Are You Being Informed, Or Intimidated?

If you watch TV, listen to radio or read newspapers or magazines you already know that 110% of what is reported is based on or adapted to the overt use of fear. It is the most sought after ploy to sell everything from ideas to products and brings in big bucks and blocs of voters.

Fear was the motive behind the Administration's hype to start the war in Iraq. It was in the tool used to push lies about weapons of mass destruction and to connect the need for the war to the horrors of 9/11. When fear is employed to combat terrorism, i.e. 'fearfulness' the irony is deliberately buried in the effort to make people conform to the wishes of the power brokers.

When fear is analyzed from a objective point of view it shows that from a human stand point there are two distinct and very different types: physical and mental. Physical fear is based on a real event that is happening and is a threat to those toward which it is directed. Mental fear is the imagination of an event that is not happening and may never become real. Most of the fear used to sway opinion is mental and may or may not have any actual roots in reality.

To understand why mental fear is such a human trait think of how differently our clever four-footed friends deal with danger. An animal goes about its business without a care every minute of every hour of every day. It focuses on what it is doing in the present and could care less about anything else. If a threat appears it responds in the moment but does not spend its entire existence worrying about something that 'might' happen.

It would be wise for us to grow up enough to pattern our behavior on those we smugly think of as 'lesser beings'. If we can sift through the fear being used to make us do what the bullies in the political and corporate back rooms want, we will be a lot more able to understand what is really going on in our world and, perhaps, to help make changes for the better.