The other day I was in the kitchen remarking to my wife that these days a person can't buy cucumbers at Wegman's without also being sold sex. I saw the word on every single magazine presented before me as I walked to the checkout lane. The more I looked, the more I saw it. After a while, even the cucumbers I was holding seemed to have a hidden message. It struck me that this has been going on for a very long time, and seems to be escalating. I was reminded of the society Mike Judge envisioned in Idiocracy.
So my son piped up and said, "Sports Illustrated."
"What?" I asked.
"I bet Sports Illustrated doesn't have that word on the cover," he replied.
I nodded. He was probably right. Maybe I was overstating things. Then the new issue of Sports Illustrated came.
So my son says, "Oh my God, what the heck? Why is that word everywhere?"
Here is my answer.
There was a bee in our kitchen that morning, and I had been telling the boys that if they just leave it alone, it won't hurt them. I asked them why they think bees sting people, and they answered "because they're scared," and "because humans look like bears, and they are afraid that we will steal their honey."
Either way, I think fear is as close as we can get to a correct answer. There is some good information here if you are interested in learning more about bee-havior. Bees are interesting animals, and the idea of the hive mentality can shed some light on many aspects of human behavior today.
"So why does fear exist?" I went on. They thought for a moment, and came up with "to keep you safe," and "to protect you." Good answers. So what's the truth?
Fear appears to exist as a protective mechanism to sustain life, and prevent death and/or injury. It is thought that the fear response resides in the most primitive aspects of our central nervous systems, but all living things appear to have this resonse-ability, including plants. Perhaps the fear response resides in a more ethereal part of the body, but that is another discussion altogether. It will suffice to say that the fear response is one of the most important response mechanisms that exists for living beings, and develops early on, residing deep within the organism.
As the nervous system grows and evolves into a more sophisticated network for information processing, more complex thought patterns can arise, and eventually, self-reflection and deductive reasoning are born. However, the later additions to the nervous system which house these processes, namely the cortex and neocortex, being farther up the chain, can be short-circuited by the more primitive brain structures, often referred to as the R-Complex or Reptilian Brain. When a life-threatening crisis is perceived, nerve impulses are thought to travel to the R-Complex, and then before they are passed on to the higher centers, are routed directly to the organs and muscles, enabling a more immediate response without the need for logical thought or cognitive rationalization. Animals which have not evolved to have sophisticated nervous systems live their lives primarily acting on instinct, never having developed a cerebral cortex or neocortex.
So what are some examples of instinctual motivators? What types of behaviors and elements are needed for life to continue? Well, we need air, so breathing is a big one. Without air, we die. Without water, we die. Without food, we die. And interestingly, without sex, our species dies. Hmmm. Might it make sense that the sexual drive is such a strong impulse? Some have claimed that it is this impulse that drove God himself to start the whole thing with "the big bang."
But I digress.
Imagine if you, as a child, were taught that water is dangerous and bad, and drinking it is a sin. And let's say you believed this to be true. It follows that you would feel bad about drinking water, because you would "know" that it is wrong, but you would also know that you have to do it in order to live. You would experience cognitive dissonance, and it is likely that this would weigh heavily upon your mind, until you changed it. You might convince yourself that water tastes bad, or that the feelings you experience are the work of the devil. This all requires a great deal of thought and mental effort, in contrast with someone who takes the water for granted, knows there is plenty of it, is grateful for it, feels good about drinking it, and subsequently frees his mind to think about other things.
Now imagine that the television is constantly showing you, a firm believer in the "bad water" story, commercials featuring waterfalls and raindrops as a sales tactic. Might make you pretty thirsty. This is a good way to keep you thinking about water, right? This is a good way to keep you in your reptilian brain, don't you think? And this is also a good way to keep you in cognitive dissonance.
So essentially, what appears to be happening is that the media controllers continue to show us all images designed to keep us engaged with our reptilian brains, in order to prevent us from elevating our thoughts into the more advanced rational cognitive centers. It is primarily fear, rage, and sex that activate the reptilian brain. They show you these things to keep you dumb, to prevent you from figuring out that they are keeping you dumb, and to make you dumber.
If you have a minute, by the way, do a Google image search for "Sports Illustrated" and see how many sports you see.
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