Propaganda, A Parasite On Society? Or A Leach To Our Infection?

In our lives, we have all been exposed to many, many types and variations of propaganda.  You can date propaganda back hundreds of years.  Before, the use of propaganda was to promote authority such as the church or to promote nationalism and trust in your government during times of war (i.e. World War 1).  Though, the times have changed.  Propaganda has now become a very negative, hostile world in the eyes of today's citizens.  It has come off now as a "parasite attached to society."  What I mean by this is that propaganda is animated as a parasite that lives off of society, only to use, take, and thrive off of its host (society) without giving anything in return.  The most common use of propaganda is to try to appeal to the weakest human emotion, fear.  Propaganda only works if it can appeal to the thought process of a being observing it.  Most propaganda that attempts to install fear to those it is targeting use the rhetoric appeal of pathos, appealing to human emotion.  The propaganda usually depicts gruesome images to put the audience it targets in a sense of paranoia.  Though, there is propaganda that is suppose to be positive and tries to promote hope for its audience.  Yet, they many times draw the ideas.  For example, a proactive ad suggesting that you have to use this product to remove your acne imperfections, implying that you have to have perfect skin.  In reality, this is not a positive image being promoted.  This is why overall propaganda has evolved into an evil beast to say the least.

My H-G handicap according to Harrison Bergeron

My handicap according to Harrison Bergeron would be weights on my body and an earpiece in my ear.  I would have the weights because I am an athlete and considered “stronger” physically than the average man.  I would have an earpiece because I choose to think more logically about topics, thus I would have a loud, annoying siren that would go off in my head to digress me from my thought process.

What is Utopia?

What is a Utopia?  By definition, a utopia is any visionary system of political or social perfection.  To many this is interpreted very differently.  A utopia can only truly be perfect to the perspective of the person envisioning it.  For example, Sir Thomas Moore’s version of what a utopia consists of is not the same as that of mine, mostly because his was written in the classic Utopia a couple hundred years ago.

Sir Thomas Moore believed that the concept of utopia is essentially the idea that a perfect society needs to be based off of any idea that prevents conflict, specifically keeping all of those busy with work.  My concept of a utopia is very similar to that of Sir Moore.  In my opinion, it is impossible to achieve a utopia, but if it were to happen everyone would be equal at birth and stay equal throughout their lives.  The economy would be based off a barter system, so no one man, woman, or child has more money than the next, just skills to trade.  Next every child and young adult is required to attend primary and secondary educational schools, but tuition is free.  Officials will be unknowingly elected by the people.  This means the people will elect the man who is, in their opinion, the fairest, except this man will not know he is running for office.  I feel the distribution of wealth, power, and busyness would lead to a perfect, functional society.

Unfortunately, I feel it is impossible to achieve this “perfect world.”  The main reasoning being, the human natural sense of emotion affecting judgment.  The human trait of emotion often times clouds our judgment especially with the emotions of anger and sadness.  Many of times this is the leading cause to conflict and great example of this are the acts of war between the Soviet Union, Middle East, and United States.