CNN: Still 'paranoid' after all these years

[Mick West]

And interesting article about the (partly justified) distrust of the media, and the extremes towards which American Politics is drifting

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/04/politics/paranoid-style-politics-hofstadter

excerpt:

It's certainly easy to fall under the spell of paranoia. Since the dawn of mankind, we have been clannish and tribal animals, wary of others, fused by emotional connections. In the modern world we create tribes beyond blood -- like sports fans or, well, political parties.

The danger is that many people don't develop the rationality to tamp down the emotion, says Dr. David Reiss, a San Diego-based psychiatrist who studies personality dynamics.

"It's not so much that they're paranoid in a clinical sense, but if they feel their needs are going to be met -- or they're connecting with someone powerful -- they're basically leaving rationality behind," he says.

Then there's another deeply human element: the attraction of the story.

"If it's something that's interesting and grabs your attention, regardless of your background, it's appealing," says Villanova's Arnold. He mentions the theories about the Mayan calendar predicting catastrophe. "Look at the end-of-the-world stories we've been getting this year."

Content from external source

 

[haarp]

End of the world stories that CNN also publish. If they were that concerned with paranoia they would explain the real meaning behind the Mayan calender, instead they're just another cog in the machine.

 

[Trigger Hippie]

If they were that concerned with paranoia they would explain the real meaning behind the Mayan calender...

So what is the "real" meaning behind the Mayan calendar?

 

[haarp]

So what is the "real" meaning behind the Mayan calendar?

According to the Organization for Mayan and Indigenous Spiritual Studies who consulted 600 Mayan elders:

“Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya.
They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed. We are no longer in the World of the Fourth Sun, but we are not yet in the World of the Fifth Sun.
This is the time in-between, the time of transition. As we pass through transition there is a colossal, global convergence of environmental destruction, social chaos, war, and ongoing Earth Changes.
Humanity will continue, but in a different way. Material structures will change. From this we will have the opportunity to be more human.”



No doom. Just the same shit that's been going on for years. The media are going to make a y2k thing about it though.
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[Mick West]

No doom. Just the same shit that's been going on for years. The media are going to make a y2k thing about it though.

No they won't. Y2K was a very real technical issue that was mostly handled in the years leading up to it, so ended up causing very few problems (there were some, I was actually affected by it, Playstation 2 development hardware stopped working for a day). 2012 is just astrology, and everyone in the media knows this. The story is not "what will happen", it's "there's all these people who think something will happen".

 

[Trigger Hippie]

The media are going to make a y2k thing about it though.
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Has there been much 2012 stuff on the major networks? Not all media panders to the lowest common denominator for the sake of ratings.

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[haarp]

Yeah here in the UK they post all sorts of crap, people keep mimicking 'if we're still alive by then' to try and pretend they know something or to stay relevant. Same thing happened with the large hadron collider 'will the world end tomorrow'. It's not a doomsday prediction, not the end of the world, the media should be pointing this out but instead are using it to sell papers. No surprise.

 

[Trigger Hippie]

It's not a doomsday prediction, not the end of the world, the media should be pointing this out but instead are using it to sell papers. No surprise.

Ya, I don't believe the 2012 doomsday conspiracy was started by CNN, the BBC or Al-Jazeera. They're just reporting and exploiting to varying degrees. I'd like to see reporting on the origin of these ridiculous conspiracies. It's too bad the "mainstream media" is not more critical of the websites that promote pseudo science and conspiracies, or the cretins that are selling survival shelters, seed banks and overunity generators to the gullible.