My dogs see a perfect world, full of fun things to do.
The insects living in the grass probably see a hellish world of violence, mayhem and destruction. Same for the billions of microrganisms in this picture too.
But only humans are capable of wrecking their lives by imagining irrational future disasters, led on by their leaders who use fear as their means to maintain power and cash flow.
This being Sunday morning, I am deeply into the philosophical …. I think that a fear of the uncontrollable and unknown is something very deep in the brain. Evolution would make this a good thing: Worrying about the coming winter (the conditions of which you cannot know) makes you stash away nuts in the cave.
We also have a predeliction to follow leaders who (claim to) know what to do to protect us from danger. Fundamentally, humans ARE pack animals.
The Priest is the world’s second oldest profession. It’s a good living requiring few skills but a sense of drama and an agile tongue. Offerings to the Gods (I’ll make sure they get them) and we get a good harvest. Good harvest? Told ya so! Bad harvest? What did you stingy bastards expect? Now better give me your daughter…no, the cute one.
We humans just want to believe, that someone, somewhere has the answers and thus we needn’t think or worry.
I’m amazed that I’m still living. I’ve lived through the cranberry scare, DDT scare, bad eggs scare, bacon scare, gluton scare, grilled meat scare, too much ozone, not enough ozone, eggs are good, salt is bad, salt is good, red wine will let you live forever, red wine will do nothing, power lines kill, nuclear power will melt the world, nothing wrong with power lines, can’t spray for mosquitoes, west nile virus, all bees are gonna die, Africanized bees will kill everyone, over fishing of the oceans, reefs dying, reefs reborn, fluoridation, soft drinks kill, GMO’s will turn us into zombies, radon is everywhere and kills, global cooling, global warming, swine flu, bird flu, meteorites hitting the earth, aids will kill everyone, combo shots will cause autism, step on a crack and break your mothers back, fracing destroys aquifers, spanking criminalizes children, Dr. Spocks son commits suicide, drugs are good, drugs are bad, some drugs are better, if you drank wine you were a wino, wine is trendy, red dye #2, too much sun, not enough sun, fertilizers bad, insecticides bad, herbicides bad, not enough food to feed the world, carbs are bad, running is good, running is bad, green tea, fish oil tablets, antioxidants, cod liver oil, …………….. and so it goes.
Add on, I couldn’t have thought of everything.
You mention eggs but not the “mother” of all health frauds:
DIETARY CHOLESTEROL CAUSES HEART ATTACKS!
However, if I may, it seems to me that the issue of meteor mitigation stands out as being ever relevant.
I am also very skeptical of the safety of high-wattage AC lines and of putting a cell phone in one’s ear.
Finally I really have to say that earlier generations of commercial nuclear power were clearly a lot more dangerous than today, and if they hadn’t cleaned up their act significantly starting in the 1980s, there’s no telling where we’d be today. And without a public campaign against the power companies, I don’t think that would have happened.
The key is not to let liberals try to own such issues. Which is what happens when we abandon the field to them. And then they can start claiming that because conservatives opposed any effort to force sensible nuclear policies, that this “shows” that conservatism means steering nuke plants to poor rural communities and then skimping on safety because the folks are poor and who cares if they get irradiated, while the urban/suburban wealthy enjoy most of the power. That may not have been intentional on the part of power companies, but if as conservatives we just automatically rally behind the power companies because they produce something we need, and label any and all activism “liberal” or “progressive”, we give them a major own-goal, which they are not too stupid to exploit!
RTF
NIetzsche had it right …
I fear animals regard man as a creature of their own kind which has in a highly dangerous fashion lost its healthy animal reason — as the mad animal, as the laughing animal, as the weeping animal, as the unhappy animal.
I see poppies.
Nice place for a walk 😉
Yucca?
Steven:
There are some people that do not know what a Yucca seed pod looks like.