Posted by
JLS 3 on Monday, August 07, 2006 12:14:56 PM
When I was in Elementary school my teachers prepared me for an
impending nuclear attack from Red China. That was the early sixties. It
wasn't very enlightened, but it has influenced my thinking all these
years later. Why? I suspect it is the fruits of fear.
We are surrounded by fearmongers. People that make their living, derive
their power and fill their time trading in fear. Sure, my first
experience was worrying about the effects of radiation and whether or
not it could go around corners or penetrate through a foot of concrete.
But that wasn't my last experience with being manipulated by fear.
In 1973 we had our first oil shortage with the attending oil shortage
scare. More fear-based manipulation gripped the country. I got my first
driver's license in January, 1973. Gas was selling for 33 cents a
gallon. A month later the price went to 65 cents. The mythical
dollar-per-gallon price was rumored right from the start. Amazingly,
the last time I paid under a dollar a gallon was just a bit over 4
years ago, some 29 years after the 1973 manipulations.
Fearmongering can take more subtle forms. At times eggs can be very bad
for your health, and then someone somewhere finds that they might hold
magical health qualities. The same can be said for chocolate, beef,
chicken, fish and a bunch of other staples of life.
Currently the environment fills the role needed by those who wield
fear. The salmon runs are diminishing, so we will likely lose the bear
population. Trees are vanishing in large numbers. There isn't enough
water. And now the big one, global warming. Quick, it's too late to
reverse its effects, but we must change our lifestyle. We consume too
much and now it can be proven just how bad our consumption has been.
It's totally ruined the earth. Be afraid.
Without fear to drive us how can we otherwise be controlled? How can we
be convinced to make radical changes in our lifestyle? Fear. It's the
perfect tool to control the masses. Coupled with guilt, it's almost
irresistable..........