Gas Prices

Is this a historic week? In one 24 hours news cycle, the President tries to shut up Donald Trump and the "birthers", our media builds up the British royal wedding to a fever pitch, and the NFL's draft produces endless speculation about which 21 year olds in America are going to be getting 10's of millions of dollars.

Why is our population so focused on fantasies?

The theory here is that humans seek out distractions to avoid dealing with what is lacking in their reality, including a lack of truth. People will turn just about anywhere to look outside of themselves for "non-reality."

The entertainment industry spends billions of dollars a year on films, games, pornography, and escapism to take advantage of this. Of course in a "free" country companies and individuals can spend money on producing anything they want, while taking advantage of human weakness in the process.

A democracy does not tell its people or companies that they have to spend part of their money on productive endeavors. During this process of producing items that negatively impact the planet and its 7 billion people, and countless other species, precious natural resources are depleted. Drilling for and refining oil pollutes the environment and the Arab world holds the rest of us and our economies hostage, by manipulating production and gas prices at our pumps.

(Of course, taxes are collected so politicians can decide what is useful and/or important. But corporations hide income with accounting tricks, off shore banking, and fake overseas corporate offices, while spending $100's of thousands on expensive accountants who shelter income from the IRS. If IRS fraud, Medicare fraud, welfare fraud, etc. were not so rampant and if there were not so many loopholes in the tax law, there would be enough money to take care of the infrastructure, our seniors, and folks who honestly cannot take care of themselves due to mental illness or physical hardships. But I digress.)

Entertainment is stimulation that creates drug-like states of euphoria. The sensory input human brains receive from TV, movies, music, video games, etc. are addictive; like cocaine and heroin. There is science that examines the effects of sensory input on the brain, but I won't bore you with research info - you can look it up.

Some exposure to story telling, myth, and fantasy is important for the development of children. However, today's child and adult fantasies, even Harry Potter, are fantasies that go beyond what is healthy and beneficial. These are also heightened super-stimuli designed to create a rapid response. Like the overdose of sugar in junk food and candy. The marketing industry pumps out fantasies to consumers at warp speed, in order to satisfy its own selfish goals; greed = money ....... this is critical to the cycle of over-consumption.

Humans who like tobacco, fast and loud race cars, cheap, watered-down American beer, and incredibly over the top cartoon-like violence, are also easily drawn into voting for politicians who will give them what they want. They watch and listen to loud and obnoxiously over blown, cliche spewing, and big personality-with-attitude pundits. Check the ratings and the demographics.

So what is the point of this rant? Gas prices are high enough to effect the mindset of consumers who would otherwise be spending more in a recovering economy. The irony is that they would be buying stuff that is not necessary and not good for them, with money that they don't really have (see credit crisis).

The bottom line is that all 7 billion of us live on a beautiful planet, but have lost our way. We should be living in humble harmony, peacefully taking care of mind, body and spirit, and enjoying the simple pleasures and bounties that naturally occur around us.