My World
An Atmosphere of Fear and Anxiety
So here we are, in the beginning? midst? of a pandemic, all relying on the media to keep us informed. What has media accomplished? It doesn’t matter which media you subscribe to, which news program you watch, whether you prefer mainstream Canadian news, mainstream US news, alternate Internet news sites, Facebook memes and testimonials, or conspiracy theories. All media have succeeded in one aspect. All media have given us something to fear.
You may be afraid of Covid19, this lurking virus ready to attack us on numerous fronts. You may be scared to go anywhere, to see your friends, to shop, to pass a jogger on a trail. You’ve been told conflicting and evolving information of how to protect yourself. We are told, now, to wear masks, to physical distance. We’ve been told the virus can be mild, can be asymptomatic, people who don’t know they have it can pass it on. We’ve read frightening accounts of people who survived but whose symptoms were severe. We’ve learned that there is a slim survival rate for those who end up on ventilators. Economic hardship has been endured. Our aging population has suffered terribly simply because they live in “for profit” warehouses called long-term care homes. “Essential workers” have been hit hard due to crowded working conditions. The statistics are continually displayed to confirm the serious nature of the pandemic - the number of cases, the number of deaths. We are bombarded with all this, in the interest of our safety, every day, every newscast. To different degrees, depending on individual reactions and levels of belief, mainstream media has succeeded in creating a state of fear and anxiety in the population.
On the other hand we may think it’s all BS. We may believe this virus is no worse than the annual flu we are accustomed to. We may believe this virus was purposely released by the deep state to get people to willingly give up their privacy by installing controls such as tracking apps. We may think it’s a cover-up to eliminate physical currency and replace it with digital. Some prefer to blame the Chinese thinking they have some world domination scheme up their sleeve. Some believe the 1% have released the virus on us to control the masses who are getting rather uppity these days thinking the wealthy should be taxed heavily to provide better infrastructure and social programs. Some fear the establishment of a police state. Some think pharmaceutical corporations are delaying or hiding a treatment or cure so that they will profit greatly from a vaccine. Some think a vaccine will be mandatory and have no trust in its effectiveness or fear its side effects. Some scoff at the statistics because they know how easily statistics can be skewed. To different degrees, depending on individual reactions and levels of belief, alternate media has just as successfully succeeded in creating a state of fear and anxiety in the population.
The effect of all this conflicting information is polarization. We are getting ugly.
We are aligning ourselves with one camp or another. We sneer and snarl at one another on social media, pass along both our substantiated and unsubstantiated beliefs. We criticize any action “committed” by public figures that seems, to us, to be in conflict with the mainstream narrative. We berate people in public for not wearing a mask or physical distancing. We purposely invade someone’s personal space to see their reaction. We scoff at people who adhere to the recommendations of the WHO. We report on people who fail to follow the rules. And on, and on...
We are acting like a bunch of chimpanzees facing off in a battle for territory.
Even though I live in what I would call the best of all possible worlds during this crazy time, I still find myself feeling out of balance. I am more and more finding it necessary to tune out the media. On my personal Facebook page I’m avoiding the pandemic, forwarding pictures of birds, art, beautiful places, accomplishments - anything light, positive, uplifting, humorous. I won’t live in a bubble and will continue to pay attention, but for my mental well-being I need to concentrate on other aspects of life. Maybe I’m not the only one who needs to take a step back and breathe.
mltipton.blogspot.com, https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/, June 23, 2020
