My poor husband, the Norwegian Artist, spent the entire afternoon downloading a graphic design and photo software program to his computer, only to find that, in order to open the program and actually use it, he needed another download.

But that’s okay, because the second download was free, according to the big button alongside its picture that said FREE. Only it wasn’t free; it just sort of looked that way. I’m sure there’s more to it, but the Norwegian wasn’t in one of his evocative, expressive moods.

“I should have ordered the box with the disks,” he muttered. “But the shipping was $14.95 a box.”

You know the quote that says, “Beware the ire of a patient man”? Well let me assure you that the Norwegian, normally the most patient of men, was losing his.

But you know, a lot of people are irritated these days. I can’t open the newspaper without seeing that yet another town is occupied by Occupiers. When the movement reached my little hometown—there was one student with a megaphone—I put on a pot of tea and turned to the Sudoku puzzle. It occupied me.

It’s not that I’m not irritated with the way that businesses are run these days, it’s just that I question the numbers. Only one percent? The people being splattered with all the blame are CEOs and billionaires. Of course some of them are greedy, insensitive, grasping, disingenuous, and deceptive, but let’s not limit these qualities to the one percent of our population that holds 40 percent of the country’s wealth.

Our whole society is so infused with manipulation and deceit that it seems normal to us. There’s a reason we distrust used car dealers, politicians, auto mechanics, lawyers, social workers, bankers, and traveling salesmen who peddle miracle cures in brown glass bottles. Enough of them have lied to us enough times that we label them all the same. It makes it hard for the honest ones.

But lots of people lie to us, manipulate us, and deceive us. Try these: “With price check guarantee, if the item rings up wrong, you’ll get it for free.” This is how we were assured, years ago, that replacing price tags on items with computerized scanning would not result in our being overcharged, ever. When’s the last time you received an item for free when it rang up the wrong price?

How about: “This particular chemical in your bananas/milk/tomato/meat/shampoo/flour/bug spray is absolutely harmless and anyone who says otherwise is an alarmist.” Or: “The new tax will be used only for street repair.”

At grocery stores, we are prodded gently to the right, past the impulse items. Young parents are scared into buying flashcards for their toddlers. Seminar speakers and writers sell the “secrets” to how they made their money. Even a simple country church was said to have increased its Sunday School attendance by flip-flopping the unpopular program with the main service and funneling congregants, like sheep, into classes.

These are the obvious examples. Worse, are the subtle things we accept as normal like sophisticated peer pressure in slick advertisements—skinny supermodels in skinny jeans that regular women stuff themselves into. There are also charts, graphs, and statistics prompting us to make the “right” decision.

Those dire headlines, dour talking heads, and sympathetic characters in television shows can cause us to question deep-set beliefs. There’s manipulation, deception, dishonesty, duplicity, fraudulence, wending our way around and about the truth. These are becoming all-too-common in the way we do business with one another in the 21st century.

We are Occupied with the wrong things.

Carolyn Henderson is a freelance author and writer of the blog Middle Aged Plague (www.MiddleAgedPlague.areavoices.com). In addition to looking at modern life’s oddities and ends, Carolyn is the manager of Steve Henderson Fine Art (www.SteveHendersonFineArt.com), which features the paintings of her husband, the Norwegian Artist.