Project Vision 21

Francisco Miraval

The following commentary is adapted from a column written by Jonathan Miraval:

This column is about control. People in general like to have control over their children, over what music they listen to, over whatever it may be. People want control. If they are not in command, then someone else must be. Control must always exist. This is the very premise for why conspiracy theories exist.

How could a lone man shoot the President of the United States from the 6th floor of the School Book Depository? How could 19 people come into America and plan out the worst terrorist attack in our history?

We live in a country that since September 11, 2001 has drastically changed, but it is still leaps ahead of other countries. We live in a place where you don't need to look both ways before taking out the trash for fear of being assaulted. Here, the trash itself is actually neatly placed into bins, which are then organized on the side of the street and all picked up on a specific day of the week.

We live in a place where you can have a refrigerator full of food, but not want any of it to eat. So instead, you grab your $500 smartphone and place a $20 order for pizza, soda and some wings. The pizza guy finally arrives and you tip him a few bucks, but it's really only out of courtesy.

You then sit down and flip through the hundreds of channels you pay for, and still deem nothing watchable. You power on your expensive gaming system, load up Twitch, and watch people play a game you already own, but don't actually want to play. Slice after slice you eat the pizza that could feed a family of 4, but you don't even eat the crust because you don't like it. You aren't even really watching the TV, but are on Facebook talking about your first world problems.

So when something weird happens, we don't know what to do. We can't understand it. There must be an answer. There has to be an answer. An answer that we want. One we can accept. One man couldn't have shot the president, that's too simple! Nineteen terrorists couldn't have legally been in our country for years practicing, that means we're vulnerable! The Queen of England doesn't have any real power, so she must be a lizard!

Because when that's not true, people are too scared to know the truth. They can't accept living in the world of a thousand channels and also accept how vulnerable they might be. They can't accept reality. So instead they watch all the false realities on the TV shows, the super heroes in movies, and they get tacos on Tuesday like it means something.

Because to them, pretending to have some control is better than realizing that no one has any.

(Jonathan is a creative writer. He is currently completing philosophical studies and would like to travel the world.)