More Fear Mongering - Prime Time

Tonight as I was making dinner, I heard a commercial that made me stop and listen. It was for GlaxoSmithKlineBeecham Pharmaceuticals.

The spokesperson was talking about new anti-infectious disease drug R&D and although I didn't see it, he must have been standing near a large snow bank. He said that they are "waging war" every day on disease and to demonstrate how uphill a battle it is, he said to imagine every snowflake there being one possible compound that could stop an infectious disease, but only a few being safe and effective for humans. Then, he pointed out that bacteria are becoming resistant to drugs all the time, so they're having to find new ones.

The war symbolism was repeated over a couple or three times. Not only was this fear mongering (the diseases out there that can hurt you are as numerous as the snowflakes you see here), but it was equating war with something good (fighting the things that can hurt you).

It starts young. I heard a mother today out in a field taking pictures of her toddler. She kept saying, "Don't let that get you. Don't let that get you." It wasn't anything that was actually going to harm her - just some big stalks of dried grasses. But the message that child got was that even in the field next to her house in very safe, suburban Colorado, there is danger lurking, just waiting to get you. Is it any wonder that we spend billions of dollars trying to wage war against what are often imagined dangers?

We have an immune system to protect us against disease, a sympathetic nervous system to alert us to real dangers, a physiological system that allows us to fight or flee those dangers, and a rational brain that can allow us to understand that most of what we are "fighting" these days are dangers we've created ourselves. It's time to find a new way to take care of ourselves based on believing in our own ability to do so in a peaceful and joyful way.