The System Isn't Broken, It’s Fixed — Mickey Z.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of World News Trust)
Mickey Z. — World News Trust
August 29, 2021
Both chronic stress and manipulative abuse can lead to an impairment of cognitive functioning. Whenever humans experience ongoing anxiety, their prefrontal cortex will generate increasingly higher levels of cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone that helps us deal with threats and danger. If stress — real or perceived — becomes chronic, we can get stuck in this state of high alert. The brain cannot differentiate between real and fake news. It initiates and sustains the body’s stress response for as long as you feel anxious, tense, worried, or scared.
For some examples of ongoing anxiety and chronic stress, consider these facts of life in the Land of Opportunity™:
- The projected overall 2021 poverty rate is 13.7 percent of Americans.
- 78 percent of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck.
- Roughly 30 million Americans are without health insurance.
- Americans collectively hold about $81 billion in medical debt.
- Approximately 325,000 Americans (age 12 or older) are sexually assaulted each year — about 1 every 93 seconds. As for those under 12, 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of reported child sexual abuse. Keyword: reported.
- The top three causes of death in the U.S. would be mostly preventable in a society that included economic stability, access to quality health care, protection of the environment, an emphasis on healthy eating habits, and even a modicum of humanity. Instead, each year, heart disease kills about 650,000, cancer kills 600,000, and the third leading cause of death is (wait for it) medical error — taking out at least 250,000 Americans per year. The powers-that-be test their corporate medicines and procedures on us while granting themselves immunity from liability.
According to the American Psychological Association:
- 63 percent of Americans reported that the future of the nation is a significant source of stress
- 62 percent were stressed about money
- 61 percent were stressed about work
- 51 percent were stressed about violence and crime
- 43 percent were stressed about health care
Fifty-six percent said that the mere act of staying informed by following the news causes them intense stress. Three out of four Americans reported experiencing at least one stress symptom in the last month — and this survey was taken BEFORE the pandemic and ensuing lockdowns.
Prices go up. Rents go up. The number of billionaires goes up. Everything goes up… except wages and quality of life. I could go on but you get the idea. Everyday life in the Home of the Brave™ — by definition — keeps the vast majority of its residents in a state of deep distress and high anxiety.
High anxiety = high cortisol. High cortisol negatively impacts our executive functioning, e.g.
- Inability to pay attention
- Decrease in visual perception
- Feeling agitated and unorganized
- Memory loss
- Loss of emotional regulation and rational thinking
This explains why so many of us jammed into supermarkets to fight each other for the right to hoard inordinate amounts of toilet paper when the dangerous and unnecessary pandemic lockdowns were implemented.
When stress is chronic and cortisol is raging, we make exponentially more mistakes. We struggle to complete tasks, we lose concentration, we forget basic information, and we repeat ourselves in conversation. Since life itself in this corrupt culture is a source of relentless anxiety, most of us live in an altered state of inefficiency and confusion. However, this reality is so normalized that it’s become invisible and we often think we’ve got it good. After all, look at all these neat gadgets we own and get to stare at all day, every day.
Think about it: We’re alive because our ancestors were the ones who used anxiety and hyper-vigilance to survive. The more casual or reckless early humans weren’t around long enough to pass on their genes. So, here we are — hard-wired with a hair-trigger fight-or-flight response — and we’re stuck in a world in which simple acts like breathing air or visiting a doctor are unhealthy or possibly lethal. Translation: We are the ideal subjects for a grand social experiment.
If you were a member of the elite class — or the proverbial 1% — wouldn’t you prefer that the masses were pliable, easily controlled, and happy to settle for crumbs? Why wouldn’t you rig circumstances in such a way as to keep billions of potential challengers off-balance, frightened, and divided? What better way to maintain power and control than to implement an insidious form of group manipulation? It’s what cult leaders do. It’s what domestic abusers do. It’s what dictators do. And what are those in power if not abusive and narcissistic sociopaths?
I know, the easiest and most alluring path for you right now is to dismiss this as a “conspiracy.” I get it. Life seems far more palatable if you choose denial. It feels so much simpler if you choose to believe those on top are not abusing you. You may even tell yourself that people never do things like create an oppressive, unfair system just to keep their fellow humans subdued and passive. If that’s your premise, let’s explore it for a few minutes.
Would the folks who run things in God’s Country™ ever coerce people through abusive behaviors? You might want to ask the detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay. As reported by the New York Times, the U.S. hired “two C.I.A. contract psychologists” to create a program that used “violence, isolation and sleep deprivation on more than 100 men in secret sites, some described as dungeons.” Tactics included waterboarding and cramming men into small confinement boxes. The idea here was to induce so much chronic stress, it would break their resistance.
Human Rights Watch has documented other devious and abusive red-white-and-blue techniques paid for by your hard-earned tax dollars, e.g. mock execution by asphyxiation, stress positions, hooding during questioning, deprivation of light and auditory stimuli, and use of detainees’ individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce debilitating stress.
The Land of the Free™ incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world. The Center for Constitutional Rights reports that such prisoners are “repeatedly abused by their guards, fellow prisoners, and an ineffective and apathetic system. They suffer beatings, rape, prolonged solitary confinement, meager food rations, and frequently-denied medical care.” All in the name of punishment and pacification.
Perhaps the best comparison for America’s brutal molding of its citizens is domestic abuse. The United Nations defines domestic abuse as “a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner.” Read that again: a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control.
Abusers, says the UN, use actions or threats of action to influence others. This includes any behaviors that frighten, intimidate, terrorize, manipulate, hurt, humiliate, blame, injure, or wound someone. Are you frightened by the lack of financial stability? Are you terrorized by the threat of sexual assault or injury by medical error? Does the possibility of eviction, homelessness, and poverty manipulate you into making choices you abhor, choices that violate your deepest values and individual freedoms?
If you declare “the system is broken,” just about everyone will agree with you for one reason or another. But what if it’s not broken? What if it’s running exactly as it’s designed to run? A minuscule percentage of humans make the rules and thus reap virtually all the material rewards. The rest of us suppress our desires, our individuality, and our dreams in the name of survival — in its most meager sense. We’re wounded and intimidated into submission, too programmed and fearful to even think about rebellion… let alone solidarity with all the other victims.
Pro tip: All it takes to flip the script is for each of you to change your mind. Demand more pleasure instead of less pain. It doesn’t have to be like this. In fact, it can’t be like this if we take off the blinders and see the ugliness of reality.
“To ask serious questions about the nature and behavior of one’s own society is often difficult and unpleasant,” writes Noam Chomsky. “Difficult because the answers are generally concealed, and unpleasant because the answers are often not only ugly but also painful. To understand the truth about these matters is to be led to action that may not be easy to undertake and that may even carry a significant personal cost.”
Truths like those discussed in this article are ugly and painful but that’s why the big lies are invented in the first place. On that note, I leave you with this from the English Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley:
“Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like
dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few.”
(from “The Mask of Anarchy,” 1819)
Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, Mickey Z. can be found here. He is also the founder of Helping Homeless Women - NYC, offering direct relief to women on New York City streets. To help him grow this project, CLICK HERE and donate right now. And please spread the word!
- CategoriesEdited | Front Page Stories | All Content | Culture | Food and Hunger | Disasters | Economy | Environment | Government | Health | Media | Spiritual | North America | WNT Reports | Commentary | Commentary -- WNT Reports
- CreatedSunday, August 29, 2021
- Last modifiedMonday, August 30, 2021
SUBSCRIBE
World Desk Activities
phys.org/news/2024-06-physicists-quantum-entanglem…
Physicists confirm quantum entanglement persists between top quarks, the heaviest known fundamental particles
An experiment by a group of physicists led by University of Rochester physics professor Regina Demina has produced a significant result related to quantum entanglement—an…
phys.org/news/2024-06-years-massive-fusion-energy-…
25 years of massive fusion energy experiment data open on the 'cloud' and available to everyone
High-temperature fusion plasma experiments conducted in the Large Helical Device (LHD) of the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), have renewed the world record for…
phys.org/news/2024-06-exploring-polaron-formation-…
Exploring the origin of polaron formation in halide perovskites
Halide perovskites are a class of materials with an underlying structure resembling that of mineral perovskites, but with X sites occupied by halide ions, while…
phys.org/news/2024-06-sharks-depleted-functional-d…
Sharks have depleted functional diversity compared to the last 66 million years, study finds
New research by Swansea University and the University of Zurich has found that sharks retained high levels of functional diversity for most of the last…
phys.org/news/2024-06-high-baby-stars-circle-super…
High-speed baby stars circle the supermassive black hole Sgr A* like a swarm of bees
Observational astronomy shows that newly discovered young stellar objects (YSOs) in the immediate vicinity of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* located in the center…
techxplore.com/news/2024-06-fully-edible-robot-pla…
A fully edible robot could soon end up on our plate, say scientists
A fully edible robot could soon end up on our plate if we overcome some technical hurdles, say EPFL scientists involved in RoboFood—a project which…
phys.org/news/2024-06-quantum-entangled-photons-re…
Quantum entangled photons react to Earth's spin
A team of researchers led by Philip Walther at the University of Vienna carried out a pioneering experiment where they measured the effect of the…
phys.org/news/2024-06-chimpanzees-luck.html
Chimpanzees understand that they are sometimes relying on luck when making guesses, research suggests
Psychologists Benjamin Jones and Josep Call at the University of St Andrews, in the U.K., have found via behavioral experiments that chimpanzees know that they…
phys.org/news/2024-06-antarctic-cold-shatter-globa…
Antarctic cold spells shatter records amid global heat waves in late winter 2023
While 2023 is noted for breaking global temperature records (State of the Global Climate 2023), the year also brought an unexpected twist with extreme cold…
phys.org/news/2024-06-scientists-coral-reef-declin…
Scientists warn of coral reef decline due to ocean acidification
The French Polynesian island Moorea is the most beautiful isle in the world, some say. Its lagoons are surrounded by reefs dominated by Porites corals.
Latest Stories
Electronic Frontier Foundation
- The UN Cybercrime Draft Convention is a Blank Check for Surveillance Abuses June 14, 2024
- If Not Amended, States Must Reject the Flawed Draft UN Cybercrime Convention Criminalizing Security Research and Certain Journalism Activities June 14, 2024
- Hand me the flashlight. I’ll be right back... June 13, 2024
- EFF to Ninth Circuit: Abandoning a Phone Should Not Mean Abandoning Its Contents June 12, 2024
The Intercept
- These “Tent Massacre” Survivors Couldn’t Afford to Leave Rafah. The Next Israeli Attack Nearly Wiped Their Family Out. June 14, 2024
- GOP States Double Down on Fighting Medication Abortion After Supreme Court Keeps It Legal June 13, 2024
- Medical Aid Worker Describes the Bloody Aftermath of Israel’s Hostage Rescue June 13, 2024
- House Votes to Block U.S. Funding to Rebuild Gaza June 12, 2024
VTDigger
- Last year’s veto session set a single-day record for override votes. On Monday, legislators could break it. June 14, 2024
- Vermont’s bump stock ban stands despite US Supreme Court ruling throwing out federal prohibition June 14, 2024
- Berlin takes owner of manufactured home park to court over floodplain construction June 14, 2024
- It’s getting hot in here: $70K Statehouse cooling bill surprises speaker ahead of veto session June 14, 2024