How Judgement Creates Society

Malcolm X was a human rights activist who was assassinated in 1965. He once proclaimed, "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent. They control the minds of the masses and will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing."

I was only 5 years old when Malcolm X was murdered, and I grew up to become part of that "mind control" that he talked about. I knew first-hand that mainstream media can make a criminal look like the victim and make the victim look like the criminal. Even though I knew that first-hand, I silenced my truth for many years as a broadcast journalist. I was expected to follow a corporate agenda of perpetuating what I now like to call "the FUD Factor (fear, uncertainty, and doubt)," which also included racial, cultural, and religious profiling.

I'm writing this with the hope that it might start you thinking about how and why we become judgemental as a society, and how these judgements lead to addictions, stigma, bias, racism, and censorship.

Television is the most watched medium in the world. We now have news streaming 24/7, and programs that continue to present us with morals and behaviours that are construed as being either acceptable or not acceptable. And, before television, families used to gather around the radio for their news and entertainment.

When I was growing up, I was exposed to television and radio programming that made cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption a normal part of life. Doctors actually used to advertise for cigarette companies!

I started smoking when I was 11 because I wanted to fit in with a bunch of girls who were all smoking during the school recess. I had watched and listened to countless programs depicting smoking as cool, so I didn't hesitate to accept when I was offered a smoke. I quickly became addicted and didn't manage to finally kick that addiction until 2015... and that was after stopping and starting several times -- and a couple of those times were for 5-and-10-year periods of abstinence. Cigarettes were a very powerful addiction for me. I was addicted to nicotine for over 40 years, which contributed to the billions of dollars in tax revenues that continue to come from the collective cigarette addiction that's still prevalent in our society. The only difference now is that cigarettes are no longer advertised on mainstream media as being acceptable and cool.

I started drinking when I was 13, but that addiction was more progressive. I was able to manage that addiction through to adulthood -- but I was drinking more and more with each passing year until it finally became unmanageable when I reached my mid-40s. I checked myself into rehab in 2009. I was 49, and I was one of the lucky ones who didn't lose a family, a job, or kill someone while driving drunk.

So, here we are... living in our Western World society with two of the most harmful and addictive substances (alcohol and tobacco) providing huge profits for governments, while also creating a segment of society that is chronically addicted to these legal substances.

And, industries have been created to offset the massive fallout from these addictions in the form of detox and rehab centres and smoking cessation programs. Most doctors will tell you that the combined effect of alcohol & tobacco addictions on the population is costing billions of dollars to our health-care system, but these addictions continue to be fed by governments that claim to have our health and best interests at heart.

The book ‘Chasing the Scream’ by investigative journalist Johan Hari discusses how the drug war began a hundred years ago when the first drug officer deliberately created the hysteria around marijuana use. He apparently went to 30 different experts looking for evidence that marijuana is harmful. But, none of those experts would provide any evidence. Quite the contrary. In fact, most experts said marijuana was actually more beneficial than harmful.

But, government funding for this first “drug agency” was contingent upon proving that marijuana was harmful -- so, he had to start a propaganda campaign to associate poor migrant workers and ghettoized black communities as the major users of marijuana. That manipulation from mainstream media began to develop the bias in society against not only marijuana but also against the people who were purported to be the culprits of using and trafficking this drug.

Alcohol and drug addiction was rampant after the first world war, affecting millions of military personnel and their respective families. But, society became convinced that addiction was how it was presented on the radio news... as an ugly thread that weaved its way through ghettos, gangs, and prostitution rings which were depicted as being comprised of mostly poor, uneducated immigrants and black people.

Between 1920 and 1933 Prohibition in the U.S. prevented alcoholic beverages from being made and sold. It didn't do much to help the addiction rates, but it sure did make a lot of politicians and police officials wealthy from all the back-door deals that were being made from the import and sale of booze.??

Addictions to alcohol and drugs are still considered to be self-inflicted symptoms of an underlying psychological inadequacy and moral failing.

In the 1950s, the American Medical Association voted that alcoholism was a disease, but many only embrace this disease model because it's thought to encourage more people who are suffering with alcohol addiction into treatment -- because the concept of it being a disease removes the 'moral failure' that's commonly associated with alcohol addiction.

Do you ever find yourself silencing your truth or maybe conforming your thoughts and behaviours in order to fit in, to feel accepted, or maybe even to keep your job?

Why not ask yourself some deeper questions around why you can't speak your truth, why you're inclined to conform your thoughts and behaviours, where all the perceived truths & judgements come from in our society, and why we're inclined to inflict these judgements onto our fellow, fallible humans.

May the force be with you... and, remember, YOU are the force!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Tanya MacIntyre is the author of Mindful Wisdom from my Philosopher Dad and Daily Wisdom from my Philosopher Dad.

As a Certified Facilitator, Tanya oversees the educational component of addiction recovery and relapse prevention programs based on CBT, REBT, MET, and several other tools of therapy - including the new TEAM-CBT from Dr. David Burns.