Thursday Reflection for Week 2

Thursday's discussion concerning ideologies and the reading, Transforming the Powers, got me thinking about power and how mass media is used to feed us all kinds of ideologies that we don't even bother to second guess. Through advertising and "reality" television, we are duped into believing that those products or those lives are what we desire. But how much of those things are giving us what we want, and how much of it is the Powers telling us what we want? The fact that that line is nearly indistinguishable worries me a bit. It is scary to think that I am conditioned by the desires of others, but that is closer to reality than anything we can get through the media. I think that it is ironic that we value individuality so much in a society where conformity to what the Powers dictate is commonplace. I was just thinking about this the other day concerning what songs I liked to listen to on the radio. Did I like that song because it's a good song musically, or do I like it because the radio station plays it a million times an hour and they tell me that I like it? Frankly, I don't know and that is alarming... This reminds me of the movie The Devil Wears Prada (don't ask why) because there is a scene in that movie in which Meryl Streep's character tells Anne Hathaway's character that her(Anne's character's) choice to buy that blue sweater that she was wearing was due to decisions made by the people in that very room, and then later it finally trickled down to the masses through the Old Navy. But by the time it got there it was no longer in fashion. I hate the idea that this is what is happening to us all the time, and we couldn't care less. So I struggle with how to stick it to the man, Jesus style. How do we transform these powers without allowing them to transform us first? Does this happen more subtly like with Claiborne, or it is something even more obvious e.g. nonviolent active resistance?