Why do people just simply accept the culture of fear?

[jerry611]

Airport security is one thing... but that is not the only place that security is increasing... you can now find increased security at concerts, sporting events, or practically anywhere large groups of people come together. These places do everything from pat-downs to complete searches of pockets and bags. And in my opinion, some of it is unconstitutional.

When people are asked about the tightened security, the famous reply, "Well, that's the new norm we have to get used to..."

It makes me sick!

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Because it is comfortable

and to quote somebody I know, "it makes me feel safe."

Also it requries no responsibity, or for that matter thinking

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. Doesn't speak well for humanity, does it?

[BOSSHOG]

3. I sincerely believe that "conservatives" would be very

comfortable if bush wadded the constitution up and threw it in the shitcan, thinking that since they are "conservatives" it will have no effect on them. They continue to be idiots; and continue to benefit from constitutional liberties they work every day at destroying.

[The2ndWheel]

4. The same reason people accepted security for fear of barbarians

Civilization is about security, financial, personal, political, cultural, national, medical. We're all scared. We all live in fear. Everything we do is an attempt to take chance out of the equation.

[Rosemary2205]

5. Airport security is not acceptable either.

Airport security doesn't make us any safer. -- and people comply because we now live in a society where holding up the line (anywhere) is tantamount to child molesting. -- plus we've been taught to fear each other more than we fear our actual enemies.

[YOY]

6. Because 'Fear is the Mind Killer'

When you're afraid all the time you don't have time to think of just why you are being afraid and what you really should be afraid of.

[dipsydoodle]

7. You been reading

Dune ? :) I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.


Try the same author , Frank Herbert's , The White Plague. That'll tell you when to be afraid.

[YOY]

9. Awesome, I'll check it out

I'll be damned if he wasn't right about 'fear' though.

[dipsydoodle]

13. I agree with you

You'll probably only be able to get that book "used" on Amazon - been out of print for years. It's an excellent novel predictive of what can happen when you really piss off even just an individual.

[The2ndWheel]

11. So instead they should spend all their time

fearing what they should really be afraid of?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. The only thing to fear is fear itself.

And spiders.

[YOY]

17. No, that should realize what is scaring them so they can understand

the situation. Once you understand it you stop to be afraid.

Most folks in this country are incapable of understanding another cultural mindset due to isolationist tendencies. They are quite capable of understanding someone in their own society trying control them using fear to further their own ends. Once they understand that those people are trying to manipulate them with fear then the fear stops.

Dunno...makes sense to me :shrug:

[niyad]

8. the sheeples are amazing in their complicity. USA today had a headline

a couple of days ago, "Air travelers adjust easily" which, frankly, ought to scare the hell out of any thinking person.

[Bill McBlueState]

25. what's so stupid about that headline

What's so stupid about that headline is that, guaranteed, not *all* air travelers adjusted easily. A talented reporter would seek out people who had problems and write a story about them. There's no skill in getting a handful of happy people to utter vapid sound bites. And readers don't learn anything from that type of "reporting."

But, it's USA Today.

[Jeanette in FL]

10. Because every generation has been conditioned to fear

I just wrote about the same thing this morning. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1927729

[damntexdem]

14. For some, it may be the ...

only culture available to them -- e.g., Dubya.

[Odin2005]

15. Ask Leo Strauss, the grandfather of Neoconservatism

Neo-cons beleive that only "grand myths" can keep a society together, and that all such myths are false but should be used by the elites anyway. The WoT is simply a replacement for the Cold War; during the Reagan Administration the Neocons, aided by a new CIA director friendly to them, fed BS to our politicians that said that all millitant groups were Soviet agents in order to create a "grand myth" of a "Red Menace" when in reality the USSR was rotting away. When Gorbachev called the Neocons on thier BS and ended the Cold War the Neocons were up a creek without a paddle and had to find a new "grand myth," and the "spread freedom and democracy" rhetoric and an AQ whose abillities were greatly exaggerated (in reality it was a tiny bunch of millitants disillusioned from the falure of Islamism in the late 80's and early 90's who got lucky) WoT is what they came up with.

This BBC documentary, The Power of Nightmares, is a good show on the paralell rise of Islamism and Neoconservatism:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1037.htm

[seabeyond]

16. i mocked the security cop at the entrance of target for all to see

and know...... we are to behave. why? cause, there is a man in uniform standing there to keep us all in line.

our kids are going to be raised in environment where it will be the norm. in the 3rd world countries i use to set and study the picutres of the armed that stood around watching the people and the odd feeling of seeing armed all over the place watching. here it is today, in our country. no better. the innocent, the guilty, we are all animals, possibility abound. so afraid, so very afraid.

[VelmaD]

18. Most human beings are born with a serious design flaw...

a tendency to bend at the knees.

[negativenihil]

19. because it's easy? n/t

[porphyrian]

20. Why do people simply accept anything?

Scientifically, it is a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental experience which, today, includes societal programming (commercial, religious, governmental, etc.) to blindly accept a variety of concepts from the mundane to the nihilistic.

How many people do you know that work at a job they hate, although there are clearly other options, and not all of them are as bad as the worst-case scenarios that this question will quickly accumulate, likely in a chastising and/or condescending tone? There are no debtors prisons in America, and while there is a real and growing problem with homelessness and poverty (and it's by design), at least half of us could live comfortably, albeit in enormous amounts of debt, doing something for profit that's less hateful. Perhaps even, with a little bit of planning and creativity, employing other poor and homeless in doing so.

[meganmonkey]

21. Other than cable news anchors, who accepts it?

I don't know ANYONE who doesn't think it is all a load of political-posturing crap.
:shrug:

[AlCzervik]

22. lack of critical thinking and laziness.

[Jeanette in FL]

23. Don't they teach Critical thinking in school anymore?

I know I took it in high school. It was a great course. We would have to bring in a news article and tear it apart. What was said, what wasn't said, where is the information coming from, who is the expert who is being quoted, etc.

I wonder if they still teach that kind of course. Sadly, probably not.

It drives me nuts when someone will tell me about a story they saw on the TV, and you ask a few question of them and they have no answers or say "wow I never thought about that". Makes me crazy.

[Odin2005]

26. The Corporatists and Neocons don't want critical thinkers.

The Corporatists want compliant drones and the Neocons want people who won't question thier Sraussian "usefull lies."

[itzamirakul]

24. Think about this....some people love scary movies...chainsaw

murders, reading about other people's accidents, etc. Because they LOVE TO BE SCARED. And they get mad as hell if you and I won't be scared with them. They know they are foolish, but they love it better than sex and money.

[Greyhound]

27. They always have. I think it is related to religious belief.

(nearly) Everybody at some point in their development starts to ask The Big Questions. Why am I here, where do I come from, what is our purpose, is there even a purpose or reason for any of this, why is my life so hard, why must we die, what happens when we do, etc.?

Then along comes somebody offering (usually easy) answers to these answer-less questions and promises some comfort for The Biggest Fear, the certainty that we will die and that we will face death alone. This serves to somewhat allay those fears and releases them from the responsibility for their actions, or rationalizes the the hardships that they endure for no apparent reason, by telling them it is The Invisible Being the Sky's will and there's nothing they can do about it anyway.

So now the poor sheeple don't have to busy their overtaxed minds with these thoughts and they can go about their cud chewing at the demand of their mystical, answer bearing, masters.

Once you can accept some unsupported myth as indisputable fact, the mind is bent and can be programmed with anything desired. Including things like surrendering your freedom to preserve freedom, or blowing yourself up in order to kill others believe in a different unsupported myth.