Are Americans delusional?

LIfe is getting betterHumanity is so blessed, particularly humans who live in the US, that even in places with the worst poverty and conflict human beings are showered with an abundance of amazing realities.

It’s no secret that all kinds of negative events are on the decline world wide despite what corporate news, political leaders, and the military might claim.

Our world is awash in energy.  It flows everywhere.  Humans have barely begun to harness and harvest the free stuff we receive each millisecond in the form of solar, wave, geothermal, and wind energy. These former “alternatives” are now real options and becoming more legitimate every year.

We are protected by an atmosphere that continues to be robust enough to allow only the life-nurturing stuff from space while deflecting everything else.  Its ability to continue doing that has no end in sight.  That atmosphere, by the way, is chocked full of elements which provide every single person on the planet with more than enough air to breathe.

The sun, the atmosphere, and the elements in our atmosphere provide a robust soup of energy transfer that propels at the most minute levels quantities of life-giving abundance so pervasive, humans become numb to the abundance. (When was the last time you marveled at what the sun, the earth, plants or society provides?) Nonetheless, we benefit from the soil, air, sea, the plants and animals therein (and I’m not just talking about the ones we eat) and the connections among all these.  I, for one, go giddy at the thought of all this blessing.

So why are we, especially Americans, so focused on the negative things happening?  The Slate article I linked to above explains this well from one perspective.  The gist is that mass media create the illusion.

There’s some accuracy to that.  I remember one winter day watching the news about a flood in an area where I lived.  The news footage made it look like the entire neighborhood was under water.  There were people using kayaks to get around!  Watching the footage and hearing the reporter, you would have thought no member of that community escaped the flood.

Later that day, just by chance, I passed by that neighborhood and decided to take a look.  What I saw with my own eyes was contradictory to what I saw on television.  The “flood” affected only a few blocks of the neighborhood.  The water was just deep enough to float a kayak—a majority of the neighborhood was not at all affected.

Why does the media sensationalize such an event, making it seem larger than it really is?  Why do we fall for it?

Do you think money has anything to do with it?  I do.  After all, everybody in the industrial world (and those exploited by it) need to earn livings to afford necessities.  This includes media moguls, newscasters, newsroom managers.  These people (and a whole lotta other folks) know a thing or two about human behavior.  They use that knowledge to attract your attention, which makes them money and prepares your mentality for future money-making opportunities.  Thus the delusion.

One of the Biggest Stories Ever Told is not Christ’s story.  It’s the story telling Americans and the world at large that there is a credible threat beyond our borders.  So credible we must spend trillions of dollars fortifying our military might to defend against that threat.  Boston Globe Staff Writer Stephen Kinzer does an admirable job illuminating the story’s preposterous nature.

The American people are some of the most delusional in the world. The good news is that their delusion is their salvation.  When they finally awaken from their horror, their reaction will catapult them directly toward Copiosis.

It’s a sure bet.

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