First off, I’m happy that Obama followed my lead and is choosing to get a puppy to open this new chapter of history.  The picture above is my puppy who’s still too young to come home, but I’ll have him well before inauguration day.

Most of the world appears to be ecstatic and elated that America somehow found a man to elect who is the polar opposite of George W. Bush in every imaginable and important way possible.  Then there are political pundits that seem as clueless as ever.

I must disclose that I rarely watch television news which makes cable “newscasters” seem a bit cartoonish when I do watch them.  (Don’t watch the news for a month and come back to it and you’ll see what I mean.)  The fact that most of the content these “news” channels provide is opinion rather fact shows the dilemma of creating 24 hour infotainment to win ratings wars with ever-declining viewership.  Therefore I have a little compassion for them, but only a little.

After Obama’s speech as our new President-elect I surfed through the cable news channels to see what the political “experts” (who are usually over 80% inaccurate in their predictions if you follow them) had to say.

What was interesting is that they were focused on statistics of how white men, Latinos, black women, white women, and other factions voted that they missed the whole point.  Everyone I know who felt that electricity when it was announced that Obama won felt they were having a JFK moment.  This kind of electricity hasn’t surged around in America or around the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Finally we may have a President more interested in equality and rebuilding America than one focused on serving corporate and monied interests.

No, he’s not a messiah, but he does seem to be intelligent, thoughtful, heartful and effective in getting Americans to get involved in creating positive change.  After seeing millions of people donate time, money or both to the campaign it seems like we could be revisiting our historic roots of banding together to clean up after our current natural disasters.  Most of the people who worked on campaigns this season had never done so before and some were over 60 years old.

While pundits over analyze strategy, race and other factors, the electorate that voted for Obama did so for other reasons.  Obama supporters  feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves – righting the wrongs, misdeeds and missteps our nation has embarked upon with imperialistic policies.

Older generations see electing a black man to be president as an historic occasion while younger generations who never saw blatant racism and grew up on hip hop music see this as a “duh” moment.  The most qualified person was elected and skin color is irrelevant in what he can achieve.  Both generations are right while the pundits are still busy ignoring the obvious fact that Obama won because he connected with voters like no other candidate in recent history.

No one knows exactly why anything happens.  We make up reasons in hindsight that fit our particular views and tell ourselves that our interpretation is a fact.  This is just how the human brain works.  So for once, lets not waste time looking to “experts” to see how it happened or listen to them about their inaccurate predictions of what will happen.  (Remember how the election was destined to be between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guilliani?  …How did that work out and why are the same pundits still employed?)  No one will ever be in the same circumstances to create the same experiences that we went through the last two years.  So lets just enjoy the moment and prepare to start a ride on a much different train than any we’ve been on this century.

With the non-stop news about how unstable the world is, this is a great time to look at how security is marketed to the public.

Security doesn’t exist.  I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it simply is a made up concept.  If you don’t believe me talk to people who used to live in New Orleans or Galveston.  If they don’t convince you talk to the white collar executives who have lost their careers over the last 10 years through mergers and acquisitions and outsourcing.  If you need more evidence then have a chat with anyone holding investments in the stock market today.

I knew a Buddhist teacher once who told a story about visiting Tibet.  He was trying to explain the concept of insurance to Tibetans and it wasn’t possible.  They don’t have words in their vocabulary for it and they see the world as ever-changing in surprising ways.  They laughed at the idea of paying money to try to prevent unsuspecting events from occurring.

Insurance is a made up product in the West to make us feel like we can prepare for surprises.  If you’ve ever tried to get paid on an insurance claim, especially health insurance, you know how the security you thought you were paying for may not have been there when you needed it.  It’s still worth having certain kinds of insurance, but realize that it can only help to a limited degree.

Although unpaid medical bills have been the leading cause of bankruptcies in America for years, many of those filers had health insurance that they thought would totally cover them, but it didn’t.  This is one of many examples of how we fool ourselves into pretending that security exists.

You’re seeing how security is marketed to us in the presidential election.  Politicians are infamous for campaigning on how they’ll fix our problems and protect us from harm only to go back on the promises once they’re elected.  In fairness, many of them probably have good intentions and are twarted by the political processes, but none the less, they market security and don’t deliver.  It’s not their fault, it’s simply not possible to control the future.

It’s helpful to notice how you act and react to the idea of being secure.  Our DNA has us wired to seek it out though it’s elusive.  Knowing that you’re human and this wiring for security is your make up, what can you do to not be swayed by marketing and promotions that play on that fear of the unknown?

Maybe just being aware that insecurity is a constant in life is enough to help you to be a smarter consumer when you’re being sold a product, service, idea or belief rooted in making you feel more secure.  Then you can choose to not worry about the things that are naturally out of your control.

The topics of the day covered by the mainstream media are usually about 5 steps behind what’s really going on.  For instance, focusing on who will be the president or will be your next Senator distracts you from the fact that these “representatives” represent heavily monied interests, not you for the most part.

Simply review the laws passed last year or over the last decade or the last century to see who benefited most from the laws and who sacrificed or suffered as a result of the laws.  While the media pretends that we should focus on the us vs. them B.S. of Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal, the elephant in the room is that it doesn’t matter.

Politics today is all about PR.  Billions of dollars are spent on public relations to frame the way the public views issues and current events.  If you talk to anyone who consumes talk radio or cable news they will regurgitate the repeated talking points drilled into their minds and they will not be able to go deeper on the issues than this.  It’s time for people to wake up, think, listen to their guts and stop swallowing these tactics.  Just say no to being blindly influenced.

George Carlin explains this humorously – but be warned that foul language comes with the medicine.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Something very cool seems to be happening in politics.  It seems like the old politics of fear aren’t working as well as they used to in the current presidential election campaigns.  Maybe people have finally been so pummeled with lies in such a short period of time that they’re less inclined to swallow a mouthful of scare tactics.

Last week there was a lot of talk of how the McCain campaign was focused on making voters afraid of Barack Obama, even to the point of inciting crowds to shout racial epithets.  The thing is, this didn’t help his poll numbers and probably didn’t attract new voters.  It just made the rallies sound like elementary school bullies and their pals taunting and booing on cue.  This leads to the question of why today’s politics seem so antiquated and cartoon-like.

Lets be honest, if a little explosion happened that could be traced back to a terrorist, foreign or domestic, politicians may be able to work the shock doctrine to their advantage as they’ve done for decades.  We just saw the shock doctrine work with the mortgage crisis and stock market crisis allowing the government to use a problem-reaction-solution strategy to partially nationalize and acquire banks and insurance companies.  But even then, Americans may not be so quick to roll over. With the current economic crisis people seem to be more angry than afraid for a change.

It’s interesting how a company laying people off is a crisis for workers but a “restructuring” for management.  Is this an economic restructuring or a crisis?  Who is benefiting from the restructuring?

So why do scare tactics work better than issues in a crisis and in a political campaign?   Have you noticed that the more a person is married to a belief system (Democrats tax and spend or Republicans are the party for business)  the more zealously and easily he reacts to politicians and talk show hosts pointing fingers?  Interestingly, many times these belief systems run contrary to facts.

Seriously, why to adults act like mindless silly children at political rallies and conventions? Psychologically what is happening is that people are reverting back to being children who naively thought their parents were superhuman.  We see this is fundamentalist religious beliefs also, but that is too big a topic to include here.  The relationship is either like adults acting like young children treating the government like a parental god who can fix everything or adults acting like teenagers treating the government like an idiot parent who can do nothing right.

The main answer to the question of why people are so easily manipulated in politics is actually a biological one.  Under normal circumstances humans do the majority of their thinking in the frontal lobes of the brain where critical thinking is king.  But when we’re under stress we think from the rear areas of the brain where the limbic system rules.

The amygdala and other portions of the brain that have been our primary areas of thinking for much longer than the frontal lobe are ruled by emotion and the drive for short term gain.  Because of this, when we most need our critical thinking we don’t use it.

This type of thinking was great in primitive times when stress was related to food, shelter and sex.  In today’s world where our stress is over money, health and relationships, which have long term impacts, we’re predisposed to make bad decisions most of the time.  The fact that most people jump out of the stock market as it goes down even when historically we know that it goes back up and the golden rule is to buy low and sell high is the best example of this.  For more information on how and why our brains deceive us most often read the book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.

In respect to politics we may be in a time of ‘fear fatigue’ from constant warnings of real and imagined threats the last eight years.  In reality, we are hurt and killed most often by unperceived threats like car accidents than from perceived threats like terrorists. Finally, the politics of fear may be losing and the public may be gaining from this circumstance.

The next time a politician goes for your vote with scare tactics, race baiting, or fear mongering remember to stop, take a deep breath, relax and do a little frontal lobe critical thinking.  Remember how many times this record has been played before and how the leaders promising security did not deliver it or even raised your anxiety levels after they were elected.  Both you and your country will be better for it.

Tonight is the night of the second presidential debate.  This seems like as good a day as any to launch a blog on how you are marketed to by advertisers, politicians, experts, media, and sometimes even your friends. If you think you might hear at least one lie, fabrication or stretching of the truth by Barack Obama or John McCain tonight raise your hand.  (Wow!  That’s a lot of hands!)

Even better, we’ll sometimes cover ways you influence, sell to and market to your friends and sometimes even to yourself.

You are blindly influenced many times a day and you blindly influence others at least a few times a day.  Have you been told an interesting “fact” from a friend today that fit into your beliefs?  Maybe it was about Barack Obama, or John McCain, or Wall Street or any number of newsworthy topics.  Chances are that the “facts” you heard were somewhat truthful and somewhat dubious.

This isn’t a slam on you or your friends.  It’s simply a result of how the human brain works and how our marketing-saturated culture operates in 2008.

Blind patrotism is an obvious example of this.  The first few years after 9/11 we witnessed blind patriotism on steroids.  Emotions ran high which concurrently made critical thinking run low.  This resulted in Americans swallowing gallons of lies that fortunately became obvious in only a few years instead of a few decades.

Again, this is nothing personal, it’s how the human brain operates. Why do you think Tony Robbins and others using NLP (Neurolinguistic programming) have done so well?

As this blog grows we’ll explore how our minds deceive us and how others can use this against us.  By realizing how this happens you’ll be one of the few who isn’t going to fall for the B.S. – well, at least not as much of it as your neighbors.

So as you watch the debate tonight, and politicians speaking on any night, keep your critical thinking hat on and put on your glasses to see through the blind influence.