Here are the worst psychics in the world. Theyre dangerous. They lead millions of people to war and mass destruction. They empower the autocratic, overbearing, domineering, dictatorial, obstinate, power-hungry and capitalize on fear. Their predictions are routinely inconsistent. They want to rob you blind and leave you powerless, void of control and without any means to protect yourselves from a savage, hostile, blood-thirsty, dangerous and perverse society of insurrectionists. They are extortionists who make much of their living by committing grand larceny on a daily basis. They want to rob you of your values, high standards, principles and convictions in lieu of their pagan, Godless, cesspool of Fascism -- All under the guise of humanitarianism centered around equality, world peace and freedom. Diversity does not work. A house divided against itself can not stand. But youre under the delusion by a power greater than yourselves. Who are these criminal psychics? -- Government. It seems that nobody can see into the future like Psychic Medium Government. For example, if a few psychopaths crack and go on a shooting spree, the government then foresees that at some point all of us will and they all band together to decide how in which to take all guns out of the equation. Of course the cracked psychopaths will magically retain theirs but fear not, no one else will have one. A book entitled, The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time, and as naturopath in search of cancer cures, I was really interested in the one noted conspiracy about why marijuana is illegal. Especially since medical science has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that cannabis oil has in fact cured certain cancers, namely brain and leukemia. The book cited, amongst other things, the patenting of petroleum-based plastics (especially polyester) by DuPont as the major nail in the cannabis coffin. Supposedly, DuPont was behind a massive smear campaign against marijuana and its purported users at the time (Mexicans and blacks), inciting fear in John Q. Public and lobbying for taxes against the growth of hemp, eventually pricing out hemp farmers, and then eventually the feds named it a Schedule I substance, and that was the end of it. Virtually every time the government discovers that some lay person has found a particular life-saving cure for a particularly dangerous illness, its then decided that its not in the best interest of government to cure thousands, if not tens of millions of people since that might dramatically increase our world population and cost the government umpteen billions of dollars. It would cost them money they dont have. They see a future of enormous populations living beyond 100 years old and realize that something must be done to stop this now. If the government does not predict that they shall greatly profit from your survival, they will not assist you nor encourage you in seeing tomorrow. When a propagandist warns members of her audience that disaster will result if they do not follow a particular course of action, she is using the fear appeal. By playing on the audiences deep-seated fears, practitioners of this technique hope to redirect attention away from the merits of a particular proposal and toward steps that can be taken to reduce the fear. This technique can be highly effective when wielded by a fascist demagogue, but it is typically used in less dramatic ways. Since the end of the second world war, social psychologists and communication scholars have been conducting empirical studies in order to learn more about the effectiveness of fear appeals. Some have criticized the conceptualization of the studies, and others have found fault with the experimental methods, but the general conclusions are worth considering, if not accepting. •All other things being equal, the more frightened a person is by a communication, the more likely her or she is to take positive preventive action. (Pratkanis and Aronson, 1991) •Fear appeals will not succeed in altering behavior if the audience feels powerless to change the situation. •Fear appeals are more likely to succeed in changing behavior if they contain specific recommendations for reducing the threat that the audience believes are both effective and doable. In summary, there are four elements to a successful fear appeal: 1) A threat 2) A specific recommendation about how the audience should behave, 3) Audience perception that the recommendation will be effective in addressing the threat, and 4) Audience perception that they are capable of performing the recommended behavior. When fear appeals do not include all four elements, they are likely to fail. Pratkanis and Aronson provide the example of the anti-nuclear movement, which successfully aroused public fear of nuclear war, but offered few specific recommendations that people perceived as effective or doable. By contrast, fall-out shelters were enormously popular during the 1950s because people believed that shelters would protect them from nuclear war, and installing a shelter was something that they could do. In a similar fashion, during the 1964 campaign, Lyndon Johnson was said to have swayed many voters with a well-known television commercial that portrayed a young girl being annihilated in a nuclear blast. This commercial linked nuclear war to Barry Goldwater (Johnsons opponent), and proposed a vote for Johnson as an effective, doable way of avoiding the threat. In contemporary politics, the fear-appeal continues to be widespread. When a politician agitates the publics fear of immigration, or crime, and proposes that voting for her will reduce the threat, she is using this technique. When confronted with persuasive messages that capitalize on our fear, we should ask ourselves the following questions: •Is the speaker exaggerating the fear or threat in order to obtain my support? •How legitimate is the fear that the speaker is provoking? •Will performing the recommended action actually reduce the supposed threat? •When viewed dispassionately, what are the merits of the speakers proposal?
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 22:00:14 +0000
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