The book I read for my third quarter research is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

My essential question is "Why must we as citizens be skeptical of societal manipulation?" The source I used to research this topic was the article entitled "29 Signs That The Elite Are Transforming Society Into A Total Domination Control Grid" written by Michael Synder.

We can often be misled to believe that everything that people tell us is accurate. For example, in my novel, the majority of the town believed that the government was doing the things they were doing to protect them, when in fact their unawareness was likely the cause of their death. The scary truth is, however, that we as a society still deal with being manipulated either by our government or by our peers today.

As Synder says "They want us to actually believe that we have freedom and that we are choosing our own leaders, but in the background they are exerting “soft power” in a way that is absolutely ruthless." In fact, often times we are unaware of what is being hidden from us by our governments or authorities. By not questioning or becoming suspicious of anything, we set ourselves up for a submissive existence.Without being skeptical every once in a while, we will find that we will become completely oblivious to common sense and the truth, because we will rely so much on what we are told rather than validating its purpose for ourselves.

However, despite popular belief, most of this manipulation can be done with good intentions. In fact, Synder says that"Many of them(these authorites) truly are convinced that those that are “enlightened” are doing a noble thing by guiding humanity into the “bright future” that the elite are designing for them. " They therefore feel that the way to accomplish this is by limiting what we are exposed to and keeping our freedoms within reasonable boundaries. Most of the time these organizations believe they are superior to us and that it is their job to protect us from something, which is exactly the case in my book. The government felt that what the people didn't know couldn't hurt them, until it did.

Being critical of what we are told every once in a while is important. We as a community must come together to validate claims made by higher powers, as to assure that we are not being tricked or controlled. It is extremely vital that we begin to lessen the power that these corporations have over us, Synder says, because once they gain total control, "we willl be faced with a tyranny unlike anything humanity has ever seen before"

Willingly allowing ourselves to be manipulated not only makes us naive as I said before, but it can also restrict and limit us from doing as we please. For example, in Fahrenheit 451, the government banned books, reading and thinking in order to assure that no person was more educated than the next. While this was seemingly done for their own good, all it did was keep them from being productive and further educating themselves.

In conclusion, it is always important to be vigilant and aware of everything that is taking place around us, as not not miss anything important or be unaware of possible danger. We must never cease to question what we are told until we are completely sure of its accuracy. Without doing so, we will find ourselves aimlessly searching for truth instead of knowing what is true. In other words, if we believe everything we are told, we will find that we are blind to the reality of our situations.