Today's Greek Empire

Chanukkah is the festival of light. The standard story that I grew up with in the Diaspora was how they only found enough oil for one night and it lasted eight. Actually, only the Kohanim would have known this, since they were the only ones allowed to go into the Kodesh, the area of the Menorah. The other miracle, the one that has been mostly forgotten about, is the miraculous military victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians. (The Syrians were a subunit of the Greek Empire which had conquered the "Known World." In the Chanukah history, because the Syrians were within the Greek Empire, they are referred to as Greeks.) The Syrians conquered the Jews, and pushed on us the Greek (Hellenistic) culture. The defeat of the Greek Empire by the Israelites was a huge accomplishment.
There was another battle going on in addition to the one fought between the armies. The Greeks were trying to take away the Torah. This sparked the initial revolt by the Jews. (Another story I grew up with told about the origin of the dreydel. If you were learning Torah with a teacher, when an Greek soldier came to the door, you pulled out your dreydel. This way, the soldier wouldn't know you were learning Torah, he would only see the child's game.)
There were three main ways the Greeks tried to remove the Torah from the Jews (The Book of our Heritage, Chapter on Kislev, section "When beauty turns to ugliness"). They forbade practicing Shabbat, blessing the new month and performing brit milah. All the other mitzvot they could fit into some ritual or idea they had. Basically, the Greeks, who had conquered the world, accepted most religions. The religions were similar enough to their own. They didn't force their Hellenistic culture on the conquered areas because the conquered areas usually believed that Hellenism was superior to their former way and switched on their own. The Jews didn't switch on our own, and the Greeks couldn't accept these three mitzvot. To continue doing these three mitzvot, the Jews revolted and defeated the world's super power of the time.
Triumphalist capitalism, which dominates markets the world over, has had success where the Greeks failed. This force is breaking down the Jewish practice in the diaspora. So many Jews fail to practice Shabbat and bless the new month. And I've even heard talk of Jews that want to forgo brit milah.
While capitalism is in theory based on free enterprise, the demon which drives the machine of today's capitalism is marketing . Capitalism is the economic equilvalent of Darwin's notion of "survival of the fittest". Those companies that can sell their product for the most profit stay in business. Instead of companies focusing on the best product, they focus on making a cheap product, or a product that needs to be replaced often so people will need to buy more. They then market their inferior product to the masses to make it look better than it really is. How many times as a child did you open a toy, play with it for five minutes, only to determine that the toy didn't do what they showed on TV, or wasn't what you were made to think it was?! After the first time, why did we still buy these things? Partially, because that's all there was, and partially because everyone else seemed to love them, and we wanted to be like everyone else. Or so the marketing made us believe. So why didn't someone make a better product? Because the big companies that made the inferior ones, buy the smaller one to stop their products, or run them into the ground, compelling them to close.
This force, marketing, is assimilating the Jews in the Diaspora at perhaps a greater pace than even the Greeks were capable of. Marketing tells people they NEED to be like everyone else, and everyone else is buying X, Y, and Z. Marketing is taking over their minds. No longer do people think for themselves, they just listen to what the marketing says.
When I lived in the states, I did what I thought was right, but how much of what I thought was right was what the marketers were telling me to do? I remember trying to think things out, but I felt drawn to the TV, or the radio, or to stores. It wasn't till I came to Israel, and didn't read the newspaper very much, and didn't watch TV, and didn't listen to the radio, that I started to see what had happened to me.
Now, it is true, maybe I am drawn by what I learn in Yeshivah in the same way I was drawn by marketing. Even if this is so, and I don't feel it is, at least these sources and ideas have kept the Jewish people alive for the past 2000 years. Also, they MAKE me think instead of turning my brain off. The texts we learn in Yeshivah compel us to ask questions, and to analyze, and to try to understand why they said what they said, and to refuse to accept anything at face value.
Even now, 10,000 miles from Madison Avenue, I still feel its pull. On Thanksgiving, I felt I had to watch football, even though normally I don't watch TV at all. I sometimes feel compelled to listen to the music I brought with me from the US, even though many of the songs contain sexual ideas and foul language I now reject. I have songs and movies in my head that at random times will bring themselves to the forefront. While sometimes, they redeem themselves by helping me explain or understand something in the Gemara, at other times, they just get in the way and keep me from learning.
Instead of fighting these influences head on, I try to replace them. I now listen mostly to instrumental music, so I can think. Or I listen to more religious forms of music. These forms of music motivate me to feel the emotions of the music, but also to keep my own thoughts instead of drowning them out and replacing them with what a marketer tells me I need to think.
Extricating myself from the pernicious effect of a media-dominated culture has a physical affect as well. Now that I don't sit around watching TV all day, I exercise because I don't feel I'm "missing" anything. Actually, I find my exercise to be something special, and I missed out on that for a long time. I also eat better. I eat what I believe to be healthy, not because a package says it's healthy. I see where my food comes from instead of pulling something out of a can. As a result, I am stronger, leaner, and I feel a lot better.
People say that closing oneself off from the outside world is bad. I used to believe that way. But now, I have modified that conviction. I believe that the world at large, especially the world of media and marketing, needs to be filtered. This is difficult since even the news is skewed to conform to what is profitable. The news that is interesting to one area is what is given to them, but someone has to decide what is interesting for them and what isn't. But, being aware and conscious of this fact already helps insulate me from the herd-like mentality I was once so much part of.
It's important for people to think through what we do and why we do it, and it's important for us to examine whether we're being motivated by good intentions or whether we're being led astray by false or deceptive statements. And we must try to find the truth in what is going on.