We are all slaves. We're slaves to ourself, we're slaves to other people, to society, to corporations, to government, to the zeitgeist which has placed itself upon us through our environments. We feel so strongly about these topics that flood in and out of these forums, griping this or that way, firing rhetoric supporting one ideology, attacking another, and while I recognize that most of it is simply instigation, it's made me realize how slave-like we are. Bear with me as I probably sound like a Tin-Foil hat wearing /x/ user, but I urge each and every one of you to take a second and consider how much of yourself is really you. We dress a certain way, we speak a certain tone, we react a certain manner, is it too much to be skeptical about how much of it is really natural? Why? We feel so strongly about this world, which is apparently in a perpetual peril, when we get all of our news from a very small amount of news outlets. We receive all of our food from a very small amount of distributors. All of our fashion, cars, money, and other meaningless currency related items from a very small amount of manufactures. In the US, a private prison industry making billions of dollars lobbies politicians to consider legislation a certain way, and warns its share holders of change. We don't feel the urge to do whatever we wish to do, because it's not practical, when practicality is a factor of motivation. We avoid certain situations for fear of failure, for the presence of self-doubt. We don't achieve everything we want in life and end up being satisfied with less. Even now, this hint of skepticism, is it genuine? Counter-culture is a pop-culture movement in it of itself. Do the very small amount of people controlling the music industry decide how we feel about things? Why do some songs get radio play and others don't? We are so emotionally connected with music, wouldn't it simply be easy to point people in a certain direction? Is propaganda universal? Are the hottest trends and anti-trends, the newest and dankest memes, the popular and controversial paradigms, are they simply products we've been forced into buying? Is this line of paranoia unsubstantiated, or is it being unsubstantiated also a product we've been sold? I know this is rambling at this point, however I just wanted to toss this out there and see what people think about it. I'm taking paranoia, and applying it universally. Are we slaves?