Over the past 40 years or so, life has definitely changed.
If I were to believe a growing number of people in the world, one of the biggest changes we've seen is an almost exponential growth in what I've come to think of as "There's a Boogeyman around the corner, waiting to GET us!" thinking. The undertone of the world often makes it sound like we're under constant assault from sources both tangible and intangible.
The level of fear in the world seems almost completely out of hand... at least to me.
How did the world get to be like this?
To be honest, I'm less interested in the debate over whether or not there are — in fact — Boogeymen waiting around every corner, waiting to "get" me... than I am in the change in thinking that seems so obvious.
When I was a young adult (early 1980's) I don't remember walking around "being suspicious and afraid of everything."
Perhaps there were always Boogeymen, but we just didn't talk about them. At most, it seemed like people were concerned about drunk drivers and the occasional creepy pedophile hanging out in the woods near the local middle school.
For example, when I was in college in the early 80's such an idea as a "mass shooting" was a rarity; I was at the University of Texas in Austin and the only such talk referred to the "UT Tower shootings" and that was an even that had happened more than 15 years earlier! During the entire decade of the 1980's, there were 20-something mass shootings; in 2021 — and keep in mind we are only in MAY — there have been 178 mass shootings, so far. And that's just one type of "Boogeyman" around the corner.
So what gives?
Do we "blame" the Internet, and its ability to instantaneously spread information? Or have we just become more preoccupied with external factors wanting to "interfere" in our lives?
Or do we look within ourselves?
When we see a leaf fall, do we observe "Look, a leaf fell, it must be windy, or fall, or both!" or do we go into paroxysms of fearful thinking "OMG! A leaf fell! It's corporate deforestation and we're all going to die from a lack of oxygen because all the forests are dying!"
And what's real, and what's not?
These days I come across new stories every day relating Covid-19 and the efforts to vaccinate the world. Disregarding where a person might stand philosophically... why are we seemingly SO obsessed with every conceivable little angle that COULD exist... but most likely doesn't?
The most recent piece of "freakout worthy" (or not) information I came across is that according to the Aztec calendar, "an era ends" on May 26th, 2021.
I'm not going to be losing any sleep over that one!
Frankly, I have no interest in taking on anyone or their beliefs or theories; my only interest here is why are so many people seemingly engaged in "scanning the horizon for the next disaster" these days? I don't get it. What's the attraction?
Thanks for reading, and have a great week!
How about YOU? Does it seem like people have grown increasingly concerned about "something" being out to get them? Is there really something evil and nefarious around every corner? Or are our imaginations just working overtime? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20210525 00:35 PDT
0265/1508
Oh, man... This was an awesome post... I will try to give my personal opinion on this, trying to not offend too many people... lol...
I think that the current social "situation" was building up for the past 2-3 decades, and I will not go further in the past, as I really think that it wasn't present in this "volume" as today... The Internet just fastened up certain things, and one of the biggest changes (except for money) is the attention...
In the jungle of celebrities, perfect men (women), with perfect lives, bodies, hair, etc., "ordinary" people want their space under the sun... It was first by doing some crazy stuff, and after that trying to "lead by example", be following some "wrong" role models... That's something that is happening on a personal level...
On the larger scale, I just got aware yesterday about one maybe not a that important thing (for some), but still could be one of the game-changers... I have noticed that suddenly everyone produces electric cars, and just 2 years ago, only Tesla was doing them... The technology was there for decades (to be honest)... Why right now? Maybe I'm just another conspiracy theorist, or it is just the influence of watching a documentary about petro-dollar, but it seems that we are at a huge crossroad at the moment...
The need for control is bigger than ever, and the best tool for getting is fear... And the Boogeyman isn't some big corporation, or terrorists, or something already washed-out thing... It's your neighbor, it's your closest one... You can't believe anyone...
There was never bigger distrust in governments and politicians on one side, and on the other side, people are blindly following everything is served... all because of the fear... And in some weird way, those people think that they are LEADING others, but they are actually just blind followers... So, their need for attention is satisfied on one side, and from the other side, that have been controlled without knowing it... win-win...
I have no idea what I wanted to say with all this, but I know it's time to bury the Boogeyman and live freely!
I have picked this post on behalf of the @OurPick project and it will be highlighted in the next post!
One of the things I often ponder is how our growing self-involvement is contributing to our problems.
Whether "good, bad or indifferent," our response/reaction to change agents of any sort is becoming more and more laced with mistrust and suspicion because I watch how people increasingly defend a "NOBODY gets to tell ME what to DO!" even if the suggestion is life-saving and paradigm altering.
To make a bad example because I can't think of a better one on short notice... the government says "wearing seat belts saves lives" but instead of considering even the possibility that seatbelts might save lives, people reject ideas out of hand because "no government, authority, organization, corporation or whatever is going to tell ME how to live my life!"
Sure, it may be your "right" to be free to do as you wish and die... but the consequences of your "right" is that someone else is going to have to wipe your guts off the highway... and that's a pisser of a job, but I guess that never occurs to anyone. Evben if we think we are "independent," we rarely operate in a vacuum.
Technocracy + technology (MK ultra et al) = a required level of fear needed to ever realize the ambition.
There is no 'belief' or 'theory' here. It is all well documented. (club of Rome onwards , in contmperay terms)
Maybe some things just take a long time to come to fruition. Take MK-Ultra... that stuff was already up and running and having its heyday in the 1950s', 60's and 70's. You'd think that by the time I was in college in the 80's it would be more than just rare whispers — and I was part of some pretty fringe-y stuff — and now it's everywhere. Not disputing its documented existence but pondering the mechanics and timing of its more recent proliferation in the public space... and people's reaction to the information.
I think we have just gotten soft as a society. My daughter and I were talking about this after gardening in the heat for a few hours. We were wiped out, and highly cognizant of the fact that our grandparents did this all day, and on most every day in even hotter weather as they farmed by hand tobacco in North Carolina.
Your post always make me think and I enjoy that! I will have to do a video yapping about this topic. Well done as always.
That's pretty much one perspective of what I fear is happening... specifically that people's brains are also going soft; there is less critical thinking; less capacity to go to a place of that "that's pure bullshit" and less capacity to determine *"Yep, that's real.. and let's take counter steps."
It's "Idiocracy" unfolding, before our very eyes.
how to reply to that - its all fudporn - but - someone has to produce and distribute the fudporn - the bogiemen manufacture the fudporn...
Oh sure, it's FUDporn allright, and someone is producing it. But has humanity become more gullible over the past 40 years? It seems to me that FAR more people believe it when someone shouts "The sky's gonna fall!" than did so, even a few decades ago.
Do you mean back when everyone believed in "the cold war" or "the moon landing"
or way back when they believed in "atom bombs" or "the holocaust"
or further back when they believed in "The Hun" or "Spanish flu"
Whatever the lie, 90% of people believe whatever shit they are told
Shit! ...tomorrow we won't escape unscathed from this one this time!!
Okay, I can speak to this; I have two degrees in mass communication and I rarely ever get to use this knowledge, so it's nice to finally be offered a soapbox, even if for only a moment. 😀
One of the misnomers about mass media is that "the news tells us what to think." This really isn't true at all; we have competition in the marketplace for information and we can pick and choose what we want to consume. What the mass media can do, and does very well, is "what to think about".
People, by nature, gravitate toward others which have similar viewpoints and beliefs to their own. When a group or community sees others with differing viewpoints begin to encroach they very often react with fear and anger.
If we add those last two items together - mass media telling us what to think about, and people migrating toward others with similar views - it's easy to see that people with certain beliefs will consume certain mass media while others consume different sources.
Now, once we also add to the equation that mass media is a business with the goal of making money - lots of money - we can see where the degeneration from "news" to "editorial" begins. Now, instead of small communities reacting in fear, we have entire mass media organizations reacting in fear and stoking anger against "the other" and "anyone different." I'm not singling out any particular news outlet/blog site/etc, either; it's common and rampant. It's good business.
So... I think the boogeymen have always been there. I think now we just amplify them.
The 1980s still had lingering cold war fear. The 80s & 90s both had AIDS, I suppose. There was the Satanic Panic over rock and roll, too. I think the 90s was the least fearmongery decade, though, aside from Global Warming. We immediately got terrorism in 2001, obviously, and that never let up. Climate concerns also escalated. It feels like 20 years of unrelenting fear porn, and I am burned out.