How Can We Celebrate Our Independence When Most Americans Are Willingly Enslaved To The Matrix?Op-Ed by Michael Snyder This is the time of the year when we celebrate our independence, but how in the world can we ever be truly independent when most of us are willingly plugging ourselves into the Matrix for more than 10 hours a day? If you feed anything into your mind for hours every day, it is going to change the way that you think, the way that you feel about things, and the way that you view the world. This endless barrage of news and entertainment has fundamentally altered the belief systems of tens of millions of Americans, and this has very serious implications for our society moving forward. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, brainwashing is a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas. But nobody is forcing us to plug into the Matrix every day. Instead, this is something that we are willingly doing to ourselves. In fact, Nielsen says that Americans are doing itmore than ever before If you feel like youre spending more time than ever before watching and streaming content, youre right. U.S. adults spent 10 hours, 39 minutes a day consuming media in the first quarter of 2016. Thats up a full hour from the first quarter of 2015, and its thanks to a substantial increase in smartphone and tablet usage, according to Nielsens Q1 2016 Total Audience Report. Here is how the 10 hours and 39 minutes breaks down by type of device Live TV: 4 hours, 31 minutes These days, there is a lot of talk about various agendas that are being advanced in our country. Well, just about whatever agenda you want to talk about, the main way it is being advanced is through these devices. Our televisions, our radios, our DVD players and even our computers are constantly telling us what to think, and this has resulted in a population of brainwashed sheeple that is more closely resembling a horde of mindless zombies with each passing year. Who do you think controls the vast majority of the news and entertainment that we consume? As I wrote about just recently, more than 90 percent of what we get through our televisions is controlled by just six giant media corporations, and in turn they are controlled by the elite of the world. Do you really want the elite telling you what to think? And the Internet has become highly controlled as well. Fortunately there are still many independent websites such as this one where you can hear an alternative point of view, but increasingly Web traffic is coming to be dominated by just a handful of giant companies. This is of great concern when it comes to our young people, because theyare spending an enormous amount of time on the Internet The majority of Americans 73 percent indicated that they go online on a daily basis, and many go on several times per day. A Pew Research Center survey collected data from internet users between June and July 2015, and confirmed that Americans are constantly logging in. Young people are the most connected; the study found that 36 percent of people ages 18 to 29 are online almost constantly, and 50 per cent go on several times per day. Ithas been estimated that there are 54,907 Google searches, 7,252 tweets written, 125,406 YouTube videos viewed and 2,501,018 emails sent out every second. So what is all of this information doing to us? Dr Lee Hadlington of De Montford University Leicester has made some troubling discoveries regarding this excessive Internet use He found the more times a person used the internet or a mobile phone the more likely they were to experience cognitive failures. These failures included not turning up to appointments, having trouble paying attention while in conversation and forgetting why they went to one part of the house to another. This is a very under-examined area and a very important one. We are using technology on a daily basis but we dont understand its effect on us, said Dr Hadlington. Of much greater importance is what this endless barrage of information is doing to our belief systems. We are willingly enslaving ourselves to a matrix that is deeply anti-Christian, and it was inevitable that this would result in the decaying of the Christian foundations of the Western world. The following is an excerpt from an absolutely outstanding article that was just publishedby Jonathon Van Maren And yet, the Judeo-Christian foundations of the West that brought such success and such prosperity have either been removed or are in the final stages of demolition. The sanctity of life is gone, but most of us have not noticed simply because we do not toss the corpses of the murdered out the front door into the street, but quietly deposit them in dumpsters behind clinics or vaporize them in modern, up-to-date incinerators. New ideologies have taken over our legal systems, and the short march to labelling Holy Scripture as Hate Speech has already begun. The number of citizens who still attend church or are even aware that Christianity was the life-blood of our civilization is plummeting. Things may be peaceful for the moment, but the dark clouds in the distance bulge with thunder and the rumblings have already begun: Christian universities are told they are ineligible to start a law school because they believe what Christians have always believed, Christian medical professionals are told they will be forced to refer patients for killing, and Christian professionals are subjected to formal investigations at the slightest hint that they have violated the new secular religion. This is just the calm before the storm, but because Christians are so distracted with the high drama of ordinary day-to-day life, they may not hear the rumblings until thunder splits the sky. As I warnin my new book, America is really starting to feel the consequences of decades of walking away from the Christian faith. But how are we going to turn this around? Many of the exact same people that are expressing dismay over all of this are the exact same people that turn their televisions on as soon as they get home and dont turn them off until they go to sleep at night. As long as we all remain willingly plugged into the Matrix, we are fighting a losing battle, and that is just the way that it is. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here. Sadly, this is a very misleading article. Not normal for this selfnews Post stable. What an example of lying statistics. First of all, lets take tv watching. When I am going about business in my office, very often I will have a baseball game on in the background. Am I being brainwashed by that matrix activity? Often, music from the radio or tv (Dish offers music channels). The article also include internet time on my PC in this quotient. IRONICALLY, THAT IS WHAT IS KEEPING ME FROM FALLING PREY TO THE MATRIX. Excellent articulation of the present pre-apocalyptic situation. Judeo-Christian???? Now that is an oxymoron! judaism DOT is/judeo-christian.html So why am I enslaving myself by taking time to read Mr.Snyders post when I can be free to buy his book? Glad Im below average. 