Choosing the Voice

It is a very risky proposition -- letting someone into your head. Most of us never carefully, deliberately consider the voices we choose to listen to. We trust to fate and friends. A random spin of the tuning knob. A casual remark from a friend, "You have got to hear this new song!". Take (for instance) my voice. Right now, as you read this, I am the voice inside your head. Whether you like it or not, I now have the ability to plant the seed of an idea in your head. Whether weed or wheat, you know not at this moment. You may never know. It may not take root. Or it may spring forth, after a longer winter of dormancy.

So, what has gotten into my head? Well, in general terms, Rachel Maddow has. I invited her in. As most of you know, I listen to the podcast of her show every morning while I'm out taking pictures. (Sidetrack: Picture, podcast, poetry, propaganda -- there are endless ways into the mind.) I was listening away the other day when I heard a story about Georgia. The clip is too long -- and the story buried too deep in it -- so I'll link you to another voice I've started listening to (reading) in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- Jay Bookman -- about the same story.

 Agenda 21: The lunacy infiltrating state leaders

 "So when Beck publishes a book titled “Agenda 21,” a fictional warning of a UN takeover of the United States in which the U.S. government is abolished and its citizens are allowed only two functions, “to create clean energy and to create new human life,” it’s easily dismissed as the harmless lunacy that it clearly is."

But wait, it gets better. First, yes, it's that Beck -- Glenn Beck. Secondly, the way Obama (you had to know it was Obama's fault) is accomplishing his evil plot is through mind control.

"But somewhere along the line, sifted through the minds of the paranoid, Agenda 21 becomes something much more sinister. For example, GOP senators attending the Capitol briefing were warned that those spreading the traitorous Agenda 21 have been trained in the use of a mind-control technique known as the Delphi technique." 

Now, just for a moment, forget that this all is unfolding in the Georgia State Capitol building and let's go to what was going through my mind when I originally heard this from Rachel Maddow. Obama is the Deceiver! Obama is the Anti-Christ! Of course!

Now where in the world did I get that idea? Well, a few years back, I was curious as to what all the hubbub was about so I read the Left Behind novel. The first one. It's now a series of 16 books, 3 movies and a video game.

Recalling from my memory (controllers all know how dodgy that is), the evil guy rises to power as the head of the UN. In one scene he shoots a guy in a room full of people but because he has mind control over the evil, wicked and unwashed...no one remembers it. He is the Deceiver-in-Chief after all. He is the Antichrist.

2 John 1:7  For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.

Are you following along here? If you write a work of fiction based on witchcraft and sorcery that winds up on the New York Times bestseller list then folks will try to get your book banned before it poisons some innocent child's soul. Write a book of fiction about Christians and some evil guy that uses mind control to take over the world via the UN...and it leads to a meeting in a State Capitol comparing the President of the Untied States to Stalin and Mao. (I don't know why Hitler didn't fit into the Power Point slide.)

Here's the thing. If you read it in the Left Behind series (movies, video game, etc.) and then you saw it on Glenn Beck's show and your Uncle Jimmy heard about it from his preacher last Sunday then it must be true. That has to be something to it, right?

Let's close this circle. It matters who you let into your head. If you listen to crazy people 24 hours a day, they soon become normal. I'm not saying to never listen to crazy people. I'm saying you need to have some balance.

You might want to choose a little more carefully who you let in. There are only so many hours in a day and space in your head is limited. When you have to search through your mind's library for an idea to solve a problem you'd do well to have some classics on the shelf. Or at least something of substance. I can't say as I've read Aristotle and Plato (well, bits and pieces) but I've got a few decent ones on the shelves. Just don't let yourself wind up with a nothing but a shelf full of Rush Limbaugh, Tosh.0 and internet porn.

By the way, thanks for letting me into your head. I'll try to leave something useful behind.

Don Brown
November 27, 2012