{"id":243,"date":"2014-05-13T18:00:30","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T23:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seth-swanson.com\/?p=243"},"modified":"2014-05-13T18:00:30","modified_gmt":"2014-05-13T23:00:30","slug":"are-you-scared-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/13\/are-you-scared-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you scared yet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone’s afraid of something. \u00a0Personally, I hate flying. \u00a0The knowledge that I’m trusting my fate to uncounted individuals while I’m thousands of feet in the air, moving hundreds of miles an hour, with absolutely no control over whether I survive to the next airport gets to me every time. \u00a0I’m sure that I’m not alone in this fear. \u00a0There are loads of reasons<\/a> why airlines don’t offer parachutes. \u00a0I accept these reasons intellectually. \u00a0BUT if I were ever to get up to the counter, and the attendant asked “Would you like to rent a parachute for just $50?” my fear of flying would make me think about it. \u00a0I’d think twice if she followed that with “There’s only a slim margin that the plane will crash, but here at Blabla Airlines, we believe in offering safety.” \u00a0Now, lets add a couple TV’s covering the most recent plane crash, maybe a couple stories about people who’s lives were saved by parachutes in commercial airlines. \u00a0Suddenly, my knowledge of why taking a parachute on a passenger airplane and paying for the privilege is dumb becomes a whole lot less important than the fear. \u00a0While my knowledge might prevent me from forking over $50 to the airline, there are plenty of people without that knowledge.<\/p>\n

Now, any airline that actually started doing this would be dumb on a scale I couldn’t even begin to describe. \u00a0First and foremost, you don’t want people to be scared of flying, or they will keep their feet safely on the ground … and do something much more dangerous; driving for example. \u00a0See, my brain KNOWS that flying is safer than driving, but I’m not scared of driving (most of the time), I’m scared of heights and falling from them and the long, long wait to hit the ground and the SCREAMS AND THE OH GOD WHY AM I STILL THINKING ABOUT THIS?!<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Ahem.<\/p>\n

Point is, fear short circuits knowledge. It bypasses natural skepticism and it makes you want to act to relieve that fear. \u00a0Fear doesn’t even need to be rational and often it isn’t. \u00a0The above example of the fictional, moronic airline is purposefully dumb, but it is closer to a lot of modern advertising, and politics in particular. \u00a0I saw a little Google Ad a while ago, advertising about the great American plague, or something like that. \u00a0It was a quick little picture, with a medical looking graphic and some symptoms listed. \u00a0I saw it, and I thought, “I’ve got a couple of those.” \u00a0And BAM! Fear. \u00a0I had a disease I didn’t even know about. \u00a0I clicked the link. \u00a0It was a medical looking site; a foundation I hadn’t heard of before. \u00a0I watched their video. \u00a0By the end, I was half-convinced that my stomach bacteria were quickly killing me and causing every ill in my life. \u00a0They were pretty clever, waiting until the very end of the video to subtly drop information that, even though my gut was full of world ending killers, all I had to do was balance them out, using one of the many pro-biotic solutions, like eating yogurt or taking Brand A probiotics, or even one of the many others. \u00a0And then I realized what happened.<\/p>\n

After just a couple Google searches I find out that the medical foundations page I had been on was, in fact, part of Brand A Probiotics. \u00a0It was subtle. \u00a0The video was pretty good, not even mentioning the “disease” I’d clicked the link to find out about until a goodly ways in. \u00a0*sigh* It was a long video, and actually pretty interesting but I shouldn’t have watched it for quite so long. \u00a0Anyway. \u00a0They presented information like a history documentary, establishing credibility, then when the hook was set, they started describing symptoms. \u00a0Then they told me the cause. \u00a0Then they told me the cure. \u00a0The basic plan is to play into everyone’s natural and entirely sensible fear of illness by telling you about a broad range of symptoms. \u00a0So broad, in fact, that just about everyone who sees an add will have one of them. \u00a0You think you’re sick, so you’re afraid. \u00a0What do you need to be afraid of? Gut bacteria. \u00a0How do you protect yourself? \u00a0Probiotics (preferably Brand A, the most trusted in the business)! \u00a0They have science!<\/p>\n

They’d used my fear against my reason. \u00a0It makes me angry, in retrospect. \u00a0Granted, they’d obviously put a lot of that into the marketing campaign, but some googling and reading quickly showed me that while some of what they said was true, certain things were only true or just might be true. \u00a0Maybe.<\/p>\n

The experience proved to be an eye-opening one. \u00a0I’m noticing more and more how fear is used to motivate people, and often how its used to bypass thought and knowledge. \u00a0I’m not going to give any examples here, but we’ve got primary elections coming up here in the States. \u00a0Listen to what the candidates are saying. \u00a0I find a lot of arguments lately are playing to our fears, as a people. \u00a0We’re scared of terrorists, so we consent to being monitored to “make us safe.” \u00a0We’re scared of losing our jobs so we need stricter immigration laws. \u00a0We’re scared that our side isn’t going to win, so we have to vote along party lines because the other side will lead us all to ruin and damnation. \u00a0This side is racist! \u00a0That side is Communist! \u00a0What are you scared of? \u00a0That’s what they’ll play on.<\/p>\n

Granted. \u00a0I’m engaging a little hyperbole, but for good cause. \u00a0Do I want you to be scared that you’re scared and people are using it against you? \u00a0No. \u00a0I was people to gain knowledge and use it against that fear and the people who want to take advantage of them, no matter who or what it is. \u00a0Fear is weakness. \u00a0Knowledge is power. \u00a0 Quoting Frank Herbert’s Dune:<\/p>\n

“I must not fear.<\/p>\n

Fear is the mind-killer.<\/p>\n

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.<\/p>\n

I will face my fear.<\/p>\n

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.<\/p>\n

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.<\/p>\n

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing….only I will remain. ” – Paul\u00a0Atreides, Dune by Frank Herbert<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone’s afraid of something. \u00a0Personally, I hate flying. \u00a0The knowledge that I’m trusting my fate to uncounted individuals while I’m thousands of feet in the air, moving hundreds of miles an hour, with absolutely no control over whether I survive to the next airport gets to me every time. \u00a0I’m sure that I’m not alone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-rant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sswanson-001-site2.gtempurl.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}