A Wild Sheep’s view on Modern Society

I have been given the title of Grand High Wombat (yet again) and feel privileged to be able to air my view in this special society of wild sheep. Thank you Viv

If you are the type of person that happily conforms to the daily routine of work, TV, sleep, doing whatever society expects you to do then you may not want to read this, although in my view you could benefit from a wake up call!
But then again, who am I to judge?

Evolution seems to be going backwards, with people becoming less and less educated. I am referring to the education people choose after school/college/university, the education from the school of life. People seem to have become less and less intelligent and to be frank I am not surprised with the amount of mindless nonsense people include in their mental diet.

The norm seems to be a diet of endless reality TV shows, talent shows (which in my book should be renamed “lack of talent shows”) displaying little or no talent whatsoever. It’s become the freak show of modern culture. The recipe is easy; Get a bunch of morons and get them to make a complete fool of themselves on national TV in exchange for the hope of fame and fortune!
I am baffled at this display of stupidity.

Take Big Brother, a concept that from a social psychology point of view started out rather interesting 10 years ago, or am I just saying this to justify the fact that I did watch the first season of Big Brother….and parts of the second….yes ok then…some of the third too!!!

However, it seemed that each season has to somehow outdo the previous, resulting in increasingly mind numbingly stupid activities with complete and utter disregard for self respect!

Did anyone stop to think about the psychological effect this experience might have on people before agreeing to be part of it or was this disregarded in the pursuit of fame?

I fear the latter may be the correct answer. I have a read through the application form and also the release waiver/disclaimers entrees are requested to sign and ask yourself if the prospect of fame is worthy of signing away your identity!!

The mass market are the fuel that feeds the fire of this display of mindless nonsense!
Billy Connolly sums up the Big Brother phenomenon perfectly; “People are sitting in a house watching people sitting in a house!!!”
He also has a rather visionary view on cannibalism, but I will leave that for another time!!

Of course it doesn’t end with Big Brother! No no no! The masses want more, so we have gems like Pop Idol, X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent (or whatever country you are in got talent), Come Dance with me, Dancing on Ice etc, each with their own celebrity version to match.

It doesn’t stop there either! When the reality TV hunger has been satisfied we can move on to the endless soaps all of which could better be described as the Ground Hog day from hell. Nothing ever happens or perhaps it does. I wouldn’t know as I cut out all of this from my mental diet years ago.

This is what is deemed normal in our modern society and this is what people talk about at work and socially, which has rendered me unable to really carry a conversation with anyone since I cut all of the above from my mental diet years ago. Thankfully I do have some wonderful friends I can have conversations without blank stares when the topic of conversation involves something different than popular culture.

Personally, I think it’s time to trim the herd!!
I am totally baffled by the fact that the majority of people happily swallow all of this mindless rubbish without question!

What happened to quality?

Quality seems to have gone completely by the way side only to have been replaced by mass market appeal regardless of quality or lack thereof.

I may be alone in this viewpoint and quite frankly it doesn’t matter.
I am bored with mass market appeal and the beige bloody culture we are currently living in.

A culture in which there seems to be no room for colourful people, people with a different opinion or viewpoint, people who question the status quo, creativity without restraints.

There is no room for Wild Sheep in modern society but I can assure you that we are here and we are growing. (Taking a deep breath before getting carried away with thoughts of world domination..)

Even the art forms have been polluted with beige products, especially music and literature.

Most of the music on the radio (I am referring to the hit radio stations) sounds bland and beige to me and has become just another product without the soul that makes music move me and inspire me. Literature also seems to have been polluted by the celebrity culture drivel on display in most bookshops. Endless autobiographies by so called celebrities whose claim to fame was the partaking on some mindless reality TV programme. It has turned into some paint by numbers process with little or no regard to quality, leaving real talent and real quality largely undiscovered.

Then we have the wonders of the internet, which is flooded by snakeoil salesmen preying on the sheep. As much as I loathe the majority of the self proclaimed gurus of whatever you are looking for, a degree of responsibility has to be placed on the sheep of society. If people started to question things more instead of blindly consuming whatever is on offer, then at some stage there would be no market for the snakeoil salesmen. Unfortunately the opposite is true of our current society in which everyone is searching for the Magic Pill of Pushbutton Enlightenment or the next Secret or Quick Fix.

I realise that this an extremely idealistic view and most will probably argue that I have lost all grip with reality, to which I agree but quite frankly the reality of our current society doesn’t exactly fill me with joy.

We can blame the media, governments, advertising, snakeoil salesmen etc, but if the sheep carry on blindly following their shepherd of choise, without question how can anything ever change?

Rant over, I’m off to find an Island somewhere!!!

J