Fear is a huge motivator in life. These days it may be one of the single largest motivators. This is why the government, the media, etc seem to be doing everything they can not to eliminate fear but to grow it in vats and mass distribute it. I find it ironic that we fight a War on Terror, but I'd argue that when it comes to the emotion of terror the United States is the biggest pusher of that particular drug in the world. Being a U.S. citizen this does not make me happy, and I certainly do not endorse or support it. In fact, if we simply open our eyes and dig back into our memories a bit it should be obvious that the War on Terror is a losing proposition.

If we were to measure success by the decrease in activity of the negative thing we are targeting then it is clear that we are failing not succeeding. For many of us this is no surprise. We expected this and could immediately see through the sham. I mean what else can you expect when your government declares war on an emotion? Even worse what does it mean when the people that seem to be using this emotion the most, especially on their own people, is the government that declared war on the emotion in the first place?

Religions have thrived on the fear of damnation for a very long time. You must be good or you will go to hell, purgatory, etc. You will not be allowed into Valhalla, the Happy Hunting Grounds, Elysium, etc. These are considered doom and this is the MOTIVE supposedly for why people are moral and good. Without this fear supposedly we would stray and all be evil animals that cannot have empathy and help other people. Of course this is a total farce as we can do all of these things just fine without the threat of damnation hanging over our heads, and I'd contend it is more genuine if you choose to do it without the threat/fear of damnation or penalties being hung over you.

Which is more genuine and meaningful? The person who does something out of fear of reprisal, losing face, or other negative event happening to them, or a person doing something without any coercive forces encouraging them to make that choice.

Now what really motivated me to write this post was sudden musings on people "Selling their souls" which is a theme in some religions. It is considered one of the most evil things you can do. Now you have nothing to stop you from being totally diabolical because you are already damned. So live your life, and do whatever evil things you may. That at least is how it is spun.

I am a musician, as such I've heard of Robert Johnson, Jimmy Page, and others that supposedly have made pacts with the Devil for their skill as a musician. I've also seen the movie Crossroads which is enjoyable and plays upon this theme.

Source: All Things Weird

Those people didn't turn into baby eating and killing necromancers who were out to destroy the world. They were simply very skilled and prolific, but they were ultimately doomed.

So the true impact of this decision seems to be that for fame, wealth, power, etc the person is willing to face this alleged damnation in the afterlife. If the person is religious then this may actually mean something to them. Yet it also tells me some things.

The person was willing to risk ultimate damnation. So would they perhaps practice harder and view that which they seek as the most important thing to them? Doesn't this imply that likely they were already working hard at it before they chose to sell their soul? Perhaps their skill has nothing to do with selling their soul. I actually believe that is likely the case, but this is my opinion.

I believe we do worse things

So if selling your soul and thus damning yourself is so terrible, what about the fact we casually sell out the futures of the future generations? Why do we keep endorsing bills and historical cycles that simply kick the can down the road? Is it okay that you've kicked the can far enough that it is no longer your problem?

The future generations walk to the road and are met by a veritable mountain of cans that have been kicked down the road. Do you think they will be worried about hell? Hell might seem like a holiday spa compared to the reality that we have handed down to them. Is this not evil?

Do you think kicking the can, and then going to church and praying for forgiveness truly makes this alright? I don't. I have a big problem with how many things we casually SCREAM for that are the doom of my children, grand children, and hopefully great grand children.

Let me give you an example. It is one I have written about before. It is called the debt ceiling.

We keep hitting the debt ceiling in the U.S. seemingly at least annually. Then they trot out the fear show in this multi-ringed circus. "and in the center ring we have FEAR!!!!"

The debt ceiling essentially means our government maxed out its credit cards. Though it is worse. You see with the federal reserve act of 1913 we permitted the formation of the Federal Reserve which is not actually part of the government and is owned by private banking families. They print money (see the word PRINT) and LOAN it to the government on interest. This means the government is instantly in debt to these banking families every time they ask them to provide some more paper with ink on it. It isn't backed by anything but our belief in it. These banking families just can magically create wealth that the government gets from them like a loan shark.

This means we are in debt to them by extension, and actually most of the taxes collected by the government go to paying the interest on these loans.

So the debt ceiling is the government reaching the end of their spending beyond their means. So they trot out fear, and they make sure to put up all the freshly created metal, wooden, and cardboard signs at all the various National Parks telling you exactly why they closed those parks. They closed them due to the debt ceiling. It can be easy for people not to really think about how much those signs cost, the barriers costs, and the fact they are still paying some people to patrol to make sure people stay out of the parks while they are closed. They may also not recall that only a few decades ago these patrols, barriers, etc were not needed.

Yet they are a great way to inconvenience the public, play into the fear, and convince the government that they MUST ask for a higher credit limit.

You see we should be letting the government fail, and not be able to pay for things. Then perhaps they'd be serious about cuts rather than doing what they actually do. I've noticed for years that one of the things they do is say "Senator X managed to come up with a Y cut". It is almost always bullshit. That Y cut was from Z in NEW EXPENDITURES. This means the amount they were increasing spending by was Z. Yet they are praising the Senator for reducing Z by Y. The end result is they are still increasing how much they are spending, so they didn't really cut anything. Yet by talking about the amount they reduced their planned spending the word games make the general populace think they actually cut something when they didn't.

This debt issue is a very big can being kicked down the road. I guarantee you they are going to trot out government shut down, and other fear tactics again the next time their credit limit is maxed out. We seriously need them not to keep increasing this as it is enslaving many future generations, and in actuality many of us see it as enslaving US now. What we have now is a holiday vacation compared to what we are pushing upon future generations.

We have a couple of ways this can be resolved. The non-violent one is to actually start balancing our budget, cutting things no matter how much we want them, and paying off the debt.

Then there is the violent one where if the people that hold the debt of the U.S. are no longer alive then technically there is no longer any debt. This though likely would not work and would result in world war. You see those banking families were not stupid. They created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which many nations are indebted to, especially third world countries. They created the World Bank. They repeated the Federal Reserve experiment ALL over the world in the many central banks. So this is happening to the U.S., but in reality it is happening virtually everywhere.

So I look about me and was inspired to write this post thinking about fear, and how heavily fear is used against us. I of course thought of the selling the soul, fire and brimstone, and in general damnation that religion uses to motivate people and try to "keep them in line". I see the War on Terror as a similar shell game. Then I started thinking about how what we are doing is actually far worse than selling our souls. We are damning the future generations to hell on Earth.

Source: Sixteen Minutes to Palestine

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I myself do not believe in heaven, hell, the devil, etc. I believe there very well could be some kind of creator which some people choose to call God, but I do not believe that this thing is found in any of our books. Our human language and books are too petty and incapable of defining reality, we must look around and observe and then we barely get glimpses. What I am is known as a Deist. I am also fine with the universe as a simulation hypothesis as that fits within Deism as well, because if we are simply in a simulation then something had to have started the simulation. That is fine. Deism believes in a creator/catalyst but they do not believe in revelation, prophecy, and other humans suddenly being able to explain the secrets of everything to you. They simply observe, and use reason. They can equally be comfortable among atheists if those atheists are also simply observing and using reason. I've gone so far as to call myself an atheist/deist before which seems a contradiction, but I have my reasons which I post about from time to time. My discussion of my beliefs was a digression from the purpose of this post. I mainly supplied it for new people, so they know some of my weird personal beliefs. If you want more detail you can check out some of these posts.

• The little religion that history has forgotten... Deism (not to be confused with Theism)
• If reality were only a simulation how would WE the simulants be able to know for sure?
• The ultimate questions: What am I? Why am I? Where can I go?
• When speculation becomes fact... you've likely seen it...