As an Addendum to the last post, in the USA, in 1949, the Federal Communications Commission created he Fairness Doctrine – “All controversial issues of public importance must be covered in a way that is honest, equitable, and balanced way.” Reporters argued that they, not the FCC, should make decisions about balancing the fairness of stories. The fairness doctrine was abolished in 1987. Curiously, media mogul, Rupert Murdock and other media moguls, sought to repeal the doctrine and be let loose to report news and information as they see fit. Coincidentally, Murdock began his Fox News network at the same time. Ronald Reagan and many others believed that market forces would keep the news media ‘honest.’ Sadly, biased news and the advent of social media have created a situation where anyone can air their opinions and even make up false stories and news. In 2004, Fox journalist Jane Akre was fired for breaking a fake story. She sued and won her case. It wasn’t that Fox reporters had won the ‘right to lie’ but that journalists in a media system who decided to lie would not be fired. Since media owners have a propensity to want to push their views on society (much like the rest of us), it is not unexpected that the owners used pressure on the editors to comply and start editing news with an agenda built into it. One of my friends noted that I write a blog to which I replied, yes, I do, but I try at least to be fair in my perspectives even if I am biased towards sustainability – that is obvious to any reader. But I do try to ensure my information is valid and checked. In all media use, it is up to the reader or listener now to do their own fact checking to discern what is real, what is factual but biased (one-sided), and what is truly fake news or invented information. Sadly, media using propaganda and inventing news is fast becoming normal. The world we now live within is controlled by the mass media who direct what we now think is reality. The idiom, “wag the dog,‘ means to purposely divert attention from what would otherwise be of greater importance, to something else of lesser significance. Dictionary.com. It has also expanded to include the generation of false narratives to hide the real truth.
We are driven by Negativity Bias, which is the phenomena by which humans give more psychological weight to bad experiences than good ones. In fact, some researchers assert that negative emotions have an impact close to three times stronger than positive emotions. Even when negative experiences are inconsequential, humans tend to focus on the negative. Even if something sounds Real and natural but is false, we will still pay attention to it (See previous post Flow Theory Part 2 – Understanding Why Flow is Important). Humans are wired for survival and so will always try to anticipate problems before they occur so they can try to avoid them. We try to stay within our comfort zone, even if it is the rut we know rather than trying to find the life we want. The world is changing so fast at this time that the fear circuits in our brain are always activated. The mass media do an excellent job of maintaining an air of fear because it what people listen to, and that sells advertising time which is how they make money and gain more influence.
An economy that is based on interest bearing debt that traps us all. Let me repeat something I said in one of my first posts on this blog site (see Economics and Well-Being 1): Economics is NOT a science. It is guessing game of predicting numbers based on previous trends. And, what you measure of importance to you, defines what you focus upon. When GDP becomes the singular measure of success then everything is equated to that economic measure and all activity is predicated on the notion that more money is the sole means of succeeding. While the next statement may sound simplistic, think about it. Economic success is geared to effectively guessing how people will invest their money to make more money. Look at the financial news and you will have certain indices keep cropping up: the Nasdaq and the Dow Jones are always up there, but every country has a range of local, regional, and international stocks being tracked – it’s ALL about the stock market – money being invested to make money. NOT, money being used to do something socially significant, although that was what they were originally set up to be about. The false narrative is that money made benefits everyone, but as most people soon realize when they are not on the benefits list, it only helps the elite economy.
Have you ever played ‘musical chairs’ where you dance around a set of chairs in the center of a group that moves around the chairs? When the music stops, all the players have to rush to get in a chair. The catch is of course that there is one chair less than the number of players. So, as the game progresses, each time the music begins, another chair is removed, until there are only two players and one chair with only one player able to win. This is the model of scarcity that we are brought up believing. (It’s another party-time version of the Monopoly board game.) We are taught to believe that everything is scarce, including money and we have to fight for it. The mass media never tells us that banks print out as much money as they want or need. Yes, it is literally printed out on paper and we are told it has value. WE buy into this narrative and accept what happens as natural. When stock markets crash and inflation soars, we accept it as just part of the system that we have to hope doesn’t ruin us. I looked at the stock market history over the past century. While some rich bankers and investors are always ruined, the uber-wealthy are never ruined. Indeed, despite the appalling scarcity they promote, these Cabalistic ones always make out like bandits, perhaps because that is literally what they are. They also manage the media outlets that dictate to us what our collective reality will look like – not true reality, just their propagandized version of it – ‘Big Brother’ like.
To break out of the Cabals scripted reality, we first have to believe that abundance is there for everyone on the planet and scarcity is merely the fear tool the Cabal use to keep us in place. In the last post I talked about numbers and how to start making sense of numbers, and also the exponential function. In scarcity, it’s about hoarding everything and fighting to maintain what you have. In abundance, it’s knowing we have enough for everyone and working to help everyone improve their lives. GDP is about scarcity, while QOL is about abundance.
To be continued……………
0 Comments