War Made Easy

Watching the film "War Made Easy", really opened my eyes up to how easy it is for a government to control what the population sees and thinks.

The messages conveyed no longer have areas or shades of gray. Things are now black and white; people must pick sides. When trying to get people to think a certain way this could be a very helpful tool. It creates a binary that you are right or wrong; patriotic or unpatriotic; good or evil. The binaries continue on and if you are not on the side of the majority you will be ridiculed and made to look obscure. Even though this may be really effective I do not consider it to be ethical.
 
To create an environment where things cannot be questioned is to create a stagnant community. There will no longer be growth or self exploration. To be able to really help the population the government needs to seek out those that are willing to be the devil’s advocate; we need a voice of reasoning. A voice of reasoning will create an environment where people can ask questions and not be afraid of the outcome. They will not be censored and they will be hailed as the ones who are trying to get to the truth. If something is justifiable it should be able to be backed up by information and facts that will withstand the tough questions.

I do not think that this questioning happens enough in our everyday life. It is important to know why things occur a certain way; or who owns that radio station you listen to and their other affiliations. We need to work at creating a generation that will ask the critical questions. I challenge all of you to ask hard questions of authority if ever you are confused. Do not follow blindly.

--Final Version--

About Christian

Well, normally bloggers will introduce themselves before they start blogging. I am doing things in a bit of a mixed up order so you will have to just go with the flow on this one.

My name is Christian Swanberg and I am a Communication Studies student at Hamline University. This blog is used for the reason of completing assignments that I have for classes. The blogs that I have written prior to this were for my Mass Communication class thus they will probably have a little bit different focus than the ones to come. The posts that are to come will be done for my Public Relations class.

This seems to be a tad bit boring so now on to the more important part of this post; me! I like long walks on the beach, moonlight strolls, cooking and baking, making my significant other happy, smiling, and working out. Outside of class, I am involved with things like Residential Life, Track and Field, Relay for Life, and many other various things. I like to be involved around campus and helping out others when I can.

I am the type that most would just assume that I would blog; most likely becuase of my heavy usage of the internet. I am truly addicted to social networking and social gaming. These things I will pour hours and hours a week into; probably close to 60 hours a week combined. I am trying to reduce this usage considerably but it is just too easy to lose yourself on the internet and to all it has to offer. One thing I am addicted to besides Facebook and Youtube is a game called Ikariam. I have a prior post that talks about this game a little bit and if you like the game Civilization I am sure you would enjoy this game.

Hmmm… It seems as if I have turned to rambling about myself which I wanted to avoid. I just wanted to write about myself and that’s, for the most part, what I did so I hope you can handle the adventure into my rambling world. If you did I think you will enjoy my posts to come.