The Mind Is Limitless

The Pledge of Allegiance of the US.

Brainwashing is not always dramatic and loud, by the way. A lot of the time it’s really subtle. And gradual. And generally seen as harmless.

It’s interesting how the Pledge of Allegiance works where it’s said every morning by kids in their classrooms at ages where most of them will just accept everything that’s told to them by their elders, particularly when you think about the concept that in school you learn, and therefore the authority figures there are accepted as right and what they tell you to do is right.

I’m not going to go into how much or why I disagree with that pledge but I do, a lot, very vehemently against it. And the pledge is not required by law but it is certainly made required by social customs and it is something pretty much everyone does. And the thing with something just about every does and accepts is that it builds up this whole “everyone does it so I should too”.

I don’t say the pledge any more and actually made a post about my encounter with someone who was obviously visibly angry because of this decision of mine, and my defiance of it but I found myself thinking recently about when I did use to say it. It wasn’t really because I’d thought much about it or agreed with the pledge which I’ve found to be the case with most people (high schoolers, and particularly those younger who don’t really understand issues or know about them to begin with, but yes, even older people!) but it was more just something I did unconsciously without even thinking about it. It would be homeroom, and I’d be reading and my mind would be drifting and over the announcements they’d say “please get up for the pledge” and I’d do so very distracted simply because so was everyone else. And the interesting thing I’ve noticed at least in my schools is that most of the kids would also be preoccupied and distracted within their own thoughts or talking to someone else and would get up because they’re told to do so and if they don’t the teacher would get upset and move around his/her hands and whisper “pay attention and get up!” but no one really questions WHY they ought to get up and/or say the pledge at all.

But that’s the thing entirely, no one thinks about what they’re doing and saying and well, pledging their allegiance to. They get up when they’re told to. They say the pledge as they’re told to. There is just so much, well, obedience where they let someone else dictate their lives unconsciously and from those early years they’re taught exactly that, just accept everything and obey and this really does go off into when they’re older because most Americans really do just obey their leaders unconditionally and if they do start to question things, they’re easily distracted by other things and will soon forget. That, by the way? Is mass brainwashing.

And this is enforced socially. In subtle ways, when people will curiously (or angrily?) look over at a person not saying the pledge on purpose which a lot of people simply cannot handle, because human nature is to want to be accepted. Or in more overt ways, like what happened (see that post I linked to) or when their motives are questioned which really does get a lot of people to go back to saying the pledge/ doing something they wouldn’t agree with for those same reasons.

And to defy and fight against this by the way is not simple or easy at all. It really is a constant fight. The reason I found myself thinking about this IS because I caught myself unaware and got up last week and stood up only to realize what I was doing and sit back down. But it’s subtlety is really hard to shake off and it’s really manipulative. Which is why most people don’t even think about it, because it is hard to defy, such a simple thing, still has to be done consciously. It’s eerie.

My little sister got into a fight by accident about politics on youtube without realizing what the other person’s talking about because she’s ten and has no clue about politics aaaahhhh *bashes head against wall*　i feel like such an irresponsible older sister

My little sister remembered she has a PixieHollow account and went back to it only to realize in the time she was gone they’d deleted her fairies and she’s all upset because something about how one of them was from before they made everything generic/ mostly for members so that first fairy had actually good clothes and she’d won all these badges.

I feel you sis. But Disney sucks anyway. People trying to make money off kids’ fun are shitty and I love you and you’ll always be my fairy.　

There’s a fine line between people just wanting to rant and people also wanting advice. Most people doing the listening don’t realize it.

And there seems to be a mentality that a person ranting must automatically want people to give advice which isn’t true, by the way, and oughtn’t be true. Because sometimes all people want to do is have someone acknowledge they’re going through whatever they are without overbearing advice about how to deal with it. And it’s really hurtful on the part of the listener if you’re going to insist on giving advice where the other person doesn’t want it. Or fine, advice is cool, but then it’s not okay to expect the person to accept that advice. Sometimes people deal with things in different ways, and yours may not work for them.

The first time I encountered erotica was in a book my mother gave me.

By accident. If she knew what it was, she’d never have given it to me. But I was in eighth grade and somewhere in the sub-series “The New Prophecy” in the Warriors series by Erin Hunter, and she was tired of my reading what she called children’s books (fine, so they’re children’s books, but there’s no shame in reading them!)

She loves reading as much as I, or my sister, or anyone in the family does but everyone knows that she has no time to read at all, and books she borrowed from the library were usually returned unread. And the book she’d handed me was not one she’d read either, it was a new release from an author she said she’d read other works of and had loved. So she instructed me to read the book and come back and tell her the story.

So I did. Grudgingly, and looking for excuses to get out of it at every turn because I was more concerned with finding books I could Escape into than actually Mature Adult Books. Besides which, you can’t possibly expect a twelve year old to want to read a book meant for people far into adulthood. It was dreary. The writing was not my style. Neither was the plot. If she gave it to me now, I would probably enjoy it better on the basis that I’d actually understand it. No, not because there’s erotica in there. That’s one chapter in the whole book.

Anyway, almost halfway through the book I stumbled onto a very descriptive part about a hotel and three different couples. I read it. It was the first time I’d encountered erotica, but it’s not like I didn’t know what I was reading.

So one day I caught my mother off guard and opened the page to the chapter and asked her in my sweetest, most innocent voice if that was Appropriate Reading Material For Children and okay for me. She read it. Looked up at me. And back down at that first page. And up at me, with the blood drained from her face, and told me no, and that she’d take the book back, and I was a good girl for telling her and thank you.

I walked away trying really, really hard not to laugh. My mother to this day probably still thinks me a Mature Child and doesn’t realize it doesn’t matter if I read the rest of the book because obviously I’d read that part anyway and that I’d only shown it to her knowing she’d react that way (because sex is a taboo topic in this household and I knew this). I was gleeful I didn’t have to plough through the rest of that book and went back to the Warriors series.

But to this day she’s never intervened in my reading list again.

Natural disasters: always been very lucky.

In December, 2004, my family went to the beach for a holiday. Actually, more like my mother, sisters and I went, tagging along with my second cousins, who go there every so often. We lived in Yangon, Myanmar and went up north-ish to Chaunda. A beach, about ah six or seven hours drive away. We went to stay there for about a week.

That was the plan, anyway. And then we decided to extend the trip and stay there for longer. Which was fun. And then this random morning my mother woke up and said no, we’re going home. Today. Right now. Which was a little abrupt, but okay, so we went home that day (or the next day? Something like that).

After we got back, a few hours in, I’d noticed the windows and all the glass doors rattling. Just…rattling. We have really big windows. And across from the living room window is this glass screen door that separates the family living room from the more formal dining/living room (called the drawing room, don’t ask why). And they were ratting. And I remember asking why, and my mother said oh silly, because the wind, and then we all noticed that there was no wind, at all, whatsoever.

It was the earthquake. That earthquake that triggered the tsunami in the Indian Ocean of 2004, possibly the worst in history, and we’d escaped it by a few hours.

I will never forget that.

The year is 2005, and we’re in Pakistan. Karachi, to be specific. And then one day, there’s an earthquake up north in Kashmir.

A big one. The entire country went into relief-mode, which is what I call that rally to help those who need it. We had fund raisers in school. Kids brought in supplies, they were sent up north. And our family, I remember specifically, digging out burial cloths deep out of our closets and attics to give away.

There is something eerie about that blank, white cloth, yards and yards of it, and knowing people would be wrapped in that cloth you’re holding, and they would be buried.

But the story I remember most is that of that cyclone in 2008.

I promised people stories yesterday, and never got around to them, but here they are. Somehow I don’t think they’re the stories people expected.

Myanmar. 2008. May. It’s summer, in that May is one of those months there’s no school (yup, we have weird school months back there). There was a blackout that night, which isn’t uncommon, blackouts in both Myanmar and Pakistan (although Myanmar definitely more) are normal occurrence. Except usually they’d mean my sisters and I would go sleep in the veranda and set up the mosquito netting and sleep there, out where it was cooler.

My father has a home office in that apartment, and the veranda (the main one we use) is off it. The office has these huge glass sliding doors that are usually kept open to it, and there’s iron channel gates. And there’s this huge white swing that hangs from the ceiling in the veranda, attached to hooks.

I don’t know why we decided not to sleep in the veranda that night. Why we slept in the office, right in front of the doors, something about the rain. On mats, on the ground, under the netting, with thin sheets, the three of us.

Sometime in the night I remember feeling very cold. Remember my little sister pressing into me, shivering. I remember holding her, both of us seeking each other’s warmth.

And I remember waking to chaos.

The cyclone had hit the Ayeyarwady division at sometime in the morning. The city of Yangon? In that area. Where were we? Right across the river.

I have to give you those links because not everyone is going to get the geography, obviously.

We were right there. There, and there’s the worst cyclone, the very worst natural disaster in the history of Myanmar.

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