Making it Real
Teaching is so much a part of healing that the word “doctor” means teacher. The more we learn the more alive we become.
University education is becoming only for those who can afford it, or for those who are willing to get into heavy debt.
The rich and powerful have always tried to control information to maintain their power over other people.
Five hundred years ago in the UK the religious leaders burnt people at the stake for translating the bible into English. Read about William Tyndale.
Censorship of information is not beneficial for society at large and it reveals fear in those who use it.
Mass advertising is also a way of monopolising information to manipulate people. The extraordinary expense of mass advertising means only the richest and most powerful have the monopoly to influence people with such intensity. Society is brainwashed to buy expensive, luxurious and often unhealthy or environmentally damaging products or ideologies from unscrupulous corporations and organisations, instead of realising they don’t need them.
On the other hand, the internet has made information more accessible then ever before to the point where people feel swamped with non stop entertainment and information overload
Julian Assange, editor of the famous whistleblowing website Wikileaks, has also warned the web is "the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. “ The harassment of WikiLeaks and other Internet activists, together with attempts to introduce anti-file sharing legislation, indicate that the politics of the Internet have reached a crossroads. In one direction lies a future that guarantees, "privacy for the weak and transparency for the powerful"; in the other lies an Internet that allows government and large corporations to discover ever more about internet users while hiding their own activities.
The rich and powerful seek to control information so that they can influence people to act and think the way they want them to. The mainstream media has enormous potential to educate society, but it is less and less a free or independent source of information, bowing to the will of its financial and political masters.
Exposing corruption and abuses by those in power (whistleblowing) is more heroic than ever.
Young Chelsea Manning spent over three years in military prison awaiting trial, charged with “aiding the enemy” (which carries the death penalty) because she leaked hundreds of thousands of classified US military and government documents to Wikileaks, exposing corruption, war crimes and how hypocritically US diplomacy and foreign policy operates. Manning was sentenced in August 2013 to 35 years confinement.
Chelsea Manning (R), prisoner of conscience.
The punishment for Chelsea is an attempt to discourage others who might have the courage to publically speak the truth and become whistleblowers.