Let me say this up front. None of us get out of here alive. Truly understanding this helps, a lot, to learn not to react to the fear porn that is coming at us non-stop.
You might be wondering what in the world I’m talking about.
Fear porn is media content (mainstream media, social media, and alternative websites where people are now getting their news) that deliberately and enticingly play on people’s fears about disaster, disease, and death. Fear is a primary motivator in humans, more primary than the possibility of gain. Fear motivates humans to do things, or not do things, to accept things they wouldn’t otherwise accept, because they fear for their safety.
I try to stay away from politics on this blog in favor of topics on living our best lives in retirement. I’m not sure if you’ll think of this great big hullabaloo the past few weeks that (I hope) reached a crescendo the last few days about the drones allegedly spotted all over the country politics or not, but I’m going to talk about it here anyway. I consider the drones fear porn rather than politics. But many believe the government is responsible to DO SOMETHING, so I suppose, tangentially, that’s politics.
In my opinion, everything these days to do with fear porn and the government is really just entertainment. It’s become black comedy! After the last 8 years, who can take any of this stuff, or the government, seriously? Whoever is orchestrating all this baloney is doing it to try to control every aspect of our lives, and the easiest way to do that is to keep us in constant fear.
I read a novel years ago, written by Michael Crichton in 2004, called State of Fear. It made such an impact on me that I still have a copy of it on my bookshelf.
In it, Crichton takes on how the topic of global warming is meant to keep us in a state of fear. Though he died of cancer in 2008, his website says that he didn’t want to write State of Fear and thought he might be killed because of it. He decided not to write it but then “felt like a coward” and changed his mind saying, “I thought what are you going to do? You have looked at the data and you really believe that it’s in effect but not something that we as human beings should be worrying about…” In fact, the novel has a 32-page bibliography detailing all the research he did to draw that conclusion.
Crichton, for Parade Magazine, penned an article that coincided with the release of State of Fear. In it, he wrote about all the scary things people are worried about that never come to pass. He closed with this:
“I’ve seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass,” Mark Twain is supposed to have said. At this point in my life, I can only agree. So many fears have turned out to be untrue or wildly exaggerated that I no longer get so excited about the latest one. Keeping fears in perspective leads me to ignore more of the frightening things I read and hear — or at least to take them with a pillar of salt.
For a time I wondered how it would feel to be without these fears and the frantic nagging concerns at the back of my mind. Actually, it feels just fine.
I recommend it.”
I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s where we regularly had duck and cover drills in grade school. Duck and cover was the civil defense response to the threat of a nuclear attack during the Cold War. Tell me, knowing what you (think you) know about a nuclear attack now, whether ducking under your schoolroom desk and covering your face is really going to protect you from a nuclear blast. Me, if a nuclear blast is imminent, I’m running toward the mushroom cloud. Who wants to be alive in the aftermath of nuclear winter?
Geez.
I’m not going to discuss in detail everything the public has been encouraged (programmed?) to be afraid of, but I am going to list them. Reaching back to the last mid-century Japanese Americans were vilified because of WWII, then Communism, Russians, and nuclear war. The high profile civil rights leaders and activists had their turn in the late 1950s and early 1960s, then Communism (again) and anyone who protested our involvement in the Vietnam War (they were on opposite sides of that issue so we should have been afraid of everyone!). In the 1980s the gay community were the villains who brought us AIDS of which we needed to be terrified. Toward the end of the century the bad guys were anyone who abused welfare and took advantage of the government, though that was short-lived, to be quickly replaced by Muslims after the tragedy of 9/11, bird flu, the bubonic plague, ISIS, COVID, FEMA Camps being set up at old Walmarts all over the country, Chinese spy balloons, artificial intelligence (AI) taking over the world, talk of the current administration wanting to start World War III. Thank God Monkey Pox never took hold.
After COVID I jokingly mentioned, “What’s next? Aliens?” That seemed so outlandish that we made a T-shirt to sell at Ozarkland. I can’t believe how fast they sold out. We still have them, and they’re funnier than ever now.
Because sure enough, now we have those unidentified flying objects they’re calling drones. With no information from the government forthcoming, people’s imaginations are running wild. Are we being invaded, finally, by the aliens?
I think I can tell you the answer to that with 99.99999% certainty.
No, we are not being invaded by aliens. Just like the polar ice caps haven’t melted, no asteroid landed in the Gulf of Mexico and flooded all of Florida, and we are not really on the brink of nuclear holocaust in the guise of World War III.
Benjamin Franklin, in 1775, is credited with the quote, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”.
Fear, as I mentioned, is not only a great motivator, but one of the greatest manipulators of all time. All you have to do is hint at something that scares the bejesus out of someone, and it is easy as pie to control them. There are those who take full advantage of this fact, on personal and societal levels. We sure have a lot of rules, regulations, mandates, taxes, and other controlling mechanisms put in place to (allegedly) minimize or alleviate the fear. None of it ever does, because the next fear comes along as regular as clockwork to replace the one that’s no longer working.
I’ve learned, over the course of this 70-year lifetime to recognize all that crap mentioned above for what it really is….fear porn. I don’t believe any of it anymore, and I absolutely don’t let it scare me or influence me. Thankfully, I grew up in a time where I learned some truth, such as how viruses actually work, or that an all-out nuclear holocaust is unlikely by the little thing called mutual assured destruction (also fear porn in a very real way).
I have a brain and I’m not afraid to use it. Which means, I’m not afraid. If I die, I die. It’s inevitable and I don’t get to choose.
Instead of fearing, I’m entertained (in a black comedy sort of way) by what nonsense they are trying to get us to believe while trying to control us. It’s become laughable.
Learn to enjoy the show instead. You’ll be happier and healthier.
P.S. Christmas in Florida just never really begins to look a lot like Christmas when you were born and raised in Wisconsin. Regardless, a week from today is Christmas Eve. What do you want Santa to bring you?
P.P.S. Here is a very intelligent video, about 23 minutes long, about how fear is used to control people. Don’t take my word for it. This guy’s an expert.
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