Once you’re living in fear, it’s hard to let go of all that and recognize that the fear is a useless poison to your life. Fear feels important and unfortunately we’re capable of rationalizing fear toward things that have no rational basis. It’s a dangerous loophole in life.
I agree with this so completely. When you compare the entertainment culture we are now surrounded by with the popular cultures of a few years ago, you see that ours thrives on conflict, pain, death and destruction. Even our music reflects our morbid preoccupations. Where are the folk who wrote songs like “You are so beautiful to me?” Or “You are the wind beneath my wings?” Why
are there no love songs anymore–except for sad ones?
Great observation with regards to music, Carol. I’m convinced the roots began when we decided to give up on ourselves, on our trusting that we can decide what’s important in our lives. Instead of trusting ourselves, we trust the television, the radio, the music industry, all of which operate within a capitalist system that encourages maximizing revenues, at any expense. The easiest and cheapest (at least in the short-term) motivator is fear, so fear is used to control the masses who voluntarily give up trusting themselves, who give up trusting in their own ability to determine what makes them happy.
The result is horrifying: masses of people who go through their lives in a state of perpetual negativity, seeking the only thing they know for answers (societal constructs that led them to where they are) and discovering yet more negativity. Negativity always begets more negativity. If we want to be happy, we need to seek and find that happiness ourselves, right here secretly waiting for us within ourselves. It’s not going to be discovered anywhere else.
I agree. Negative news begets more negative news and then one ends up in the loop. One way of dealing with it is through talking, communicating and sharing with people who are not as glued as one is to mass media.
Absolutely! And to be the person that others (those ‘others’ who may be glued to mass media) think of when the thought flashes across their mind that maybe so much mass-media consumption isn’t so good.
We must be the example of change that we want to see in the world around us.
My parents used to have this disdain for my non-news lifestyle because I was ‘not informed.’ I still don’t quite get it.
Once you’re living in fear, it’s hard to let go of all that and recognize that the fear is a useless poison to your life. Fear feels important and unfortunately we’re capable of rationalizing fear toward things that have no rational basis. It’s a dangerous loophole in life.
I agree with this so completely. When you compare the entertainment culture we are now surrounded by with the popular cultures of a few years ago, you see that ours thrives on conflict, pain, death and destruction. Even our music reflects our morbid preoccupations. Where are the folk who wrote songs like “You are so beautiful to me?” Or “You are the wind beneath my wings?” Why
are there no love songs anymore–except for sad ones?
Great observation with regards to music, Carol. I’m convinced the roots began when we decided to give up on ourselves, on our trusting that we can decide what’s important in our lives. Instead of trusting ourselves, we trust the television, the radio, the music industry, all of which operate within a capitalist system that encourages maximizing revenues, at any expense. The easiest and cheapest (at least in the short-term) motivator is fear, so fear is used to control the masses who voluntarily give up trusting themselves, who give up trusting in their own ability to determine what makes them happy.
The result is horrifying: masses of people who go through their lives in a state of perpetual negativity, seeking the only thing they know for answers (societal constructs that led them to where they are) and discovering yet more negativity. Negativity always begets more negativity. If we want to be happy, we need to seek and find that happiness ourselves, right here secretly waiting for us within ourselves. It’s not going to be discovered anywhere else.
I agree. Negative news begets more negative news and then one ends up in the loop. One way of dealing with it is through talking, communicating and sharing with people who are not as glued as one is to mass media.
Absolutely! And to be the person that others (those ‘others’ who may be glued to mass media) think of when the thought flashes across their mind that maybe so much mass-media consumption isn’t so good.
We must be the example of change that we want to see in the world around us.