We have access to seemingly endless information. With a few keystrokes we have the ability to read about almost anything that we want. This is the wonderful gift of the modern age. Never before in history have we had an ability to learn so much so easily. But rather than take advantage of the great wealth of knowledge that exists in the world, many of us spend our days reading about the comings and goings of celebrities and marveling at how fascinating Kim Kardashian is as she walks from her car to the nail salon. We all need to get a grip on reality.
Pop Culture Does Not Matter
I find it disgusting that our society celebrates "celebrities" who do little more than lavishly purchase cars and houses and insult one another. With few exceptions, I cannot think of a single useful, practical or important thing that our celebrities actually do. Obsessing over their lives is a sad excuse for living; nothing that any of them do will ever have any tangible effect on you in any way whatsoever. They know this, but sadly they will continue to earn millions of dollars every year simply because there is a large market eager to pay to consume details of their lives.
Any amount of effort spent "learning" about pop culture is a complete waste of time. NPR, which I normally have great respect for, has a deeply concerning podcast about the things that we can learn from pop culture. This is absurd. One could claim that The Tudors can teach us about English History or that Sons of Liberty can teach us about the American Revolution, but these shows are full of historical inaccuracies. Trying to sell television as a supplement for history lessons is a total farce and claiming otherwise is greatly dangerous.
The Real World is Important
In the past couple of years hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed in a brutal civil war; Kim and Kanye had baby North West; Greece has elected a ultra-leftist party that threatens to break up the Eurozone; Lindsay Lohan went to rehab; the American government was shut down by radical members of the Tea Party; Justin Bieber breathed air; and Marine Le Pen and the anti-Semitic National Front have come to lead the polls in France.
Sadly enough, most of us probably know all of the celebrity news, but we seem to filter out most of the real and often tragic happenings of the real world. If we do not start paying attention, our collective ignorance will be the downfall of our society. If we do not become informed we will continue to allow our elected leaders to corrupt our political system and our world. We have the ability to make a change, but only if we wake up.
By the way, Katy Perry has 64.3 million Twitter followers compared to 54 million for Barack Obama. Oh and when I typed in Khardashian, my computer's automatic spell check corrected it for me.
