Just One Joey: We Are Scared. The Media Told Us So.

Did you hear the good news?

Probably not.

You never hear that.

I mean, unless you are around a Jehovah’s Witness.

But that’s old news, really. Depending on your religious affiliations, it’s not news at all.

We are usually talking about something bad we heard on the news.

Hurricanes

Flooding

Bombings

Killings

Cover-ups

Presidential nominees and how they will be horrible

Russia

North Korea

Etc.

Are we walking the dog or is the dog walking us?

I am inclined to say that the media is driving the car here, but what if they are just giving us what we want?

Do We Want To Be Scared?

It seems ridiculous, why in the world would anyone want to be scared?

Yet we seem to be driven by it.

Or are we driven to it?

There is a quote in the new, amazing, book, Presuasion, but Robert Cialdini: “The press may not be successful most of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling them what to think about.” I agree and disagree with that. I think it does tell us what to think about, especially since we are going to them for information. But, whatever they say becomes our scope, both for what is important and (depending on their spin) how to feel about it.

Example: If I turn on “World News Tonight” with David Muir, and he says, “Earthquake caused by fracking in Texas levels homes,” I am thinking, “holy s***, those poor people, and fracking is horrible.” So the next day, when they show two shacks that collapsed, and tell you that the earthquake was a 3.2, I still have that feeling of “holy s***” because of my initial reaction. Unless the “new” news delivers that same pop of excitement and emotion, the original feelings are going to be locked in.

Have you ever noticed that people who watch different news sources are worried about different things?

If you watch FOX News you are worried about immigration and all the illegals running rampant, raping and killing people, or Hillary’s dire health and her emails.

If you watch CNN or MSNBC you are worried about Trump’s, well, everything, Russia, and positive spins on Wikileaks, etc.

We all live in the same country, with the same “news,” but we get completely different stories, or the same stories with completely different results.

No wonder we are so divided right now. Mr. Fox News is worried about one thing while Mr. CNN is worried about other stuff, each one looking at the other wondering why they are worried about “that.”

The man walks the dog.

The dog walks the man.

So who is leading who?

Science And Stuff

1. Anything that draws focused attention leads observers to overestimate it’s importance.

2. Violence, with its associated threat to safety, has always been able to draw human attention.

3. Above all else, animals are designed to react to threats of physical harm. Our chemistry changes, our focus is heightened, and our adrenaline spikes to make sure we are able to decide and react quickly in order to survive.

4. When we feel a threat, everything else comes second.

That’s the news in a nutshell.

They are taking advantage of our “lizard brain.” That, by the way, is the “and stuff” part of this section, not the science. Just want to make that clear.

But it is who we are. We have had thousands of years of evolution, and developments that have allowed us to get to this place at this time. Media manipulation is relatively new. When we feel a threat, is it real or is it portrayed as real? We can’t always tell. We hear something fearful and our biology takes over. Thousands of years of survival is making us more aware, more on edge, and left focusing on something that may or may not be true, even when it is presented as such.

Are We Scared? Or Does The Media Make Us Scared?

They take our psychology, our biology, and use it against us. While we turn on the TV, or check the news feed, we are allowing them to treat us like puppets.

What would happen if you paid zero attention to the news for a week?

Absolutely nothing.

Zika, killer bees, earthquakes, ISIS, illegal immigrants, all those things that are causing us to s*** our pants every day would still be there. The difference? We would realize that it is not something that we need to worry about. They force us to worry about them, and we let them.

If we didn’t focus on the hyped issues, we could then turn our attention to the things that actually do affect us, our home, our neighborhood, or our community. The things that actually matter, instead of the things they tell us matter.

I am not saying that it is not important to know certain things that are going on in the world, but we focus on things we have no control over while the things we do have control over sit idly by with no attention.

Stop letting the news dictate your fears. Stop being a puppet.

You are messing up your pants for nothing.

Turn it off and live a real life, your life.