The time has come to abolish stereotyping. If we don’t, we will be nothing but robots in service to the few who have trained us like monkeys.
We are already halfway there. Ads are targeting us according to what we at one point have bought.
I was buying some workout leggings the other day.
Suddenly I am inundated with ads for leggings, not once, not twice, but every time I open my email, my Facebook and who knows what else. Every time!!
I could have leggings coming out of my ears. And how do you stop it? You don’t.
The same with everything else. You have a baby picture, suddenly there are pamper ads. Amazon has us pegged. We buy one item and it offers us many variations on the theme every time we order something.
Right now I am at a loss what we can do to save our individuality and appreciate our uniqueness as people.
The manipulation is so big and so effective. We are overrun by an avalanche of ads and statistical targeted marketing that will completely suffocate our society.
People have stereotyped each other for centuries already.
Kings and queens did not accept commoners, different races do not accept each other, different religions fight each other, different countries fight wars with each other. But there was still room for people to be who they are within the structure of society.
Now however, we are getting manipulated so well that we don’t even know it. We get the news that fits our basic beliefs about the organization of society. No other points of view penetrate our bubbles. Unless we continuously make a conscious effort to get information from different sources we only get reinforced in the beliefs that we already have.
And what we believe is constantly influenced by the beliefs of the people around us and the environment in which we happen to live with no chance of another viewpoint to penetrate.
We saw it in the last election which elevated the manipulation to another very dangerous level. But we don’t even have to go politics.
The ads we see are tailored to the places where we live.
If you live in an area where there is a lot of fear generated and some well-placed ads about guns are published, people are buying guns. The bigger the fear, the greater the frenzy to the point where we now have assault weapons in the hands of ordinary citizens.
If you have seen your jobs disappear and someone tells you it is the fault of another group of people rather than what the actual cause is, namely automation and lack of retraining, chances are that you believe that it is the maligned group who is the culprit. And the people around you will reinforce it with the help of advertising and the media.
I want to sound a strong warning that what looks like convenience and truth needs to be examined and challenged.
In the age of automation, robotics and artificial intelligence we have insist on our right to exist.
We are human beings and not kegs in a machinery that reduces us to disposable parts in a system hostile to people.
It is unacceptable that only a few have all the wealth and we become mindless fear-ridden robots who hate each other.