Smashing the Cult of Celebrity and the Disempowerment Game
Dylan Charles
At the dark heart of corporate consumer culture lie the
social programs that mass-produce conformity,
obedience, acquiescence and consent for the matrix.
The cult of celebrity is the royal monarch of these schemes,
the ace in the hole for mass mind control and the disempowerment of the
individual. This is the anointed paradigm of idol worship and idol sacrifice, a
vampire’s feast on our individual and collective dreams. Who do you love? Who
do you hate? Who do want to be like?
Combine this paradigm with the technology of social media,
and the individual is flung into oblivion, never fully understanding the
importance and value of their own life, instead always comparing themselves to
phony ideals and well-designed, well-funded marketing campaigns.
‘The camera has created a culture of
celebrity; the computer is creating a culture of connectivity. As the two
technologies converge – broadband tipping the Web from text to image;
social-networking sites spreading the mesh of interconnection ever wider – the
two cultures betray a common impulse. Celebrity and connectivity are both ways
of becoming known. This is what the contemporary self wants. It wants to be recognized,
wants to be connected: It wants to be visible. If not to the millions, on
Survivor or Oprah, then hundreds, on Twitter or Facebook. This is the quality
that validates us, this is how we become real to ourselves – by being seen by
others. The great contemporary terror is anonymity.’ ~William Deresiewicz
Marketeers and propagandists are skilled at leveraging human
psychology to exploit human nature. They utilize the study of the psyche to
gain inroads into your behavior, and they employ this science as a tool for
stoking insecurities and triggering urges.
They may be selling an idea, a lifestyle, a product, or a
war, but, the pitch is the same: a false idol rises from the wastelands of the
American dream, and is presented to the hordes as a well-packaged product. The
celebrity’s life is a projection of a niche fantasy, and a following is built
up around this fantasy, and the cult followers are steered toward whatever
point of purchase.
And that’s what a cult is: “a system of religious veneration
and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.”
This kind of externalized validation serves as a power
transfer. Your personal power is extracted and foisted onto a manufactured
image in the matrix, and without realizing it, you’ve forfeited your power to
influence the direction of your own life.
“The Fantasy of celebrity culture is not
designed simply to entertain. It is designed to drain us emotionally, confuse
us about our identity, make us blame ourselves for our predicament, condition
us to chase illusions of fame and happiness, and keep us from fighting back.” –
Chris Hedges
This is about usurping individuality in order to foster
groupthink and hive consciousness. It’s also about creating a barrier between
what you believe is possible for yourself and what chances you are willing to
take in order to manifest a unique vision for your life.
You see, human beings are energetic creations, partly made
of matter and partly made of spirit, but wholly malleable to the direction of
the mind. We are affected by subtle energies, body language, electromagnetic
energy, frequencies of light that we cannot see, sounds that we cannot hear,
and a thousand other hidden cues. We are beings of energy, and much like a
battery, we can can give or receive energy.
But the mind is at the center of it all. Whatever the mind
entertains, the being creates.
When the mind fixes on an external idol, this innate power
to form ourselves is transferred outside of our own locus of control, and where
the mind could be centered on creating and expanding the self, it is instead
focused on the fantasy of achieving an impossible ideal.
As journalist Jon Rappoport notes:
“If perception and thought can be
channeled, directed, reduced, and weakened, then it doesn’t matter what humans
do to resist other types of control. They will always go down the wrong path.
They will always operate within limited and bounded territory. They will always
ignore their own authentic power.” ~Jon Rappoport
The end game here is to keep us from accepting ourselves as
worthy and perfect divine beings, and to disconnect us from our own potential.
This is deep stuff, reaching far beyond the push to convert us into greedy,
materialistic consumers. In a metaphysical sense it is a transfer of energy,
and where once we were strong and full of promise, we are now helpless and
content to observe as the world flits by.
What’s most dangerous to any system of control is for the
individual to know their own strength and to speak their own language, as Chris
Hedges puts it.
“That’s why I don’t own a television… and I
work as hard as I can to distance myself from popular culture so that I can
speak in my own language, not the one they give me.” ~Chris Hedges
About the Author
Dylan Charles is the editor of Waking Times and co-host of
Redesigning Reality, both dedicated to ideas of personal transformation,
societal awakening, and planetary renewal. His personal journey is deeply
inspired by shamanic plant medicines and the arts of Kung Fu, Qi Gong and Yoga.
After seven years of living in Costa Rica, he now lives in the Blue Ridge
Mountains, where he practices Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and enjoys spending time with
family. He has written hundreds of articles, reaching and inspiring millions of
people around the world.
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