Percentages

I’ve been pondering percentages. I’ve been wondering if the advertising and the opinions that I’m bombarded with each and every damn day are reflective of the majority, or if I’m being manipulated by a concerted effort from a minority percentage of the population.

There’s not much pondering necessary though. Of course I’m being manipulated and conditioned. I’ve actually stopped even debating if the brainwashing is taking place, and instead have concentrated my efforts on trying to understand who’s programming me and why. Some of the motives are in your face obvious. Nike and their representatives want me to believe that buying their merchandise will make me so fast and sexy that LeBron and Tiger will want to hang out with me. But what Nike really wants is my money. The rest of their ad campaign is bullshit meant to deceive and manipulate. Also, they would appreciate it if you didn’t wonder how much advantage they’re taking of the thirteen year old Indonesian girl that stitches the shoes together. So they kind of neglect to mention that part of the formula, and she doesn’t appear in any of their commercials.

It’s bad for business. So, they, just don’t do it.

I’m aware that the minority behind any advertising campaign are the owners and shareholders of businesses. They manipulate and condition the common folk for profit, and damn near all of their eco-friendly, family oriented, made in Canada, equal opportunity language is a bullshit smoke screen designed to obscure a motive that’s exclusively about the Benjamins.

I understand greed. Greed has been around long enough to make the seven deadly list so its nothing new.

Social conditioning is another matter altogether. I think this version of manipulation is substantially more complicated than greed. Maybe complicated isn’t exactly the right word. The right word is more likely diverse, and that diversity comes off as complicated because the sheer quantity of social manipulation is relentlessly mind numbing.

I think the plethora of social special interest groups is what inadvertently created the make America great again crowd. The best I can determine is that the era of America that the crowd longs for was just after the second world war, to about sometime in the mid-sixties. That’s about the time that the hippies arrived and fucked up everything. It was a time when everyone knew their place and the majority made the decisions on what manipulation was appropriate. The church, the state, General Motors and a little Jim Crow was the perfect mix that allowed the majority to sleep well at night.

But now there are a few more groups that want the rules to be changed to include them in the pursuit of the dream. The dream of wealth, success and security, that by the way, isn’t a dream exclusive to Americans, regardless of the fact they claim it as their own.

So, percentages.

How many gay people are there in Canada? I can’t find very good data but if I Interpreted the numbers correctly then the survey says……… about one to two percent. This may be low because of reluctance to identify your sexual preference on a government survey, so let’s just say five percent. So, if you round off Canada’s population and call it forty million, then five percent of that is two million. Two million is a lot of people, but five percent of one hundred is not.

How many Native people are there in Canada? Five percent again, so around two million.

How many women are there in Canada? Almost fifty one percent. Pretty much nineteen million.

How many visible minorities? The best I could determine is that this number means anyone who wasn’t white. Black, Asian and East Indian were all that were listed so I guess you’re a visible minority if your skin or eye structure isn’t Caucasian. I suppose there are invisible minorities too, like Swedish or Australian immigrants, but they don’t become visible until they talk. Anyway, the best data I could find was a little dated, but the percentage of foreign born citizens in Canada is twenty one percent. This percentage is comprised of some four hundred ethnic groups.

So, if you add five percent Native, and twenty one percent not white, then you’re left with a white population of seventy four percent.

Now, back to percentages and social conditioning. I selected women, gay people, natives and non-white people for a reason. It seems to me that these four groups advocate the most for social change in pursuit of equality. There are other minorities that are trying their damndest to have their voices heard, from vegans and environmentalists to disability rights, and the list is seemingly endless.

But, for the sake of argument I’m going to stick with these four groups. They have flags and parades and marches and shit, and because of those public displays they generate the most press and air time. Also these groups seem to stir up emotional responses from the mostly silent majority. The response is the problem because it’s invariably negative, and it takes persistence and dedication to turn that negative response into grudging acceptance. Once a few years pass following the grudging acceptance then everyone looks back and wonders what the hell the commotion was all about in the first place. Because those groups of people have managed to interject their lifestyle or ideas into the mainstream.

Like legalizing weed and same sex marriage, or allowing women to vote. Now that they’ve happened, the people that have lived with this liberty for a while are left wondering why the fuck this was an issue in the first place. So, there’s value in persistence.

However, the most successful manipulator is still money. Money is what fuels the influence of the petroleum producers and the mining and bankers associations. These groups are relatively ambivalent about social change as long as that change isn’t drastic, doesn’t threaten the people at the very top of the corporate ladder, and doesn’t cost them anything. They’ve got bigger fish to fry like avoiding paying any taxes and minimizing regulations. I don’t think they really care who they use to run oil rigs and calculate interest on loans. Gay, white, black. The corporations don’t care as long as you show up for work and make them a profit. The difference between lobbyists and social activist groups is that lobbyists are quiet. They prefer not to be noticed because everything is working out fine for them. Having said that, I think that corporations only accept social change when they’re mandated to do so. Then they brag about being inclusive after they’re forced.

But the fact they fly under the radar means that they rarely attract the attention of the silent majority and that’s a good business plan. You don’t want people thinking about the ethics of who manufactures your two hundred dollar Jordan’s. That’s bad for business.

However, social manipulation and change is by its very nature, loud and in your face. It’s the only way to get anyone to pay attention and you have to relentlessly hammer away at the silent majority until they throw their hands up in the air and provide whatever the loud minority wants.

If the majority provides for the minority based on percentages and not on noise, then that provision is either half assed or non-existent. Case in point would be the fact that slightly better than fifty percent of the population of the Dominion wasn’t allowed to legally cast a ballot until 1916.

With that statistic in mind I think I understand the noise a little bit better. But, is the percentage of noise equal to the percentage of the population?

Nope.

With the exception of women where half the population of the land should be able to make half the decisions. All the rest of the five percent groups are relying on how much attention they can garner and how uncomfortable they can make the majority.

It’s kind of a shitty aspect of democracy, but at least there’s a method for the minorities to be heard. The problem is that the majority can’t identify on a personal level with the needs or desires of the five percent groups, and probably don’t give much of a fuck.

And so the noise will continue, and the highest percentage of that cacophony will always come from the minority. It’s how the system works.