We Are Born Into Social Enslavement

By James Donahue

During my years working as a journalist, covering all phases of life from industry to government and the church, I have concluded that everything we as a society believe and do is carefully programmed by forces outside of our control.

The above statement probably sounds like an old cliché to some readers, but if you think it out carefully, what is written is somewhat profound. It suggests that the reality we think we are experiencing is no more than a matrix of our own making. The very word "freedom," which is so cherished by Americans, is no more than an illusion. It does not exist. Everything we do and much of what we think is put in our minds via our televisions, our computers, our parents, teachers and the church.

My work as a journalist, mostly serving on news bureaus for daily newspapers located miles away, gave me access to all phases of our social condition. I covered the horrors of families suffering the horrors of losing their sons in wars on foreign lands, photographed and wrote about fires, train wrecks, tornadoes, riots, labor strife and death.

I had personal contact with bishops, priests and theologians of just about every known religion. I covered music events ranging from great symphony orchestras to punk rock bands rattling garage rooftops. I worked among the Hippies, the Rainbow and legislators on both state and national level. I ate with governors and traveled in a press caravan behind President Richard M. Nixon during his final days of disgrace. I even attended a Michigan Republican convention at Detroit’s Cobo Hall as an alternative delegate, just to see what went on behind closed doors.

I was privileged to see all of this. And the more I saw, the more I realized that it was all a scam. It was all a giant circus performance staged for our benefit, or more accurately, for our control. Everybody fell in line because they looked too seriously at the show, and believed it was all true.

They never doubted our need to be at war in Europe and the Pacific Theater. They did not doubt the Korean conflict. It was not until the college students rebelled against the draft and getting shoved off to a deadly war in the jungles of Vietnam that the question of "serving our country" was ever raised.

There was some kind of an "adjustment" in our nation after Vietnam. Thus when 9-11 happened, and we were instantly shoved into a make-believe war against terrorism, few dared to question it. Even though the evidence is strong that 9-11 was a staged attack designed to throw us into a state of endless warfare for the benefit of big corporate interests, the majority of people blindly follow their leaders and do what they are told.

On a more grass roots level, we get involved in local and state politics. We support the candidates of our choice, and then go to the polls on election day and cast our votes. It has never occurred to most of us that the elections are rigged. It has never occurred to us that the candidates that win offices, especially on state and national levels, are chosen by a shadow government outside of our awareness. When they fail to follow through on election campaign promises, we hardly notice. The corporate controlled media makes sure of this.

On a personal level, we are taught a belief system shared by our parents, our community and the church we were born in. Our teachers at school reinforce this belief system. Consequently we grow up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, believing that The United States is a perfect union where all people are treated equal. Most of us as children recited the Lord's Prayer and are indoctrinated to believe that Christianity is the only true religion.

Most of all, we were taught and truly believed that we were all free from enslavement; that we live in a land of opportunity and consequently are allowed to choose whatever path we wish for our lives. In some sense, that may be true.

A writer using the pen-name Sigmund Fraud recently wrote the following analysis in an on-line publication called Waking Times:

"We live in a world of illusion. So many of the concerns that occupy the mind and the tasks that fill the calendar arise from planted impulses to become someone or something that we are not. This is no accident. As we are indoctrinated into this authoritarian-corporate-consumer culture that now dominates the human race, we are trained that certain aspects of our society are untouchable truths, and that particular ways of being and behaving are preferred.

"Advertising is just the tip of the iceberg," the writer stated. "When we look further we see that the overall organization of life is centered around the pursuit of illusions and automatic obedience to institutions and ideas which are not at all what they seem. We are in a very real sense enslaved. Many call this somewhat intangible feeling of oppression ‘the matrix,’ a system of total control that invades the mind, programming individuals to pattern themselves in accordance with a mainstream conformist version of reality, no matter how wicked it gets."