Everyday's delusion
From 12 September 2001 until January 2004 I used to listen many hours every day to the news on Dutch radio. I wrote everything I found interesting down in a text that grew to be very big over the years. It is called Everyday's delusion (in Dutch: De waan van het etmaal).
Laura's receiver. Nowadays I don't even own a radio myself.
When I was re-reading it, it became clear to me that I had largely used the writing of the text to get rid of my frustrations. It was hardly possible to read more than small parts of it, before a break was needed. It was only until much later when I realised that the media are mostly being manipulated or even frustrated by those who are in power, and that most of the media also have their own political agenda that makes them keep silent about some news items and want to shout aloud about others. Above that there's a great number of reasons why media are not able, even if they want to, to tell more than half-baked truths. And listeners mostly only hear what they want to hear. So the original text, which was more than 1000 pages long in Word-format, was more or less a demonstration of how easily the news can bombard an individual into numbness.
News items often seem to suggest that reality can be reduced to a number of paragraphs and a photo, or that a journalist may be able to tell what is "happening." I do not believe that it is possible to represent reality in an objective or "truthful" way. There exists no world outside us that is filled with facts, waiting to be discovered by us. At most there is a world outside full of (perceptions based on) opinions. Opinions and convictions that each of us use to form our egos. Above that I also do not believe that we can make or change society as long as we have the "correct" information. I do not believe society is "progressing," even less that we humans could stimulate it by means of our actions or policy. "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."
I decided to just cut out small snippets from the text, combined with snippets from a text I called To be read when I have a bad temper. Because it should be fun to read. But I decided to not translate it into English, and I don't think I ever will. It is just too long. The following link will therefore take you to the Dutch version of the text.
Contents in short of De waan van het etmaal
