Burgers and Truth
- Jul 26, 2017
- 2 min read
Truth is ever more confusing in today’s world. An acquaintance of mine posted this picture of a couple of the fast food market place’s top burgers – comparing what is advertised and what is reality. That picture has had a significant impact on me over the last couple of days. It has disturbed me greatly and left me sick to my stomach. That picture demonstrates how truth can be distorted in an environment driven by profit motives alone, without regard to traditional ethical boundaries.
As I am writing this, I am sitting in a bar and grill and am being bombarded with images on various TV screens – four of them to be exact, strategically place around the establishment to maximize consumer viewing. Sports, social media, the stock exchange – whatever your chosen distraction to the truth is, misleading information is being freely offered by the highest bidder for you to consume. It is 1984 all over again, Yogi Berra would probably say, offering a variant of his famous quote. Some might say that Winston Smith knew nothing about propaganda. Had Winston experienced 2017, he would have thought that 1984 was a weak year for conflicting messages being delivered by an absolute elite. 2017 is the new 1984.
“Ignorance is bliss,” said Thomas Gray. What makes us ignorant? Distractions, plain and simple. That distraction could be as complicated as your home loan that you struggle to pay from day to day or as complicated as the photoshopped images of perceived goddesses in the local fashion magazines who are no more divine than you and me. Yet we aspire to these things. We are driven by these un-acquirable images and messages.
Bombarded by these messages we fail to stop and think. We fail to consider the absolute truth. We fail to see the truth. All we can think about is that juicy, delicious image of a flawless hamburger.
The truth is wealth is being accumulated by a select few – taken from the poorest of the poor. Corporations are requiring more from us, and contributing less to us. An elite 1% has taken over our economy and is slowly taking over our minds. “Truth is self-evident” wrote Thomas Jefferson, however what is the truth is slowly being faded into the oblivion of our own ignorance – paid for by big business and those who profit from our hard earned dollars.
“The truth shall set you free,” it is written in the apostle of John. But just like the advertised version of the two famous burgers, our perception of the truth is suffering due to a blurring of the facts as we are distracted by the mundane and unimportant – yet overly fascinating to us. Hmmm….I am in the mood for a burger.
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