Peace, Love, and Foma

I hate the word manipulation. We have overused this word so much in our past few classes that I swear it’s almost as bad as people saying “like” all of the time. I get it; books manipulate us, advertising manipulates us, social norms manipulate us, grade inflation manipulates us, but our endless droning on about manipulation is beginning to manipulate me to not care anymore. Why is that? Manipulation is obviously an ever present and frequently harmful thing in my life. Why have I gotten to the point that I just don’t care? Because I know too much, and if I kept in mind every way in which I was being manipulated by every product and every stimulation at every moment in my life, I would undoubtedly go insane. In this course, we have examined the practical implications of the concept of manipulation to the point that we can just almost now see how it is all connected: how none of our decisions are really our own. How all people are simply in a “choose your own adventure” novel where they aren’t allowed even the control of realizing when they make the choice to change their stories. I feel that our class discussions have brought me all too close to realizing the implications of this concept. I feel like Mr. Tagomi from The Man in the High Castle: finally, when I begin to understand what I’ve been working and reading and striving and studying to understand, I realize that I’d prefer not to understand it after all. To recognize this, I had to be close enough to see this issue but far enough away that I’ve not yet been consumed by it. So I’ll not step any closer. I’m through overthinking my decisions and those of others. What I mean is: I get why the ‘foma’ is so appealing and I think I’ll give it a spin.