I had a kind of revelation. Yesterday I was noticing someone walking around listening to an iPod (or some generic). It reminded me of those self help tapes – like in the movie “What about Bob?” where he repeats “I feel good, I feel great, I feel wonderful” over and over.
Maybe the reason is struck me as funny is that is seems like the iPods are programming us, not the other way around. You’ve heard the phrase “you are what you eat”. If people, like this person I saw, wore their portal music players 24-7 it seems like they are (probably inadvertantly) “programming” themselves.
It’s a proven fact that the best way to remember something is to repeat it over and over. Remember the old joke about having to tell Ed. majors something 7 times so they’ll remember it? Well it’s kinda the same deal. Besides slowly deafening themselves (hear about that?) we are slowly but surely training information into our brains – via music.
It got me to thinking … how else do we do that? Listening to people, TV, movies, newspaper, blogs, etc… In the end, I guess since I believe the old addage “Garbage in, garbage out”, I’m gonna be more careful with what I “program” myself with each day.
Just food for thought.
Other thoughts in relation to the same topic: They call Americans the biggest consumers, but what’s the byproduct of that? What’s the waste?