This is written in response to the prevailing negative-laced oratory found on many radio stations recently, and by recently I mean since the radio was invented. Okay, maybe not that long, but it does underscore man’s lean toward the propagation and lingering on subjects based on negative patterns or negative events occurring in the world.
Doomsayers. The word evokes an image in my head of a ragged and somewhat filthy, long-haired man in tattered robes holding a sign saying the end is coming, or that the end is here.
The only difference between what I see in my head regarding that word, and what’s going on today, is that the doomsayers of today tend toward harvesting a crop based on one’s fears - something they’re getting better at decade after decade, a fine-tuning of evoking the right emotional response from you.
The crop in this particular case can be either financial wealth, shifting of political power, or both. One may say that this sort of thing is been going on for some time, but in light of the world’s financial strain and our awareness of tragedies occurring in the world, it seems to be getting more of a foothold.
And awareness is really where it’s at. Tragedies have existed throughout history, we are just now in a position, an age, where near-instantaneous transmission of events are readily placed before our eyes from “news” organizations, most of them having just a wee bit of desire to sensationalize for profit.
It’s interesting that our awareness doesn’t often extend toward ourselves. It seems we are so willing to become victims and be led down the path to our salvation by someone no less elevated than a greasy car salesman.
Now don’t you all get on me about how car salesmen aren’t in the slightest way like that… okay, I can’t even hold my laughter on that one. If your experience hasn’t been with a car salesman in that regard, then just pull up images of disreputable snake oil salesman from the 17 and 1800s. My apologies to those car salesmen out there who are honest.
(Smiling)
My simple caveat: Beware the gloom and doomsayers, look in their back quarter and see what they are purveying, that they don't speak about. Many are out to sell using fear as a motivator, and their product, the answer to your fear.
It disturbs me that people are oh so willing to dehumanize those elements who are in power. We are all people, we all stretch out from the same base desires. Position in society, or placement in an organization does not instantly make one evil or inhuman.
Unless one is a sociopath, or has a genetic expression that is been tilted, or DNA that it's been damaged whereby gene expression goes awry, there are levels of understanding and empathy inherent in all of us. The only difference is in the level of attention and action toward others versus self, or self-preservation. And self-preservation is a powerful motivator for those selling product.
There is a saying: power corrupts. In my experiences I have found to be true that if one is already corrupt, bringing them to power does nothing to reduce that corrupt base. Power itself doesn’t corrupt, it’s the individual power is placed upon that determines the expression. Which brings about another caveat: know the person you put in positions of power. Do the digging and take the time required to know and understand those you wish to elevate in society.
The problem with positions of power is that the people drawn to take those posts have somewhat of a craving for the benefits that life brings. Put in another way, and a little more dramatic I might add to make the point; dictators don’t rise to power because they are gentle and caring people with a great deal of empathy. People with those qualities don’t actively seek to step on others, or limit, or crush your liberty to see their goals achieved.
I’ve had personal experience with some financial wealth hard work in my later 20s produced, and I have found people do change with the power that money brings. For myself, I simply became more of the person I was, and most people know me to be a fairly good person, with both empathy and ambition. But the position I was in, the wealth I had, didn’t alter my base, it didn’t pervert my ambition and it never, ever, caused me to look down on others or make me think I was better than anyone else or more deserving.
I won’t say that it wasn’t enjoyable having the president of the bank greet me every time I came in, or that every teller knew my name without ever having met me, or that other business owners in the area were all to happy to personally do business with me, a preferential treatment I neither desired nor sought out.
People changed.
There were other people riding my financial success at the time, who also become more of what they were at their base. One particular person became more greedy, would look down on others and frequently voice that opinion, and so on.
What you are at your base is what you will become, with or without money. If you are a miserable person, feel that the world owes you something, then that is only amplified when you have the power financial wealth allows.
Financial wealth is just opportunity, it is a solvent for some doorways that would otherwise be closed to you. Being wealthy does not corrupt you. Not having cultivated a good moral base, a clear understanding of who you are and importance of those around you, makes corruption an easier path.
There is something twisted, though, I feel, in preying on other peoples fears merely for your financial success. When every aspect of an advertisement is geared to pluck at your fears, or to elevate your sense of anxiety about a subject (as in those using fear to gain political power), then do your homework and find out just why you are reacting to what they are saying, rather than to headlong fall onto the pathway of their promises.
Seek solutions in yourself first, in your immediate life, and in those around you. Find ways to help others dealing with the same worries you have. The solutions you come up with, the actions you perform, can only help you in the long run, and it takes the focus off of wanting to become a victim, rather than an active participant in your life.
The doomsayer mentality, once accepted and replayed then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Pathways in the mind and body then are expressed toward that confined thought, and propagate outward. Rather than seeing opportunity and potential, and positiveness, one becomes locked in a cycle that regurgitates the fear the doomsayers are all to happy to play to your ears.
