Should We Believe Everything We Hear and Live in Fear?

There are many industries that cater to the outright fear that has been bred into Americans over the years, and they’re all making money.

All of the media to which we’re exposed uses fear speak to make us concerned about what we’re eating, the receptacles we use to hold our beverages, the medical field, and just about everything in between. From documentaries to the news, fear is what leads and unfortunately, it drives the American public.

Fear Drives Our Troubles

We’ve been taught to believe what the news tells us, so when the tagline is “find out what’s killing you inside your house”, our first instinct is to tune in. What’s unfortunate, however, is that we’ve been programmed to believe everything we hear so lead-ins like this one caught our attention.

They do what they intend to do and the American people are typically none the wiser. It may seem to be a harmless tactic to raise viewership, but when it expands beyond a simple tagline, things can get a little bit dangerous. If we’re being trained to believe everything the media tells us, none of us are safe from anything.

The News Doesn’t Help

Terrorists are around every corner, every single food we eat is going to kill us, and our homes are a veritable cesspool of dangerous items bent on our destruction. So where do we draw the line? When do we stop believing everything we hear from the news?

We have become a nation guided by fear, and it’s largely the fault of the media. For years we were told that eggs were the enemy. We were told that they were horrible for our cholesterol and could lead to any number of horrific diseases that would eventually cause us to keel over in the prime of our lives.

Changing Your Daily Live Because of Fear

Fast forward a few years and now we’re being told that eggs are essential to our diets as they are a great source of protein and very low in fat and calories. If we bring the egg debate around to today, they’re okay for us to eat but only if they come from cage-free, free-range chickens raised on organic farms.

It’s enough to make your head spin, just concerning breakfast food. When you think about all of the other things that we’re being told are horrifically dangerous, it’s no wonder that Americans spend their days concerned about everything around them. Ten years ago, a Playboy Playmate started the autism/vaccination correlation debate and parents everywhere stopped vaccinating their children for potentially deadly diseases.

Sometimes We Believe the Wrong Person

This spurned a whole different debate as to whether unvaccinated children should be allowed to attend public schools. Although, we never stopped to consider the source of the correlation, to begin with. It was not the opinion of a medical professional, it was the proclamation of a woman who had posed in Playboy magazine. The best part is that she recanted a handful of years later after finding out that her son was not, in fact, autistic.

As fear drives us further and further into a devolving society, it begs the question; should we really be listening to every single thing we hear? We’re being told to change things that we’ve been doing the same way for years and years and years.

The Don’ts of Fear

Don’t drink tap water, but also don’t drink bottled water. Don’t eat carbs, but carbs are necessary for energy production. You can lose weight by doing cardiovascular exercise, but no, you have to lift weights to lose weight. Every piece of information we get contradicts the piece we got before that one and it becomes a vicious circle.

We need to stop the momentum by making our own decisions; choosing what we believe and following that rather than what we’re told to believe. Make the choices for yourself. Do what works for you. You can’t believe everything you hear.