Now most recently,  we are being terrorized with the H1N1 epidemic and the threatened choice between vaccination and quarantine. It has been 9 years of mounting political tensions, cascading failures in the old boy network and a broken economic system, and a massive campaign of viral fear with an expectably increasing sense of panic.

Little did we know when we started writing The  Worst is Over that the need for it would be so great or the ways in which it could be used so widespread.

I know I can speak for my co-author when I say that Verbal First Aid is like the emergency kit most of us pack into our cars or have under our sinks at home. We know we really ought to have it well-stocked and be properly versed in its usage, but we loathe the idea of actually needing it.

Well, we need it now.

Because the single most potent antidote to Viral Fear is Verbal First Aid.

Originally designed as a protocol for first responders and emergency medical personnel, Verbal First Aid has become much more than that. What we have found by teaching people how to use words to facilitate self-healing in others is that we are also giving them tools to change the way they heal themselves.

What we say can do more than change how we feel emotionally, although it can certainly do that. Unfortunately, most crises are handled without much consideration of the impact of words. If a person is bleeding, we bandage the wound, but we don’t address the fear. If a person’s feelings are “hurt,” we tell them to “get over it” and get back to work. The research abounds with examples of how words can generate a cascade of chemicals that can turn off pain, reduce inflammation, or help stop bleeding. And the quicker we do that, the quicker the healing can begin.

This is the core principle of Verbal First Aid: What we say at the scene of a medical emergency or emotional crisis is as important as what we do.

The same is true of what we say to ourselves. And what we allow ourselves to believe.

When advertisers, particularly insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants sell to us, they are using what hypnotherapists call "suggestion." They may not literally tell us to be afraid (although I have seen ads that do), but they suggest that there's good reason to be afraid, that if we don't buy X or do Y or see Z, we could get sick, be left out, or lose everything we own.

When they say these things to us (and often they use very clever ways of saying and showing it) we are not just hearing their words. We see them as images in our minds and we respond both physically and emotionally immediately unless we have a way of countering the suggestions.

And that way entails a profound change in our core thinking.

The New American Economy: Viral Fear

America is driven by many things. Not that long ago, it was axiomatic that sex sells. But that has changed. More than almost anything else (except fear) it is driven by ambition. Under that rubric I include greed and power. It is the  flipside to being such a courageous, inventive and heroic nation.

Our desires are so great, we outpace our own abilities to both produce and consume. Our economy and our cultural activities are built squarely on that foundation, and in order for growth to continue, our desires and capricious appetites (which we are convinced are real needs) must likewise continue to grow.

We must be convinced that we have to have that new car even though our “old” one is only 3 years old and perfectly functional.

We must be motivated to buy that new high-definition TV even though it will mean digging ourselves into a hole of debt so deep we’ll have to work two jobs and have no time to watch it.

We must be made to believe that buying a new dress will make us more lovable, more appealing and more desirable even though we have done nothing to change the way we treat others.

We must be reassured that a painful, dangerous surgery will give us relief from the self-loathing that is our most gruesome secret, even though all we will get out of it is a face that can no longer smile.

This is the core belief system on which Viral Fear is based: That we need things.

We stand on line for hours, perhaps days in cold, wet weather waiting for the newest release of a video game. We fight one another to be the first in line for incredibly ugly-looking dolls at Christmas time and pay a premium for the privilege. We spend money most of us don’t have on salves, scents, pills and potions to make us appear young, give us longer-lasting erections at 70 years of age and pretend we can ward off the inevitable.

Why? Because we’re afraid. But of what are we so afraid? No matter how much money they have, no matter how cleverly they insinuate their suggestions into our collective consciousness, advertisers can only make us as afraid as we're willing to be. Their suggestions take hold because they resonate with us.

In a country of greater comfort and security than any other in recorded history, we’re thoroughly afraid of everything: of being alone, of being intimate, of being too skinny, of being too fat, of being too young, of being too old, of having too little, of having too much, of changing too fast and of being too still. We’re afraid of being alive and we’re terrified of dying. The irony – and the point on which this all pivots – is that our fears are precisely commensurate with the distortion in our perceived needs. The more we feel we need, the more afraid we are of not having it, being it or doing it. The more afraid we are, the more we need. And so it goes. The market depends on it.

Verbal First Aid to the Rescue

Releasing ourselves from the trance of Viral Fear requires two simple things:

1. An awareness that we are in trance.

2. A willingness to see things differently, to think differently.

A while back I met a man at a large event in Albuquerque. After showing me the bracelet he was wearing around his ankle because of a DWI, he started complaining about the fact that he was being mandated to go to A.A. meetings.

"They're all a bunch of zombies. They all say the same things. It's like being brainwashed."

I looked at him, partly amused and partly saddened. "And you think you're not already brainwashed?"

He stood quietly so I continued.

"So, all the drinking you did, all the trouble you got into because of it, that was because you had such a clear sense of self? Your beliefs about alcohol were never influenced by television or your family? You were never moved by the ads that showed beautiful women falling all over the guy with the Dos Equis, right?"

I thought for a moment that he was going to throw his soda at me. Instead, he shrugged his shoulders and said, "I never thought of it that way."

I think for him that was the beginning of the end of his trance and, hopefully, the end of the hold that Viral Fear had on his soul.

When the market tells us to be afraid, we need to have an answer at the ready.

Casting Out Fear

There is a remedy for fear.  We heard in the Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them…And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?”

The remedy, the antidote to Viral Fear and generalized anxiety is faith–faith that there is a God and there is more to the universe than we can see, faith that things will work out, faith that we will have enough, faith that we can take care of ourselves, and faith that this life is only one small piece of a very large picture.

We have to begin a full-throttled reversal of the value system that has America in a choke-hold. We've got to let go of our stuff and our need for more. We have to come to grips with the fact that, no matter what the insurance companies imply, we are not going to live forever and things in this mortal coil will never be utterly secure.

In one way or another we are commanded over and over and over again to “fear not” and trust God. Fear and faith seem unable to co-exist, incapable of being released in the same breath.

Yet, we know that fear is a reasonable response to certain situations. How can we be told not to be afraid when we’re such fragile, needy beings in a fallen world and even the greatest of us have succumbed? How can we tell ourselves the same and believe it?

From my point of view, not all fear is the same. There is the fear that furthers our survival, like stepping out of the way of an oncoming train. Then there is the fear that is futile. The latter is a threat of monumental proportions in our culture. It is pathological, pervasive and addictive. It keeps us from doing that which we need to do to survive (or to thrive) and enables us to justify that which we ought never to do. It undermines faith and corrupts our thinking.

In Verbal First Aid we start by telling ourselves some simple truths.

We don't need everything they tell us we do. The new phone, the new TV, the new outfit and the new breasts are all fine if you want them and can afford them. Knock yourself out. But you don't need them. And they won't make you feel any better about yourself. Ever. No matter what.

Not everything or everyone is out to get us. (They don't have the time or inclination. Really, we're not that important.) Some threats are real. Some aren't. Get informed so you can tell the difference.

Not every storm will hit our shores and, if by some chance it does, we have what it takes to weather it. We've all been in storms before. They blow hard and then they blow away.

Not every boo-boo will  become a pus-oozing ulcer. As you must have noticed when you were quite young, boo-boos get better all by themselves.

Not every germ means the death of us and we don't have to pop pills for every sniffle. We have immune systems. That's what they're for.

Not every sales pitch means we have to buy.

That's what Verbal First Aid is for.

By

Judith  Acosta

Recently, the Massachusetts legislature passed Bill 2028 that will give the governor and the health commissioner the absolute authority to put a range of emergency measures into action in the event of a health “crisis” or “emergency.” According to the video report which can be seen on youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXBV2jGrBg8 ), this will include enforced vaccinations, quarantines, and fines of up to $1,000 per day. The bill was passed rapidly, according to the reporter, because of what was happening in Mexico.

First, a question, please:  Has anything changed in Mexico? Because the last I saw a report on the situation there, it was more hysteria than disease. And the same could be said about anyplace else on the globe. People die every year of acute disease. So far, over the last year, fewer have succumbed to complications from the flu than in years prior. Why the hysteria? If nothing has changed in Mexico, then something has changed in Massachusetts.

A Hysterical History

Hysteria is not new to the American political scene. This is not the first time we have been faced with proposed or real internments because of a perceived threat. Nor, should this republic continue, will it be the last time that Forces  both frenzied and frightened threaten to corral and silence those who disagree or disobey. First it was the Germans, then it was the Japanese, then it was the Russians and communists, then the hippies, after that the terrorists–whoever they were.

What is different this time and what is so surreal to me as I watch the news developing, is that now the enemy is us. Or rather, it’s germs that may be IN us. It is the first time America has turned the gun around and locked in on itself. For no reason other than the possibility that some of us may get sick, we have put the entire American public in the crosshairs.

The question in this article is not whether the vaccine is effective or not or even whether it’s necessary or not.

(For more information on this topic, please go to http://www.wordsaremedicine.com/2009/08/25/primun-non-nocere-first-do-no-harm/.)

The question is who determines a person's medical treatment. And at this point, it looks like the frenzied and the frightened have the power.

Like myself, many of you who are reading this are not old enough to actually remember the internment of Japanese Americans. But the data and the painful personal documentation of the seizure are all readily available. According to the census of 1940 (www.answers.com), 127,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived in the U.S. with approximately one-third born in Japan.

Even prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were not allowed to own land, be naturalized, or vote in some states. But after the bombing, the rumors of Japanese-American saboteurs pressured the Roosevelt administration to sign Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which forced all Japanese-Americans to evacuate the West Coast. No comparable order applied to German-Americans or Italian-Americans, with whose homelands we were also at war.

Ten internment camps were established throughout the west and southwest, where approximately 120,000 people were held after being forced to sell off or lose any property they had. Naturally, with shackles on their wrists and bayonets at the door, they were not in a position to sell any of it for very much.

Oddly, the Supreme Court didn’t overturn the order. The vast relocation was upheld in Hirabayashi v. United States and Korematsu v. United States.

The camps continued until 1946 and it wasn’t until 1948 that any compensation was made for the property loss sustained by the interned. In 1988, survivors were paid another $20,000.

The 1950’s saw a similar, but less physical assault on civil liberties in the person of Joe McCarthy, who collaborated with big business to essentially keep anyone suspecting of seditious politics from working, an elaborate “starvation” policy to put pressure on writers, actors, politicians, and academics to conform and give up their colleagues, their convictions, and their constitutional rights in exchange for a good meal. Some did. Some didn’t. It was a harsh time–a truly frightening time for so many innocent Americans–and I can’t honestly imagine what I would do if my family had no means of support but me and I had the choice to provide them with food or continue writing what I believed to be true. Do you starve your children or do you speak up? I do not judge anyone.

But the time is coming again when we may be forced to choose.

The Executive Order Highway

It started, oddly enough, with John F. Kennedy, a democratic president, on February 2, 1962. That day marked the beginning of a series of FEMA Executive Orders that would give the government absolute sovereignty in the event, once again, of any emergency. Who would determine whether there was such an emergency? The same people writing the executive orders.

Who could be surprised by that?

Here but a few of those orders:

E.O. 10990, which allows the government the right to take over all public transportation, including rail, seaports, trains, and airports.

E.O. 10995, which permits the government to seize all the media and control the information available on any channel, radio, television or cable.

E.O. 10997, which states the government may control all utilities—electric, gas, communication lines.

E.O. 10998, which gives the powers that be the ability to seize any and all means of personal transportation—your car, bicycle, motorbike, or plane.

Finally, E.O. 10999, which takes your farm, your food, and your future.

These orders supersede any local or state regulations. Meaning, regardless what you, your senators, or governors have to say about it, they’re coming in. (You can see these and more at:  http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/executive-orders/1962.html)

These Executive Orders, which have stood on the books for more than forty years now, are coming to a bizarre, and fundamentally horrifying fruition under another, more modern version called REX 84, standing for Readiness Exercise number 84. According to Diana Reynolds (http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/fema/Fema_3.html), REX 84 is also known as a continuity of government plan. I guess in an emergency of global proportions (this plan was designed and enacted in cooperation with NATO), the principle purpose of government is to keep itself—and not its citizenry—alive. It reminds me of what they say on the airlines: “Please put your mask on you first and then attend to your child.” It should make sense. So, why does everything in me find it so frightening?

There is more: It seems that there are already a large number of detention camps fully operational and ready to receive evacuees—or detainees, as you see fit to call those who wind up there.

Under this program, certain military bases are closed down and turned into “housing” centers, although some pundits and scholars question whether that’s a fair word when those living there will not be able to leave of their own accord.

Where the Highway Leads—H1N1 and Viral Fear.

This is not a matter of politics—neither left nor right. I have scanned the blogs, the fanatics, the more centrist news media, and the archives and, although the left is accusing the right and the right is accusing the left of being at fault for the sorry state of our liberties, they are both as aghast as they are against it. Neither side stands to win anything by losing the Bill of Rights. It is truly only the wildly uneducated, the fringe paranoids, and the secret fascisti who think any of this makes any sense.

Over the years, starting with the Act of August 29, 1916, continuing with the National Security Act of 1947 and the 1950 Defense Production Act, the grasp of the government has extended steadily, ending (but not stopping) with the most recent security measures enacted under the Bush/Cheney administration in the Patriot Act.

Despite the seeming solidity of our system of government, despite the written guarantees of our constitution our bill of rights and our declaration of independence, we have had to fight for the simple right to free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of political point of view and freedom (above all) to dissent over and over and over again. These rights do not come cheap. We must pay for them with our vigilance and our hard work. We must choose to be free. No one can give that to us.

Choice is both the glory and the bane of the American system. Because in order to continue speaking freely, in order to continue choosing our own candidates, in order to decide whether or not we will take a medicine or a submit to a vaccination or not, we have to choose. Constantly. It is not one choice and the matter is solved. Like breathing, it is something we must do every day. Will Viral Fear sweep us away as it has our politicians?

We are always being offered a barter for freedom: If you were guaranteed security, a good job with a 6-figure salary, an insured retirement plan, and a house stocked with cheap, but filling food, would you take it if all you were being asked to do was take a little pill? Would you even momentarily consider the trade off? I think most people would.

Most, unfortunately, do all the time.

We are being told: “Yield up your principles and you will be safe.” This is not at all different than the deal McCarthy offered the blacklisted in the 1950’s: “Give up your friends, your ideals, your beliefs and your conscience, and you will be rich again.”

The American conscience and our freedom of choice can sadly be bought with a coupon or a good ad. We will sacrifice our ability to communicate without surveillance for empty sacks they assure us will make us feel safe forever. Sadly, very few are willing to test either their own characters or the snake-oil salesmen to see if anything they are saying is true. As it turns out, if you give people enough comfort or the illusion of security, the purveyors of false promises don’t have to take our freedom away. We give it to them.