The Wake

America’s youth are naively succumbing to manufactured images produced by America’s big corporations and organizations for profit. As a result, there are adolescents walking America’s streets with no clue as to what reality is. These males and females are mainstream culture consumers. They are caught in a coma of reality and are subsequently sustained by whatever image corporate America prescribes. Alone, this fact is not a great evil or threat to humanity. However, if one does not read the warning labels of particular images, then potential health risks to the whole of society can occur.

As of now, America is the great melting pot for images of the 21st Century. Walk down any street in any major American city and you will see a representation of almost any group. This should not be confused with diversity, because many images create sameness. Sameness is the result of images manufactured by organizations and companies that are the producers of mainstream pop culture

Mainstream culture and information are television, music, movies, newspapers, magazines, the Internet and, consequently, anything that appears on them. Since all of these media are privately owned, they are most often used to facilitate the agenda of the owning company and their constituents. As a result, you hear and see mainstream culture every time you turn on your TV, your radio plays or your computer logs on. These mediums are incessant drones of deliberate voices that are intended to subdue the conscious person into the unconsciousness consumer.

For example, the Emo rock band you listen to tunes you out of current events and tunes you in to self-loathing. An image is born. Eventually, individuals with the same apathy for life begin to congregate together like geese at a pond. Instead of a pond though, these gaggles flock to garage concerts of a friend’s winy rock band. After the show, the gaggle will migrate to the drummer’s house and reminisce about past shows and past parties that occurred at the same house with the same people. Everyone at the party is wearing the same major label Emo band shirt. Everyone is also wearing the same Dickies pants complemented by the same Hot Topic accessories. Everyone is the same.

What does this mean?

It means your favorite major label Emo rock band is living the high life by exploiting your emotions with all-inclusive clichés that were written with empty vowels and consonants. It means you are struggling, possibly financially or emotionally, while you have continually added to their wealth and well-being. You have profited the companies that produce their music and manufacture their image by buying their albums, concert tickets, books, magazines, guitars, drums, clothes, posters, cell phone ring tones, dietary supplements and candy. You may have also adhered to their political stances, biases and religious beliefs, which are most likely only artificial aspects of their image to be sold to you: the unconscious consumer.

As an unconscious consumer you are also unconscious to the actual reality around you. This is the great evil images pose to the whole of society. If one can be easily manipulated by an image, then one is easily manipulated by anything. Eventually, this exploitation may result in the suppression of original thought. Most Americans, if they are not already, will be puppets for big companies and organizations to control for their own financial gains and growth in power. Therefore, either Americans cut the strings now and become aware of their exploitation at the hands of big companies and organizations or America will turn into a vast puppet stage and its people will dance like jacks on a string.

The incessant drones of senseless voices bog the unconscious world,
pounding the pavement I lose my responsibility.
The day, the time, the year are muted—

caught up in a coma of reality; prescribed the minimum to survive.
Of routines, of deadlines, of relationships, of worries—
the psyche seeks escape through empty entertainment-amphetamines,

when the body withdraws, it is met with dry heaves of worthless
information: regurgitated facts of fairytale-nonsensical-irrelevantness
bombarded with scandal, with fabrication, with justification—

My piece of Mind fiddles as certainty burns doubtfully,
castrating my care by blunted blade,
motionless: I search for that escape into a reality.