Posts Tagged racism

The Disease of Hollywood Narcissism

I admit I’m so much happier now that I don’t really watch TV, keep up with the endless minutiae of every irrelevant incident occurring throughout every second of every day. Having said that, one of the most interesting phenomenons in modern society is the way people—especially Americans—transfer or transpose their own egos into the mirrored reality of famous stars, actors, politicians, sports stars, reality TV and a multitudinous cacophony of completely inconsequential blather and bullshit.

Hollywood Spawned Narcissistic Ego Disorder

People like stars because they see themselves in them. They feel part of them. Women swoon over famous men and men fantasize about sexy famous women. We want to to have sex with these people. We want to hang out with these people. We worry about them. We cry when they cry. We cry when they die. We scathingly critique them when they make us mad. We jerk off when they do a Playboy spread. Not only do we worship, look up to, grovel for, dream of and much more—we want to be them. Hollywood has become the mirrored ego in a majority of people’s lives.

And that is not only sad, it is sick. It’s a sociological disease driven by mass media entertainment. These are powerful, wide sweeping sociological phenomena that absorb people without them even knowing it. It is a self-generating entity unto itself.

People in American society are far too concerned with famous people, stars, musicians, awards, who died, etc. It is actually a sociological mass brain disorder

Dr. Drew Pinsky has a theory (the mirror effect) that most stars are predisposed to narcissistic personality disorder long before they become famous and that a majority of people in society use this as a mirror thus psychologically distorting and damaging their own minds using stars as “twisted mentors”. I’d go even further to say the entire landscape of the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogging, etc. has changed the way people interact as a whole. Because of the way our lives and egos are mirrored by Hollywood narcissism, we are growing into a less intelligent, excessively greedy, superficial horde of human beings.

Your destroyed identity

Your destroyed identity

When human beings begin to actually care what happens to a character on a TV show and then obsess over the actor paying the character, it is so bizarre I cannot help but look at them like science experiments gone awry.

The entire idea of friendship has become a shallow meaningless relationship whereby elimination of those we disagree with is but a click away—and this disturbing phenomenon overflows into our actual lives. Let me rephrase that: it doesn’t overflow, it is a tsunami of sickness.

All these concepts coincide with the modern plague and version of depression and drug addiction. The truth is, when we allow all this garbage (over-obsession with Hollywood, what other people do or say, etc)  into our lives we lose “presence” in our own lives.

When it comes to judging celebrities and their behavior, it might be best to take a good look in the mirror

I know a young woman who didn’t go to her own mother’s funeral, but did travel 1500 miles to mourn over Michael Jackson’s death (and actually cried for three days over it). But the fact remains, she never actually knew nor was friends with Jackson in real life. That is scary my friends. What famous people do or say generally has no relevancy in yours, mine, or anyone’s lives. There’s nothing wrong with watching TV, listening to music, having a “star crush”, but when it becomes an obsession it becomes a serious medical disorder.

We need to choke down that Valium to sleep. We need that Prozac to cope. We need to take sides in political issues. We need to worry about why we aren’t more beautiful, skinnier, sexier, younger. Advertisers masterfully manipulate the public making women believe they need to be someone else to be wanted, loved or desired. Men are sold and actually buy billions of tablets of ExtenZe so their dicks will be longer and harder.

WHY?

Because there is something wrong with you and they want to sell you the cure. The most unbelievable aspect of all? You demand it. You demand to be sick. Keep obsessing on all those things in life that truly don’t matter and transferring your own ego into the matrix of meaningless bullshit—you’ll remain exactly where they want you to be.

Be yourself. Love yourself. Let go of all that which truly doesn’t matter and be filled with love and happiness. And most importantly, BE PRESENT in your own life and forget about what stars do. Learn the difference between loving yourself and narcissism.

Dramaturgical Perspective

What I’m really getting at is an actual sociological paradigm called dramaturgical perspective. This can be an effective way to explain a  sociological disorder (affects an entire group of individuals, not just one person). Dramaurgical perspective theorizes that because of modern communication, we are no longer individuals or who we believe we are. Our identity is built on consensus (relationships between ourselves, others, societal groups, and how these elements blend as a whole). We aren’t really ourselves, we are in a sense playing ourselves or the created image of who we want to be like an actor. Social interaction has become dependent on this “consensus”.

People are living more and more aspects of their lives as a slave to socially molded conveyance or performance. It has become commonplace for people to become a caricature of themselves and live as a performing artist, based not on who they actually are, but on who society says they are. Some  are aware of this and use it to manipulate others, but are still a sociologically produced psychological product . . . kinda like a living breathing human McDonald’s cheeseburger.

The symbiotic relationship of mirrored realities (Hollywood to masses and masses to Hollywood) are reflections of each other. Human beings become more fake than the fake actors they worship. And it all designs and builds a bizarre mass-sociologically separatist reality.

  • We are born blank slates.
  • We get a corrupted politically correct mass media influenced education.
  • We then become less individualistic.
  • We grow up and separate even further.
  • We divide among religion, race, politics, class and every other type of separatist identification.
  • We allow mass media entertainment and the 24 hour news cycle to turn us into superficial slaves.

I could go on an on about this stuff, but I’ll just say: take a step back from this sociological matrix and take a long look in the mirror. Are you really who you believe you are? Are you nothing more than a highly manipulated representation of a displayed performance you reveal to the world?

I didn’t watch the MTV music awards yesterday. but I did watch in sheer astonishment as the Kanye West sociological manipulation exploded across the web, Facebook and Twitter. The very idea that some guy on TV manipulated how you felt at the time and prompted you to voice your concern over this irrelevant triviality is incredible. The mass public was played like a violin. Ask yourself why and look in the mirror when you do it.

You might just have narcissistic personality disorder.

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All Races & Religions – All Welcome Here

So we’re born as pure innocent children–blank slates with eager minds and sparkling eyes, filled with wonder and astonishment (if we’re lucky). Then we go to school and make friends. We don’t care what race, religion or whatever our friends are; too young to know anything, but smarter than any adult where it counts most.

We get a little older and the separation begins–the division, partition, divergence forked into endless segregative paths. The black kids hand separate from the white kids; geeks divorced from jocks and so forth. A little older and we are driven further apart by religion, more distance by race, body size (fat, skinny, ugly, weird, hot, fine, etc.) and then . . . we grow up. We learn to drive a thousand more asphyxiating wedges between us based on class, sexual preference, who your family is, how much money you have–by the time we’re into our early twenties we become “mature” separatists conforming our lives to every ridiculous form of separatist identification possible.
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Political Hatred and Racism is Everywhere

This has been an extreme week for me and I just need to vent.  Three days ago I was talking to some guys while waiting in line at the post office. We started talking about the upcoming election which was a mistake. The guys (who were both white) said some horrifying things that made me want to puke. One said, “I hope Obama gets his head blown off.”
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The Insanity of Stereotypes, Labels and Generalizations

I was filling out a job application and couldn’t help but feel violated because of the detailed information required. I’m going for something much higher paying than I have now which is understandable because of the collapsing economy. One thing on my mind is how people are stereotyped, labeled and categorized in modern society. Like many places, this one had me sit down at a computer to fill it out the application; there was no person to talk to, just an impersonal machine.

The collection of demographic information makes me feel uncomfortable. They first ask you to check a square by your race. Am I African American, Caucasian, Latin American and so on. I’m wondering what difference does it make? It was incredibly detailed – even asking if I had a tattoo and if so, where on my body it was as a picture of it would need to be taken. They required a highly detailed 12 year job history and required I give them permission to check my credit. I feel that is a violation of my constitutional rights. No employer has the right to peer into my private credit history. I had to give them permission to also do a criminal background check which I understand, but for this particular job, I felt was quite unnecessary.

Finally of course, they required a hair shaft drug screen, where they pluck several hairs from your scalp for spectroscopic chemical analysis. By the time I was done, I felt like I had been molested. You may be wondering what kind of job I was applying for. Surely it was to homeland security, the FBI or something extremely sensitive…right? No. It was a bartending job at the Beau Rivage Casino…hahaha! That is unbelievable isn’t it? Yes, it is an incredibly high paying job, but the requirements are ridiculous.

Modern society is based on shallow attitudes and ratings. We have learned to stereotype and rate people based on different criteria. We are being psychologically conditioned by mass media entertainment: she’s beautiful, he’s an asshole, those people are black, they’re racist, he’s a fundamental Christian bigot, she’s an atheist with no heart or soul and so forth. It’s so ingrained into our lives – we have become slaves to entertainment, religion, patriotism and many other labels.

I talked about how we do not realize how much power we truly have in my previous post on aikido. You live your life, do the best you can and become a slave to society itself. People have this take care of your own backyard mentality because there is nothing you can do to change anything. That’s true and exactly what our leaders want. They want you enslaved and helpless, watching TV, noodling on the web and on and on – all while a handful of super rich individuals have and own everything.

Think about this: You are a Christian parent with a five year old child. Religion and Jesus is everything to you and you’re teaching your child the same thing. Your neighbors are an atheist family with a five year old child. The atheist family believes that Jesus is a myth and never actually existed. They believe the bible is just a bunch of mythological stories plagiarized from other works that predate Christianity. Would you let your Christian child play with the atheist child? Would you be friends with the atheist family? What if the atheist parents told your young impressionable Christian child that nothing in the bible is true? Would you be upset? Of course you would, and chances are, you would not be friends with them. The point is, when religion or any view causes such a deep division among people, it ceases to be good. There are even fundamentalist atheists who think all religion should be outlawed. They are both wrong. I am part of no group and choose instead to be a free thinker, which is also a label and causes division. Isn’t life fun?

Some people think a possible second American revolution is coming. I fully disagree with that. We are far too lazy and just don’t care enough to do anything about it. Have you heard the phrase, divide and conquer? That’s exactly what is going on in this world. We are all divided, not just geographically, but by race, religion, class and other means. The world is filled with problems, but at the heart of every single one of them is this division between us all.

Stereotypes-Labels-Generalizations

Stereotypes-Labels-Generalizations

These labels, stereotypes and shallow generalizations will never go away, but we have to live together and get along. We shouldn’t generalize anything. Some people generalize about Muslims which is ridiculous. They are all different depending on where they’re from and many other factors. It’s just like there are many types of Christians. People think Jewish people are tight with their money, Mexican people steal cars, British people have bad teeth, people from the southern United States commit incest – it goes on forever. Young girls feel ugly when they don’t fit the image of what popular magazines say is beautiful, which is so unsettling it makes me sick. In France, I believe “stick” models are banned from magazine commercials if I’m not mistaken. In America, such a law would be considered a violation of our freedom…hahaha! Go figure.

I don’t have the answers, just some observations. None of this stuff stresses me out any more, it doesn’t help anything, especially me. I was thinking about what could help me and my blog. Here are some ideas:

On The Lighter Side

  • I need to get in the Oprah Winfrey studio audience or do something wrong and get sued on Judge Judy’s TV show. As soon as the mike got near my mouth I would say, “Revellian dot com…that’s r-e-v-e-l-l-i-a-n dot com,” over and over. I wouldn’t shut up until they arrested me gaining me national headlines. While basking in my 15 minutes of fame, I would go streaking down the streets of New York City screaming my website name. Following that, I would get a book deal and a spot on some sitcom. Hey…it’s a plan.
  • If I could be spotted alone with Hillary Clinton and get someone to snap a photo, I would tell everyone I had sex with her. When asked by the media, I would say something smart like, “She was walking with a limp on cloud 9 when I got done with it.” I figure this site would get 10 million hits the day it happened. With 15 year old Miley Cyrus getting tons of attention because of her new racy pictures, I could do something similar. People don’t realize that her ploy was engineered specifically to garner massive press. Vanity Fair magazine got 5 million hits yesterday because of this. After all, isn’t any and all press, good press? Sorry to get off topic towards the end, but I didn’t want to end this post on a sad note. :twisted:

* The picture is How to spot a psychopath! from Dan’s Data
* I actually wrote this post several months ago, one of many sitting unpublished. I added a little to it this morning so it would be better and more current.

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Racism In America

Racism is a Disease

I usually don’t discuss much about politics and laws in this blog. My previous post in support of my very good friends at Nafasg did get to me. There are some things that burn me up here in America and I want to share my opinions with you.

I am a white guy from Mississippi and this post may shock some of you if you are familiar with the idea that Mississippi is considered a racist state. As many of you may know, I am against racism and consider it to be a disease of the human spirit.

It makes me sick to my stomach when I think about how the media and American people support and go crazy over certain news events. One that drove me crazy was the Jean Benet Ramsey case. Had this girl been black, Hispanic or Asian, it would never have had the attention it received.

I live in Long Beach, Mississippi, right on the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a beautiful area and I’ve been living here most of my life. Young black people get murdered here all the time. You never hear it in the national news though. Just because someone is white does not make their death any more horrible than any other.

I think the parents of Jean Benet Ramsey are some strange people. I think these beauty contests are very weird. Why on Earth would you dress a four year old girl in sexy clothes? I think people that go see these contests are deranged.

Just seeing a four year old girl dressed up like a showgirl from Las Vegas makes me sick. Is her death more important than the 7 year old black kid that was gunned down 5 miles from my house? Hell no! Why are some deaths sensationalized and some not? It should be illegal to sensationalize any death!

A Death Close To Home

There is a convenient store close to my house. My parents used to own this store. They ended their lease and it sat empty for almost 7 years. Finally, a Vietnamese family bought it and got it running strong.

I knew the family who ran the store. The father, a fifty something year old Vietnamese man, was the most friendly man in the entire town. You couldn’t leave without receiving a warm smile and a big “Thank you” from him. He was really nice and it made you want to shop there.

I did shop there regularly. His wife was a beautiful Vietnamese woman who always wore the loveliest perfume! Me and my buddies would go in the store and flirt with her as long as her husband wasn’t there (hey, we’re respectful).

The best part of the store was their daughter. She was a seventeen year old girl and was one of the most beautiful young women I have ever seen. Me and my friends always stopped in to say hi to her! She was a total sweetheart and we just adored her.

My heart almost stopped one morning when I read she was dead. Some guy waited outside the store one night for her to close up and leave. After closing, she walked out to her car to go home to her parents. She never made it.

This guy raped her and put a plastic bag over her face while he did it. She fought back and survived the rape. She went home and died later that night from head trauma. I had some major tears the following morning. It was so horrible.

Her parents were so distraught, they closed the store. They had lost their baby girl. Me and my friends were so upset we wanted her killer to die. It really hurt us. Imagine how her parents felt. I was sure this little beauty was going to be a movie star or model. Even though it upset the community, it was a tiny blip in the news.

This is something that must be changed in this country. When someone is murdered, why does the colour of their skin make such a big difference? If there is one thing that truly embarrasses me, it is this. I wish things were different.

I did not list the names of this family out of respect for them. The sad look on her father’s face made me cry for days. They were some of the nicest people I have ever met. I used to eat fried rice made for their daily lunches all the time. I really miss them. :cry:

Her killer was caught and is awaiting his sentence. I am actually against the death penalty but when it’s someone you know, it seems like a good idea. May Linda rest in peace.

I wrote a post when I first started blogging about racism and the late great Vernon Johns. He was the true father of the civil rights movement. Please read that post. It was important to me and Vernon Johns was a great man. Learn something new and read, “Racism: The Enemy of Mankind“.

Vernon Johns is one of my idols.
[Tags]american people support, beauty contests, Friendship Support, jean benet ramsey, long beach mississippi, racism, racist state, ramsey case, thought[/Tags]

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Promoting Racial Unity

A great martial arts master once said, “The world doesn’t change for anybody. I don’t care if you are a woman, I don’t care if you’re a baby. The world doesn’t change.”

The Master I speak of is Steven Segal. He is an actor and whether you you know it or not, he is a man of great wisdom. The truth is, is the world truly doesn’t change for anyone. I would like to introduce those of you unfamiliar with the Japanese art of Aikido to one of its’ most important concepts; the concept of the circle.

All I see in the media are people fighting against what they oppose. These people hate Bush, these people hate democrats and these other people hate Americans, etc. The list goes on and on and on.
The techniques used by the majority are known in Aikido as “square” techniques. Meeting force head on with a more vicious opinion. Sometimes you’ll see a “triangular” technique where one group is setup and flanked from the rear or side, taking advantage of your oppositions ‘ lack of intuition.
You will rarely ever see the most powerful and useful of all these concepts– the circle.

Become your opponent, use their energy against them. This is actually a weak example of what circularity is. It is much more than that; it is actually nothing. This can be difficult to understand from a western mindset. The reason why is because it is not something one can understand. Are you thoroughly confused? Well don’t worry because this is far beyond the scope of this discussion. Go to you tube and type in Morihei Ueshiba and witness for yourself who in my opinion was the greatest martial artist who ever lived. Go read some books about him if you wish, as you will learn much. He was the greatest because of what his art (he was the founder of Aikido) is about– peaceful resolution of conflict.

Instead of all of fighting against what we oppose we should promote what is good! Do you understand what I am saying? Imagine billions of dollars spent promoting world unity and the entire human race as one people. This is a circular technique. This is true power. If you do not see that then you do not understand my point. I will end here as the point has been made and is plain and simple. It is also powerful; more powerful than any bomb or gun or hate group.
It is all about LOVE!

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Racism: The Enemy of All Mankind

Recently I watched a movie starring James Earl Jones entitled “The Vernon Johns Story”. It was unplanned but happened to be on. I was gripped by the powerful true story of whom many refer to as the true father of the civil rights movement.

The church where Reverend Johns resided was actually the place where Martin Luther King Jr. started to become known as he replaced Johns after he left. I am from Mississippi, born and raised here and nothing ever made me feel so sick as the way the police and people treated Reverend Johns and his family.

Johns was a man of incredible intellect and his having to bow down to obviously lesser men was a central motif in the story. So right to the point– I have a few ideas that some people might understand.

Racism starts and ends on an individual basis. Lets say you’re white talking with five white friends and a black guy you all know walks up. After he leaves someone in the group may say, “Why did that black !@#$@@#$*& have to talk to us?”
Thats when you say to him, “Hey, thats James. He’s a really cool guy, and a friend of mine!”

Thats something you could do as on individual basis. Don’t add to the insult, stand apart and be the best example for your friends, etc. The same applies on both sides, blacks or whites or whatever. We are all humans from the same planet. The world may always have prejudice, but I WILL NOT.

Bobby Revell

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