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Oh, Oprah!

From the time of civilisation, human beings have tried to make Man think in the same manner so that it is easy to control. Anyone thinking outside the box is considered deviant and a troublemaker out to disturb the tranquillity. A uniform way of thinking and values are imbibed to all. It is accepted that red is danger and it means 'look-out!' In the same manner, a certain response is to be invoked to a particular situation and is accepted as the norm. For example, if you find an envelope with an address written with a stamp pasted at its corner, the normal reaction expected of a person is to put the said envelope into the nearest letterbox. This is accepted as how a civilised individual is expected to react.

If I were to tear off the unused stamp to use for myself and just throw the envelope and its content into the nearest bin, though logical and rational, I may be labelled as barbaric uncultured, uneducated or under-developed mentally!

This is how the world subdivides its population. We always feel comfortable around people who act, respond and have the same values as we do.

First, they came out with a uniform scripture for all to follow. To give a divine authority to it, they said that it descended directly from God via hand-picked adversaries. To ensure conformance and uniformity in governance, they gave the fear of God of devastating consequences of after-life if His words were disobeyed. Then came the mass hysteria and mass hype of mass media. Repeated messages by various channels somehow sounded more convincing and people engulfed it as the gospel truth. A lie told repeatedly become the truth!

Fast forward to the time of telecommunication and obsession with daytime TV, reality and talk shows, now we have modern day evangelists who try to solve people's problems through public declaration, confessions and shame. People are all encouraged to think the TV talk show compere's values are the universal values accepted by the modern world. To disagree is to be uncultured or even barbaric. There is no shame in washing dirty linen in public. Bring it on, everybody has things stashed in their closet. Why wait for Boghi?

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