Recently, while watching Cartoon Network with my kids, I came upon an unexpected epiphany. Despite its childish guise, the cartoon we were watching was heavily charged with ideology. Hidden beneath its bubblegum wrapping was a worldview. I don’t remember exactly what that worldview was, or even whether I objected to it, but what remains indelibly forged into my brain is the realization that everything, even a simple cartoon, is designed to influence our consciousness.

Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer before him, believed that we are driven by a “will to power”, that as human beings we are bent on expanding our hegemony, our circle of influence. But on that night I realized that the many bloody wars our world has endured – the invasions and annexations, the air strikes and terror attacks – are just one small part of this “will to power”. They are neither cause nor cure; they are nothing but symptoms of a higher order battle – the battle to control our minds. It is a war of ideas, of values, of world-views, a sometimes hot and sometimes cold war that never abates. I call it the Hegemony of the Consciousness.

Seated in front of the TV on that fateful night, I discovered that we are ground zero of an ideological offensive. But I also realized that we are not simply casualties in this war – we are its foot soldiers. You and I, the citizens, the consumers, the general public, we are the boots on the ground, fighting in the trenches, and always directly in the line of fire. Every purchase we make represents a set of values and beliefs. When we spend money on something, we are helping to entrench a particular agenda… and our disposable income is the only real weapon we have to defend ourselves. With it we can define which ideas live and which ideas die. But we have to be discerning, we have to look beyond the coercive tactics employed by the cultural superpowers and pledge our support to a long term agenda, rather than simply satisfying our immediate desires.

We have always been complicit in this centuries-old battle but today our role in shaping its outcome is exponentially greater than before. Social media has armed each one of us with an arsenal of weapons that we regularly use to amplify one worldview or another. Every piece of content we share, every like, every re-tweet or comment, is a bullet fired into the fray. You can pretend to be an innocent civilian but your freedom to choose makes you a combatant in this war.

Jean-Paul Sartre said, “man is condemned to be free” but increasingly sophisticated forms of corporate and cultural coercion are undermining that freedom daily. It’s time to open our eyes, to acknowledge the forces of indoctrination that are being insidiously woven into the fabric of our pop culture. Don’t be an unwitting pawn in this battle to control our consciousness. The planet is on a dangerous trajectory. It’s time to set a new agenda, to wrestle back control from the powers that be. It’s time to grab your cursor, like the bayonet it is, and stick it somewhere meaningful.