November 26th, 2008

Held like a prison bitch, the owned man indentured by debt. Debt fueled by artificial need ... a crush of want in the brainwashed mind, dulled by endless hours of aggressive television advertising.
-Me, in a dark state of mind a few days ago.

* * *

I've always maintained that television must—almost by definition, in fact—appeal to those people who are the most susceptible to advertising. This is not an uncommon revelation, mind you, but it is special in my case because it grew in my mind organically, without my having to have it pointed out to me.

Put simply, TV is meant for the middle classes so that the middle classes stay in check. I mean, think about it: You won't get any revolution from the lower classes; they are too poor, stupid (usually), and resourceless to do anything except complain self-consciously about things. There really is no self-righteous rising up and defeating the man, except in fictional life stories made up by gangsta rappers trying to look tough (most of them cultivate these personas with great intelligence and foresight). And the upper class is doing just fine and, except for a vanishingly small group of particularly idiotic short-sighted cross-bearing crusaders, have no interest at all in altering the status quo. The system is working for the top 2%; they aren't interested in changing it.

But the middle class is big and semi-educated, and where all the real battles occur. Get the rising ruling class—the makers of the polis—from the pool of the middle class and you are in some serious trouble. Because middle class people have mostly well-intentioned but poorly thought-out mandates that they learn in kindergarten and subsequently don't visit anymore. They think everything has to be about fairness and equality and equal rights for all (as if those were even definable, much less possible!) and if you give them enough power and opportunity, they'll try and make it so. And then we'll all die.

So tools have evolved to control the middle class. No, they weren't created to be such, just that over time they evolved into this mechanism. The biggest of those tools is television. In effect, the purpose of television is to shape middle class spending habits. It is vital that all the people with a little money, but not a lot, are quickly and easily parted with said money. In fact, they have to be convinced that they have more money than they really do, so that they overspend (dipping into class-controlling credit). That how the middle class is enslaved.

An enslaved middle class lacks the opportunity to rise up and fight the system. Debt is the perfect tool for enslavement. And television is the primary tool in convincing the middle class to take on debt.

Television serves a purpose: It may torture the lower classes with things they can't afford, and it may amuse or irritate the upper classes in its bohemian pedantry and pointlessness, but its real purpose is to convince the middle class to spend spend spend their way into slavery. Television has become a critical tool in maintaining the status quo and quelling uprisings.

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