State of fear

Every person in the world has a natural fear for one thing or the other. Some fear for ghosts, some fear for darkness, even some fear for cockroaches, while some fear for all of these. Only one thing among humans is common. Fear. This basic instinct of human being is being capitalised by the governments and the media. At any given point of time, either the government or the media keeps the people under tremendous pressure or fear.

To start with, try to answer these two questions. What is the inflation data for the week ending this Friday? What is the price of crude oil per barrel as of today? These two issues are publicised as much as possible by the media in the recent past. Isn't it the duty of media to inform people when good things happen as much as they publicised the bad things? 'Oil on the boil' was the caption when the price of oil went up to 147 dollars per barrel. Now, oil is on the cool. Who bothers? The same applies to the inflation data as well.

Let us look at a few examples over the last one hundred years. We all know that global warming is a potential threat to the world in the coming years. For some reason the world is heating up for the last 150 years. It could well be due to the green house effect, which is the major factor for global warming. The amount of co2 that is emitted due to human activity is increasing. No question about that. But the amount of co2 in the environment is still less than half a percent.

But, the weight of all termites existing in the world is more than the weight of all human beings in the world. Termites excrete methane. Methane is a green house gas which contributes for global warming. To make things worse, methane is 21 times destructive when compared to co2. Yet, no one publicises it.

According to global warming theory, the upper atmosphere should get heated up first before the Earth's surface. But, the current phenomenon does not prove any increase in upper atmospheric temperature. Global warming also states that the number of frosty days will come down. But the whole of Europe is experiencing highest number of frosty days for the last 18 years. Fishy, isn't it?

When the temperature data for two places, New York and Albany, which are just 100 KM apart, the data shows that the average temperature of New York rose by 7 degrees in the last 150 years while the average temperature of Albany decreased by one degree over the same period. As the name suggests, shouldn't global warming be 'Global'. Then, why this discrepancy within 100 km? Could the high concrete structures that came up in New York, also known as urbanisation, be the reason? Well, thats something to think about. Isn't it?

The whole concept of instilling the fear about global warming only started after the Second World War. But the world is getting warmed up for the last 150 years, for some reason. So, why wasn't global warming publicised then? Well, the media is busy instilling fear among the people due the first and second world wars.

Ayn Rand, one of the great visionaries, predicted that the media will become so powerful in the book 'The fountainhead' which was written in the early 1920s. All the time, the media's duty is only to keep the people in a 'State of fear'.