Are Humans the New Cash Crops?
We are no longer born with innate value to bolster a thriving society based on positive morals and strong values. We are born into a type of slavery in which our worth is no longer assessed by our achievements, but only by our abilities to increase consumer consumption of the products, beliefs and cultures that we display. Welcome to the new world order in which we are each being bought sold and traded as digital cattle and branded not by the choices that we make, but by the products that we use. Welcome to the commodification of culture and ourselves, the human race.
This stark new world can be thought of as a prison that we have built ourselves, which functions to measure the effectiveness of every man, woman, and child by their ability to indirectly sell products. We now are advertising ourselves and each other without any form of recompense, other than invisible fame and fortune. This is becoming a world that breeds mainly Machiavellians and masochists due to these new chilling facts. A locale in which anyone’s heritage can be commodified without disclosure and sold to those born without a rich history, is no place for a human with an honest desire to live among moral people. But who are we to say anything, after all now we have Facebook?
How is Facebook Still Free?
The primary cause of the success of social media giants like Facebook is because the platform freely provides the ability to the advertiser, whom perform a last minute bait and switch tactic. Ladies and gentlemen we are the bait, and their products are put in your place at the first and last stage of the sale. Your culture is now on sale in isle 3 right along with the Frozen food and ice cream sandwiches. Your family’s traditions are now by two get one free. The very advice that rolled off the tongue of your dying grandmother has now been bought up by an advertising agency to use as a tagline for a toothbrush advertising campaign. Nothing is sacred any longer.
What are we to do? After all, there must be some positive that can come of this, if we don’t place our dignity or self-respect on a clearance rack. After all, we can now communicate with cultures around the globe. As fast as we can talk, text, or speak, our signal, which is nothing more than ones and zeros gets sent through the air at faster than light speeds to a destination halfway across the earth or closer. Is this to be looked at as all bad? Is it not true that with this technology we are finally able to educate third world countries as to how to become an upstanding member of the global economy and begin trading, taxing, and governing themselves. Or is there an ulterior motive?
Education is a good thing!
Are we educating poor undeveloped communities to worship and depend on technology to think for them. Are we raising these groups according to the values and cultures and perspectives of the corporation that can afford to pay their tele-communication bills? Are those corporations taking advantage of the naiveté of the technologically impaired in order to commodity their culture by trading tele-communication service for an entire culture to eventually place it on a discount rack for ad agencies looking to target a new niche demographic?
There are many pros and cons to this new commodification of people without their full comprehension of the disclosure. In a way, in the country in which I live, capitalism has always had the final say in what stays and what goes. In this sense it can be thought of self-governing and regulating. But is it healthy for society as whole?
This morning of February 23rd, 2014 I propose the following inventory questions as guideposts to measure our success as a single race of humans by ensuring the common good of all mankind does not become forsaken by the media moguls.
8 Guidelines for New Media
- Does this messages content help to create a peaceful world or does it portray violence as an instrument is used by power to instill fear in the unarmed?
- Is this broadcast’s source reliable and trustworthy?
- Does this website use technology that is unfamiliar to me, if so where can I find trustworthy information about it and the full consequences of its use.
- Every digital document’s terms and conditions shall be provided in easy to read and understand writing and should be comprehensible for anyone above the age of twelve.
- A free of charge public organization should be able to be contacted by anyone anonymously, in efforts to prevent unethical and immoral corporations or individuals from obtaining and distributing any personalized recorded information without complete approved disclosure.
- Does this digital transmission solely exist to earn revenue from an unrelated enterprise or venture?
- Does this information help to demonstrate what a world without poverty and violence would look like according to betterment of the word as a whole?
- Does this information portray any culture, race, society, group, symbol, religion, or individual in a negative light without first providing the prior causal, factual history that led up to this content being created?
To reiterate, these are just guideposts and clearly cannot be enforced by any violence or all this will be rendered null and void. Therefore it is leaving the decisions about the content up to a combination of creator and transmitter to use his/her own best judgement to follow these guideposts as consistently and as often as possible, and to provide the mass public with only the highest quality and honest reporting as can be expected by a society that is constantly improving itself.
Thank you all for reading. Please pass these 8 guidelines on. Unfortunately, if you feel they are being breached their exists no organization to contact. One day we hope, this will change.