Fear Mongering Destroys Life – Joy & Passion Creates Life

Apr 14, 2012 by Phyllis Joy Gilfilen

The principle I want to talk about in this article is that “Fear mongering destroys life, joyful passion enhances life!”  This is an extension of the last article I wrote about “Why Sales of Painkillers Soar..?” and referred to a news article that I believe is nothing less than a sensationalized commercial for drug companies masquerading as news.

Published in the Bellingham Herald, virtually the entire article, as it was written, displayed and endorsed the destructive to life through fear-mongering. Let me be say it a different way:  By emotionally charging the article by their choice of words and images, it becomes news carefully crafted into a professional commercial to sell more painkillers to you, your friends and family.

Whether this is done consciously by the crafters or unconciously, the net effect and the end result is the same:  not to stop the sales of legal narcotics, but to increase the sales.

While the smokescreen idea is to motivate you to be aware, the sales pitch comes in the backend.  Notice what is missing:

• It does not redirect you to life enhancing alternatives.
• It does not give you any actions to take that would make any difference.
• It does not give you any real sensory appreciation for the real cost to the taxpayers, to the family, to the planet.  In fact, what it does is tell you how many narcotics the average family member takes.

The article as written leaves the reader feeling any number of emotions…especially hopeless, powerless, overwhelmed or angry.  All these feelings feed depression, and pain in the soul.  Bottomline, it feels bad.

And the emotional response is to want to feel better.  Painkillers make people feel better, they say.

So the cause of the bad feeling (problem) and the painkiller solution (antidote) are directly linked subconsciously in your psyche by the story.  You never made the link yourself, yet unwittingly you are likely to walk away from the article with a seed planted in your head that painkillers will solve the problem.  Whether this is true or false is not the point.  The seed was planted by the way the presentation.

And our local news staff placed the article/ad appropriately in the Bellingham Herald in the business section.  Why?  To further scare the marketplace, and inform on market trends, so investors know where to invest to get the best return on investments?

Then the key words of the search engine system strengthened the article’s impact on the emotional hearts of people, selecting appropriate ads to support the articles impact. More fear mongering. 

The Herald editorial staff probably has no idea they were manipulated by the drug companies with the illusion that they were serving the public to inform them of the dangers of using these addictive legalized narcotics.

Now, I do not say this lightly, for the illusion of being a concerned article is strongly maintained by the writers  There are only a couple ways to know if what I am saying is true:

1)  Compare:  Feel your way through the article as written.  Then compare it to a different article written with the same or similar data, different purpose.   Find one that is actually designed to enhance your life and gives you tools that you can use in place of painkillers. Or find one that actually is designed to stop the sales of painkillers and watch how they write it.

When I write a comparison article…it will be along this line:  ”Let’s stop the escalating sales of painkillers: Here’s what you can do!”  And I would go through alternatives to the various narcotics, giving the dangers, and providing alternatives from various industries that are less harmless.  I would only name them once.  Then I would call the medical profession on their legal oath to do no harm, and invite the medical professionals to go read the Naturopathic Physician and other qualified resources for more education.

2) Study the actual composition of the article and the rest with a thoughtful analysis of sales techniques, subliminal messages…and diagnose it rationally.  Use your critical awareness to notice how many fear mongering words are in the article. 

As it is written, it strikes fear into the soul just in the title.  They do it by saying, “Sale of Painkillers Soar Around the US, Fueling Addiction”. This scares and intriques you…you are hooked.  Why?  Virtually every word has an emotional hook and energetic density that captures and triggers a subtle fear response in the cellular memory of our bodies.  Look at every word and feel your bodies reactions.  Sale. Pain. Killers. U.S. and “us” (the people, you and me). Fuel. Addiction.  I feel reactive, don’t you?

Unless you are totally numb to looking at authentic reactions in your body, most people have a negatively charged emotional reaction to this.  We will react…whether it is by choosing to deny it and cancelling it out, getting irritated or angry, or wanting to know more so we can say, “I knew it.”

Now, when you read down through the body of the article it feeds your fear, making it an epidemic of reactivity.  They use the medical profession…and we all have been trained to mind the medical professsionals…to create the authenticity of the story.  They use the stats to prove their point.

3) Study the layout of the article and notice all the trigger words in the article, in the visuals that are motivating you from a fear place.  Notice that the ads that are linked all have women in them (victims) or pictures of the drugs themselves.  Notice that the commercial names of the drugs are listed multiple times in the article and in the related photos.  Notice that a commercial enterprise is where you go to fight the addiction, and to get more narcotics.

This is so clearly a commercial disguised as news, that it should be blackballed from any serious news media outlet.

As writers and critical thinkers, lets start calling our media, our commercial enterprises, our fear mongering stories out for fouls.  Let’s start asking anyone who writes to write from a position of education in critical thinking, and from a solution basis.  We must start to build all new industries that support life-enhancing behaviors and actions.

Who else sees this stuff happening all over the news…daily?  It is time for a new story that is about turning this culture away from the sensationalism, and inviting people to step into their own empowerment to create change, to build all new industries that are life enhancing and more.

Who do you know that is doing something that is deeply, truly awesome that we need to know about?  Invite them to join us as a writer on UnitingCreatives.com