Vicariously I

Sheeple is just another word for the fearful sleeping masses. The only difference between peasants of the past and the ones of today is that we are lead to believe in our own superiority, however false and juvenile it may be. Society is a reflection of our selves. Magazines are filled with celebrity gossip because that is what the masses want. The news? Same thing. They give us what sells and what sells is anything that prevents us from thinking about our lives or the world. Most of us will never be celebrities or sports stars or rock stars and media outlets help us live vicariously through these people.

The real world is a scary place but thanks to the American dream we can “live” our entire lives without ever having to be a part of it. Americas pride has gone from “look at what we have accomplished” to “well at least we don’t live there”. It’s gotten to the point where we actually find comfort in others pain, in that it is not us who are suffering.

“Cause I need to watch things die from a good safe distance, vicariously I live while the whole world dies.”

The second part of the problem is our leaders. This is our country and therefore we are responsible for what it has become. However our leaders do nothing to get us involved. When you think about it, anyone, any person who has ever had a message to unify the people, all of them from John Lennon to Martin Luther King, have all been shot and killed in front of our very eyes.

Yet people like George Bush tell us after being attacked on 911 that the best way for us to beat the terrorists is to go about our lives as usual. Fly, shop, have fun cause after all it’s our freedoms that they hate us for and if they see you going about your lives like you could care less, they will be so disheartened they will give up. And for this he will NEVER be assassinated, hell he won’t even be impeached. But of course that’s just a coincidence right.

Men of power are the reason the most horrible things in this world take place. They don’t want things to change cause they are the ones who benefit from our problems. They are the ones who made a business out of our health or I should say lack thereof. For everything that needs to change there are those who stand to lose from that change and they are willing to do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening. They are the things that go bump in the night and we are the sleeping masses.

Reality is hard to face when you are busy living in the American dream, and our leaders benefit greatly from our indifference. They are not about to wake us up.

To me it is a very big problem but one that is easily changed. The sheeple of this country woke up on 9/11 and GW was there to lull them back to sleep. We’ve been sleeping restlessly for over 7 years now and the flocks of sheeple are getting smaller and smaller. Reality is getting harder to ignore and with enough inspiration (Obama) we CAN begin to change things. It’s not that these “sheeple” are genetically made to be so. It’s just that they have been protected from reality for so long that they now fear it. As long as they believe what they are told they don’t have to think for themselves. Also if you have noticed the problems with this country and the world is always “their” fault not “ours”. And knowing that the problems in this world are someone else’s is a very comforting thought.

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"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

Chantytown

A a ghastly hybrid of half livestock and half man that rule the night and conspire to steal our grazing lands.

Over my cold dead body... You hear that sheepfreaks?!?

Vicariously I

This was my second choice.

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"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I

Chantytown

Everyone was thinking it.

I'm just the only one with balls enough to say it.

I ain't a'scurred of no sheeppl.

babylonDon

We have discussed it...And we agree to your terms.

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“The irony of the Information Age is that it has given new respectability to uninformed opinion."-John Lawton

Chantytown

Rigged

Sheeple, is a word used by people who want to feel like there superior to others. In one sentence you make a pronouncement separating one group from another on a baseless criteria, in the next one you contradict it?

You see, that is a "half-truth" part of the equation. True people want entertainment, however, I think this election has demonstrated that many people don't have the time to sit and think about the deep questions all day. Most people in this country live from day-to-day, paycheck to paycheck. It is not an accident that most people doing all the deep thinking are not worried about their at-will employees of McDonald's.

It's not that the average person (being an average person I can speak from this) is not smart, observant, or even aware of what is going on. It is that you either don't care b/c it doesn't effect you, or you don't have time to care. I try to keep up on current events, but my schedule doesn't always allow me the time to sit and read the entire newspaper. So I jump on the internet and read the soundbits of the day, or you listen to the radio coming home from work.

Americans are very isolated from what is going on outside of our borders, perhaps more so than any nation in history. That isolation is our weakness. It doesn't come from being "superior" or "Sheeplee" is comes from ambivalence. I am American, but I was raised in a non-American household, so my perspective is a bit different. I would say it really depends on the issue you are talking about. In the areas of culture, (e.g. values/norms in society) most Europeans would probably say they are superior (to be honest I can't really blame them sometimes). I do agree America has a pretty bankrupt culture these days but I don't think that is the fault of the "average" guy.

Well...I suppose. That is some people though, not everyone. I can't say that it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that children are starving and dying of AIDS. It certainly doesn't make me feel better. I know its just the roll of the per verbal dice they I am here and not there.

I can't say i am a big fan of rhetoric. Its mostly empty.

No offense, I don't know what your life experiences have been, but inspiration does a fat lot of good when people have no place to live, no jobs, and are broke all the time, or have several hundred thousand dollars in debt (what my glorious education costs over 40k a year not including personal expenses, that is JUST tuition, you know what the gov't gives me? 18-20k a year if I am lucky, compound that with ungrad/graduate/lawschool it will take over 30yrs for me to pay off my debt).

I still don't know what Obama plans to "change" or how he plans to do it. I still can't get over my skepticism when it comes to all his rhetoric. Pretty words will not fix the economy, stop the war in Iraq, or do anything about the various human rights crisis that have been burgeoning the past 8 years on our watch, or help me pay back my over priced student loans.

I will be inspired when he DOES something other than talk. With HC gone now, we will see what happens.

As for the other rather arrogant things you have said, I got to take an exam now so I can't address them. Wish me luck!

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Click here for further confusion

ibex

I like grass.....

Chantytown

"per verbal".

Per. Verbal.

Per......

Verbal......











Per verbal.

Vicariously I

We were talking about the "sheeple" of this country. The times when I said we I was not saying all. I was simply implying that I am not completely free from judgement and included myself. I was not implying Rigged that YOU are one of the sheeple yet you responded as if I was. Some how it became about you.

Politicians will talk till the end of time and their power will continue to mean nothing unless WE get involved. Inspiration has changed the world for the better more then any other thing in it's history. People being inspired by other people to act, to live, to chose for themselves.

And that is the point of this topic. Too many people in this country shy away from the resposibility they were given when they were born here and chose to believe only what they are told. Those people? Are what we could define as "sheeple".

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"It's hard to face reality when you're busy living in the American Dream."

Vicariously I