I find it disturbing that the US has become such a nation of fear controlled by the fear mongering media. We live and thrive on being terrified of everything. I am writing this to say that I am not scared and I’m never going to be.
I watched the news on TV for the first time in a long long time yesterday. I don’t even know why I turned it on. I just didn’t have anything to do, and got caught up in a game of channel surfing. It’s crazy the way the media presents things in a way that sounds threatening to our safety and well being. From terrorists, to hurricanes, to Korean ICBM’s, to global warming, to cancer, to blah blah blah. The list just goes on and on.
After I couldn’t handle listening to it anymore, I walked outside. I looked around and thought “bullshit” The sky wasn’t falling. No missles were flying over head. People weren’t dropping dead from bird flu. The end is not near. It then occured to me that FDR was right. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Let me let you in on a little secret, that I know of. At the very root of life and everything two things are certain. Life and death. It’s a fact. Everything that has a beginning also has an end.
Now, we have come a long way since man first climbed out of his cave millions of years ago. Most of us no longer have to worry about the possibility of being eaten by a tiger, but I don’t think that cavemen were all that concerned about it either. It was just the way life happened. Sitting around worrying about it didn’t help matters out much. If early man never left his cave because he was scared of being eaten by a tiger then he quickly would have died of starvation. And now here we are in the modern day where we have so much and our life span is longer than it’s ever been. But yet, what are we doing? Cowering in the face of fear. This thought sickens me. How can you truly live if you spend your life worrying about being alive?
I for one am not going to live like this. I am going to spend my life pursuing life instead of preserving it. I am going to venture out of the cave and see what the world has to offer instead of hiding from the tiger.
Beautifully articulated… your premise reminds me of a Bill Hicks comedy routine….
“I don’t understand anything, so there you go … You know what my problem is? I watch too much news, man. That’s my problem, that’s why I’m so depressed all the time. I figured it out. I watch too much CNN, man. I don’t know if you’ve ever sat around and watched CNN more than, I don’t know, 20 hours in one day … I don’t recommend that. Watch CNN Headline News for 1 hour, it’s the most depressing thing you’ll ever fucking do. ‘WAR, FAMINE, DEATH, AIDS, HOMELESS, RECESSION, DEPRESSION. WAR, FAMINE, DEATH, AIDS, HOMELESS …’ Then, you look out your window … [makes cricket noises] Where’s all this shit happening? Ted Turner’s making this shit up! Jane Fonda won’t sleep with him, he runs to a typewriter: ‘”By 1992, we will all die of AIDS.” Read that on the air. I don’t get laid, no one gets laid!’ I’m writing Jane Fonda: ‘Will you fuck this guy so we can get some good news, please?’ I want to see a well-laid Ted Turner newscast: ‘Hey, it’s all going to work out. Here’s sports.’”
taken from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Hicks
This post was actually loosely based on that exact Bill Hicks skit.
Maybe that’s why I’m not afraid of dying, because when I know that I will finally be able to sit down and have a smoke with Bill Hicks.