A New Angle on Viral Fear

c. 2010, Judith Acosta

One way to understand a culture is to see what it values. One way to know what that culture values is by what it is willing to pay or give up in order to have or obtain it. The “it” can be anything from a TV to a state of being. From the statistics available (*1), our culture places very little value on children, health, and education and a monumental value on a few people who actually do very little. It places far less on safety than it claims even though the media would have us believe otherwise and would inspire us to mortal viral fear in order to get us to keep buying.

Here’s an unbiased view of our values based on average national salaries:

Home Health Aides                                               19,198

Counselors & Social Services                          26,906 – 48,820

Teachers                                                                  47,681

Firefighters                                                             50,986

Police Officers                                                        51,192

Registered Nurses                                                58,483

Conservation Scientists                                     53,544

Health & Safety Industrial Engineers           73,893

Those professionals listed above are the people we entrust with the education of our children, the emotional well-being of our families, the care of our elderly, the health of our entire country, our futures and our safety. We put their value at anywhere between 19,000 and 74,000 a year. Do we value them? We say we do.

But the following is a list of those whose values are made clear by their earnings rather than their occupations and our proclamations.

Professional NFL Player                                 770,000/year

Celebrity Athlete (Michael Jordan)          170,000/day or $160.97/second

Movie Stars (Tom Cruise)                     25,000,000/year

Exxon CEO (Rex W. Tillerson)            32,211,079/year (an increase of 19% from 2007)

The reason I began thinking about this is because of an email I received from a friend in which athletes who made millions of dollars a year were quoted revealing their true worth:
While Chinese and Indian kids excel in math, science and languages, we invest $MILLIONS in athletic scholarships. Below is a brief list showing the fruits of these
investments:

1. Chicago Cubs outfielder Andre Dawson on being a role model:
"I wan' all dem kids to do what I do, to look up to me. I wan' all the kids to copulate me."

2. Senior basketball player at the University of Pittsburgh :
"I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes."

3. Chuck Nevitt , North Carolina State basketball player, explaining to Coach Jim Valvano why he appeared nervous at practice: "My sister's expecting a baby, and I don't know if I'm going to be an uncle or an aunt."

Those were just a sample.

I imagine you can make your own assessment. I made mine.

*1. The information was taken from Bankrate.com, Bureau of Labor Statistics at BLS.gov, and AFL-CIO.org/corporatewatch/paywatch.

My friend Jim sent this to me today. If "unknown author" hadn't been written beneath the quote, I would have sworn he'd said it:

“Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall his choice.”

On December 15th, TIME Magazine printed an online article by Amy Sullivan entitled "Christian Group Launches New Attack on Christmas Commercialism." As soon as I saw the title, I thought, "It's about time."

Last year some time a survey was conducted to gauge the religious and spiritual propensities of Americans.  No one was surprised by the findings and no one really needed to spend the money on the survey: The vast majority of Americans believe in a Supreme Being or higher power whom they call God.

So what happened? And Christmas is just one example of how distorted our perceptions are. Somewhere we went from a nation devoted to God and freedom to a nation devoted to things and Jessica Simpson, who proudly hailed, "I don't know what it is, but I totally want it" has become our spokesperson.

We are consumed with our own bodies and the things we acquire but have no idea why we're here or what to do with ourselves.  We have come to believe that meaning and having are equal.

This is a profound and pervasive delusion that is also both simultaneously destructive and systematically distracting. So much so that corporations have put their billions into marketing campaigns that specifically target and capitalize on these delusions.

The delusions are:

1)      The product can save me.

2)      The product has meaning and therefore can give my life meaning.

3)      The product can help me belong to a tribe.

4)      The product or service or brand can make me lovable.

Of course, none of the products on the market today and none of the products anyone can possibly conceive of will ever meet the deeper needs of a human being because those deeper needs are for love, belonging, and meaning. Who in their right mind would consciously believe that a pair of shoes or a car or a skin cream could ever do that? Yet, we buy and behave as if we did believe it.

I am not a theologian. I am only a psychotherapist and homeopath in Albuquerque. I write mostly about Verbal First Aid, not Biblical matters. But I think this is idolatry in the purest sense of the word.

I have helped people with anxiety, panic, trauma, sorrow and confusion for over twenty years and in watching their struggles I now believe that God had a good reason for forbidding idolatry–because it is delusional and will never make us happy.

But we keep saying “no” to joy and “yes” to stuff.  How does this happen?

By some marketing principles that are universal.

Become the atmosphere: This is a phrase used to describe the infusion of brand recognition into our culture, to surround people with “Sony,” for instance, so that when they think it's time for a new TV the first thing they’ll think of is that brand.  One woman in the documentary, The Persuaders, said “Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them and spray them.”

Create a culture of need:  This is market-ese for creating a need in order to produce a product. It can also be done by generating an image that not only creates a pseudo-need, but promises a new way to meet it.

Give products "feeling" and  life: By endowing everyday products with emotional energy ( kindness, sexuality, sensuality, friendliness, etc…)  that product itself  resonates with people’s emotional lives and secret needs.

Create a culture of fear: The media  has been promoting viral fear since the Civil War. But it has been expertly cultivated since the Cold War and the build-up on Madison Avenue.

Many of us become so afraid we are willing to put ourselves into irreversible debt to deflect it. And the thing we are most afraid of – not belonging, being shunned, being seen as inferior or unworthy – is precisely that which they are best at manipulating by making the product an extension of the self.

They sell fear because they're afraid and that’s what they buy. Advertisers can’t stop spreading viral fear because, in one marketer’s words, they’re terrified of being eaten alive by the competition. It doesn’t get more limbic than that, does it?

Sell to the Soul: Marketers use the term “Pseudo-spiritual marketing.”   When they sit around a table banging out strategies and campaign slogans, they use expressions like “making a spiritual bond with a product” and “channeling the inner brand.” The brand becomes the church and the product the icon.

Create an IMAGE: This means that campaigns will skillfully and persuasively present the product as more than it is.  I drive a Hummer, therefore I am…And I am successful, tough, yet refined. The product is no longer a product but redefined as mystery, as intimacy, as meaning, as cult, as success, as comfort, as our due.

Facilitate Entitlement:  It's the RIGHT of every American to have whatever he wants. So, banks cooperate with manufacturers and retailers to finance loans, no pre-payment options, leases with hidden clauses, no interest deals for three years, no payments for two years.

It's way too easy to buy things we really don't need and can't afford. But if a product is identified with the “self” then not having it becomes emotionally equated with existential death.

This article may be seen in its full edition at http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Objects-of-Our-Devotio-by-Judith-Acosta-091217-229.html

Today a colleague of mine sent me a one-page article by a fellow named Paul E. Marek, a second-generation Canadian, whose grandparents fled Czechoslovakia just prior to the Nazi takeover. The article, entitled Why The Peaceful Majority is Irrelevant, made the disturbing argument that good people and good intentions get run over by forces bigger and badder than they dare or wish to imagine.

This may sound slightly to the right of what we usually write about here–the influence of corporate media on American culture–but it's actually a bullseye.

Good people–or even just benign, busy people–who want to go about their chores whether those are in a field or a multi-billion dollar firm are easily bulldozed by fanaticism because they are exactly who they are–benign and busy.

Marek makes the point that fundamentalist Islam is no different in its form or its functionality than Nazism.

His article begins:

"A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. "Very few people were true Nazis," he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come."

He goes on to explain. Because so many people are just benign, sweet at heart but not suited for the sword, evil in its most malevolent form can sweep them up and even solicit their cooperation. They are sold a can of goods they not only don't need, but truly don't want. They have just been convinced otherwise.

Again, I quote Marek: " The hard quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the “silent majority,” is cowed and extraneous.  Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 30 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant."

The effect of the media in terms of its perpetuation of viral fear is two-fold. It whips a certain amount of the population into a frenzy (whether that's fighting or buying). But perhaps, more importantly and more pervasively, it paralyzes the vast majority of its audience.

Sated and sanguine, Americans point the remote at the television to change what they see, to keep the entertainment coming. They buy when they are bored. They pop a pill when they're hurt.  It doesn't occur to us that the catastrophes we witness over cable may be in our own neighborhoods if we are not clear-thinking.

Viral fear substitutes languor for lucidity, panic for accurate assessment. Marek is right and he is not telling us to be afraid. He is telling us to wake up.

Thrill does not exist alone.

Thrill and fear are intimately connected. And in many ways our desperate thrill seeking is a defense against the constant pressure and fear we are fed by a media that is in our lives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

By going to horror movies, by subscribing to the Fear Channel, by watching real assassinations of American citizens on the internet we have found ways to manage our terror at arms length, to convince ourselves that we can control the insanity. It is delusional.

Fear That Won’t Stop: What That Means to a Country at War.

Soldiers stand at the front line in many ways. They hold off the advancing hordes with their bodies, but they are also caches for the nightmares we dare not deal with ourselves. Technically they are supposed to be more prepared for the exigencies of battle and are carefully trained to be “stress hardy.”

In many cases, this is true. Well prepared and emotionally healthy individuals can generally tolerate trauma without long-term adverse sequelae.

However, what we're now seeing is an inordinate percentage of our men and women returning from the front with incapacitating PTSD, which in real terms is a syndrome of chronically acute fear.

We usually don't see the words "chronic" and "acute" together to modify one state, but in this case  the fact that we do points to the pathology – an overwhelming fear that simply will not go away.

What is happening to them individually, however, is also happening on another level to all of us but for different reasons.

When fear is relentless, several things happen to: We lose judgment, we become insensible, our adrenal gland is either unresponsive or overly so. We are stuck in arousal and can’t determine when it becomes truly safe. Which in turn means that either we’re hypervigilant or not nearly vigilant enough.

For a country at war, these symptoms do not bode well.

Characteristics of A Healthy Militia

What does a soldier need to perform well?

If it were this person's army, I would want them neither terrified nor inured, neither overly excited (read: murderous) nor dull. I would decidedly NOT want to see soldiers whose eyes were glazed over and whose expressions revealed minds that had gone dark.

Rather, I would look to enjoin people who were adaptable, clear-thinking, and quick. I would seek only those who were motivated by honor and courage and I would rule out those who were benumbed with fearlessness or thrill-seeking.

I would know that some fear would be good. All soldiers and their commanders are sometimes afraid. But they do what must be done, because it must be, not because it’s an antidote to feeling or another ride in their own personal amusement park. No rational general wants an army of psychopaths or zombies.

When I think of a true army, I think of Tolkien’s band of warriors, all courageous and committed, all honest and honorable, at times afraid but not fearful, emboldened by their belief in their mission but not mad or indiscriminate, merciful not meek, compassionate but never yielding, and always emotionally present for themselves and for one another.

The requirements are the same for civilians. We need to be alert, to think clearly, to see threats where threats exist and respond appropriately  rather than imagining threats that don’t exist. We cannot do this if we are force-fed a daily diet of consumer-driven viral fear by the media.

The irony in this culture of idol-smashers and rebels is that what is most necessary in crisis is for us to have an authority to follow, to have bonafide leadership, people whom we can count on to say what is TRUE, not confuse us with politically advantageous spin. Part of that authority now is the media. We don’t meet the commanders and, in fact, we rarely hear from them except in orchestrated press conferences. There are no more midnight criers, their capes flapping in the icy wind as they ride through town. Whether it’s tragic or comic, our new leaders, our new midnight criers are our newscasters. Whether they like it or not, there is a certain responsibility that comes with that position.

The Writing on The Wall

The other night a friend told me about a graffiti artist in New York City who’s been covering subway and building walls with a simple declarative statement: Stop shopping and start thinking!

This got my attention since we are now approaching the season to shop… and shop and shop and shop. It also made me wonder what he was suggesting we actually think about. And perhaps more importantly, what we were doing instead of thinking.

So, more than half-way across the country, I went into town and I spent a day watching people. I observed them on the street, in stores, in restaurants, on television, at gas stations.

What I noticed overall was that the more intense the environmental stimuli the less genuine interaction there was between people.  Many walked about with glazed eyes and slightly open mouths. People appeared to be in deep trance. I am not aware of any research to validate or refute this observation, but it is what I saw.

The Impact of Too Much Information

It’s no secret that telecommunications have changed the world in which we live. There’s more information, more excitement, more scandal, more sensory overload and more crisis than ever before. Seventy-five years ago in a small town, you could spend a whole week without knowing much more than the week before.

The important items– like the assassination of a president, the illness of a neighbor or the arrival of the new preacher – made themselves known quickly enough. And people responded as necessary. . But there were long periods of time that were left, well, unfilled and simple. Not that there was nothing to do. There was always plenty to do. But it was plenty of one thing or maybe two, like getting the field plowed or fixing the roof, or going to work and coming home, not lists of twenty, thirty or forty things to do. Our ancestors were different in many ways, but perhaps the most significant distinction is that they had a lot less information to manage in one bite and a lot less to worry about. Crises happened, but they happened rarely. Now, crisis is constant. The critical state is the nominal one.

Viral Fear As Part of American Culture

Speed is only one part of a world that is spinning us out of control. On top of being pounded through all five senses, we are increasingly pressured on a psychological level:  pseudo-intimacy, over-exposure (both physical and emotional), intensity, frustration, pressure to complete multiple tasks simultaneously, complexity and confusion of social expectations, and fluidity of family roles.

Fear has become so embedded in our culture we no longer notice it as fear. We see it as thrill. One Walt Disney theme park – a place that was created as a small paradise for children and an escape for the young at heart – not boasts a ride called The Tower of Terror. Can you imagine? “Daddy, after we see Mickey Mouse can we go on the terror ride?” How do you fit those two things together? I don’t think they were made to go together, especially in children. So, then, what happens to us when we force it?

The Addicted American

Americans have always been a brave, brazen group. While most of us are religious or at least spiritual and the vast majority are incredibly generous, we are also a culture of iconoclasts and take some delight in upsetting the old order of things, splitting open the delicately jeweled egg just to see what’s inside, racing across a forbidden continent to see who can get to the rocky coastline first.

Consider the sort of person, the individual that has those qualities. Now consider that individual over time as there are fewer and fewer old orders to overthrow, fewer and fewer gods to shatter against temple walls. The energy of that person, the forces at work in him have not been changed and as a result they must find some other outlet.

When we run out of continent, we must conquer space. When we run out of new fun, we must generate danger. We have become a nation of thrill addicts unable to be still or just be. So what do we do? I think we do what our graffiti artist said. We stop thinking and we shop.