Social zombies: 7 July 2012

Song of the day: Pass this on by The Knife

It`s mid winter and the bare trees bring with their loss of leaves a kind of nostalgia. That sounds like melancholic bullshit, kinda like an entire really bad mills and boon novel (aren`t they all terrible though?). The middle of the year has come and passed and with it more time elapses thus the future creeps closer like the prospects of catching herpes when just looking at contestants participating in The Bachelor/Bachelorette. So many options peep their heads up over the scary horizon. Post graduate studies, overseas travels and job opportunities. The possibilities really are infinite but infinity is a pretty vast concept and more options tend to lead to a nebulous stuff up of confusion, similar as to what happens when trying to decipher the universe. There are temporary fillers like sherry, smiles, dreams, loved ones, walking the dogs, but they in themselves are pretty confusing at times as a result of their vast nature. So many options! I sometimes feel that life is a Verimark store of a more substantial nature. Please excuse the pseudo philosophical non-sense. This is a mere attempt at making sense of what is to come. It would be easier though if I weren`t equipped with the brain of an over analyser.

On a different level (to divert from the above babble) I have been watching a lot of Louis Theroux documentaries and came across a documentary he shot directly after Apartheid ended. In this documentary he visits right wing Afrikaner groups and talks to them about the prospects of an integrated multi cultural society. The comments are extremely shocking but as a wannabe sociologist/anthropologist I`m interested as to how someone becomes so indoctrinated into believing that someone is inherently inferior as a result of some superficial characteristic such as skin pigmentation, religion, sex, status, etc. It`s such a scary thought and I remember growing up and knowing the world was a fucked up place but in my miniscule existential framework only cults had the characteristic of consisting of zombie-like brainwashed people. Now my analytical eye has been opened and trained and I catch myself accidentally finding these social zombies everywhere. I proceeded with the Louis Theroux marathon and clicked my way into the lives of American Neo-Nazi`s. More zombies and more hatred came flying at me through the TV screen and I later felt as though I was being thrown with bricks hitting me in my stomach. It`s depressing how so many preach hatred and segregation and how this gets passed on through cultural hereditary. Individuals eat it up like it`s half price sushi.