Fear: A Tool We Are Manipulated With

Let’s take a deeper look at fear, and open up the discussion of how fears are used against people as a tool.

Fear

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about how my fear of an Electromechanical Pulse or Coronal Mass Ejection (EMP / CME) fueled my original interest in prepping. I came to this many years ago on my own as I was studying history and the Carrington Event. 

I’ve worked in the IT field off and on, and part of my job was insuring that, no matter what, we were not vulnerable to catastrophic data loss. When I read about the Carrington Event, then started to uncover what was known about the probable effect of an CME like the 1859 Carrington solar storm or an EMP, that started me thinking about our own situation and what we needed to do to protect ourselves in the very unlikely event of an EMP and the probably less unlikely event of a CME.

Fear is a great motivator in some senses; but the worst of all motivations in another way. It’s great in the sense that it gets you quickly and energetically engaged. On the other hand, when fear takes over it suppresses other parts of your mind like “good sense”… and it opens you up to being easily manipulated.

I’m going to outline what I mean, and I know that it may seem to some “political” but politics is only one aspect of the manipulation of fear… it’s just a very common one. The following scenario can be plugged into just about every aspect of life where there are “big leaders” (be it religious, social movements, education, sports, entertainment, business, etc.)

Here’s a podcast that Spice and I did on the subject that you might enjoy listening to:

Fear Manipulation

The first thing to consider when looking at the concept of how to “use fear” is that we don’t live in a vacuum. Others understand what we fear: What our concerns are, our ideas, our emotions and our beliefs. 

Several entire industries have been built for one purpose: To learn what it is that we fear, and then to provide that information (at a profit) to those who wish to use our fears to manipulate us.

The phrase “manipulate us” sounds pretty sinister, doesn’t it? On the surface, a lot of what people do with the knowledge of what we fear doesn’t seem bad at all. Businesses, for example, use the things that we fear as a way to sell products (many of which are beneficial to the public).

A perfect example is how products are marketed to the elderly. Perhaps the most famous product out there is the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” device, which allows somebody who’s fallen down to call for help. Obviously, the idea of helping a fallen elderly person is entirely good, right? Well… on the surface, yes… as long as the company is reputable, doesn’t charge unreasonable rates and actually does what they say they are going to do — help the elderly person who has fallen — every single time. 

Unfortunately

Unfortunately, not everybody has good motives. In fact, I would argue, most don’t. 

We don’t do politics here at 3BY (except that we support the second amendment) but i have to admit (without taking sides in any way) that the vast majority of politics in America is based on fear manipulation.

Everybody is doing it. All political sides seek to use what we fear as a tool to build their power base.

The shocking thing, to me, is how few people talk about this; and how few of us seem to think that it is a bad thing.

But we also see it in many non-political areas as well. We see this across the board, as I have mentioned above… the fear of not “keeping up with the Joneses”, the fear of missing out on the “next big thing”, etc.

Again, not all people who use fear as a manipulation are evil. Everybody has seen a mother of a young child use the child’s natural fear of being abandoned when the mother says “I’m leaving now, I’m going to leave you here if you don’t come on with me”. Obviously, that mother is going to do no such thing, but the child’s fear of being left behind compels it to follow. 

Turning Fear To Hate

Not everybody, however, is like the mother mentioned above. Many want to manipulate our fears as a tool to get us to buy, to vote, or to believe in whatever they are selling/pushing.

One of the strongest ways that they can do this is by turning what we fear into something that we hate. Fear manipulators do this all the time. 

If we fear, we want to do something about it so we don’t have to have that fear any more. The way the human mind works, we can turn our fears into hatred. We can assess blame to others and by doing that we suppress our fears. “It’s THEIR fault!!!” 

The manipulators know that fear is easily transmuted into hatred, and if the manipulator has converted the person with fears into a follower, it’s easy to direct those fears against the target of their choosing. It’s called demagoguery, and over the centuries we have seen some true masters of it.

Again, I want to stress, this is not political. We have seen demagoguery in all walks of life. Pretty much name an industry or interest and there have been fear manipulating demagogues in it.

Turning Hate Into Support, Turning Support Into Power, Turning Power Into Empire

The thing that manipulators know is that they can use all of the hatred that they themselves are directing into further fuel their power. There are MANY obvious historical examples from the 20th century in the political world… Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hiram W. Evans, I could go on and on.

It happens. It’s happening today, on all sides. 

Sadly, it also works.

Fear sells. Hate sells. 

So What Is The Point Of All Of This

You might ask me “yeah, so what’s the point of all of this?”

The point is this: Who do you want to be in charge of you?

Who do you want to make your decisions? 

Do you enjoy being manipulated?

Me? I don’t. Not even a little. 

I have my doubts, I have my fears, and I have my worries. But they are MINE. 

All I ask is that you think about it.

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