial or I start to "miss" my dark side. Maybe it's just one of those days. I have been thinking too much, and I've spent most of the day reading.

Really, I just wish I really understood how this world works, how we work. Those questions in "What the Bleep" haunt me daily: who are we, where do we come from, where are we going, what should we do? I know christianity has made claims to answer those questions, and I have not lost faith, but they have always struck me as trite, even since I was in high school. When people asked such questions, the phrase, "Jesus is the answer" never really did it for me. It was just an easy way to dodge the question. That way you don't have to go into specifics, you don't have to do anything or really know anything or search anything. You just had to think about some unknown figure with the label that we know as "Jesus" and hope you had the right version of him in Sunday school. Or maybe that didn't matter, as long as you had the name. I don't know. I never liked it.

Geez, I keep thinking I'm going to end this post, and then I keep going. My mind just keeps whirring tonight. I can't enjoy many of the activities I usually enjoy, for some reason. Except reading. I've been readin the DaVinci Code all day.