iLiza's eyes

We live in a culture of fear.

I’m trying to find a roommate and spending my evenings interviewing around the hookah, and then we find someone. Someone who is perfect in everyway, except that the someone is a guy and my mom is scared. She says you never know, he could attack you in the night, he could be pulling the veil over your eyes, there’s a good chance he’s dangerous and scary, a villain underneath. You should do a background check.

But Mom, I’m thinking as she rattles on, the number of people that things like that actually happen to is very small. This almost never happens, and when it does it’s usually careless, easily coerced girls who aren’t good judges of people and probably don’t use their heads. It’s the news that plays it up as if this is a huge epidemic sweeping across the nation, something to which everyone is susceptible and could fall into.

I’ve had enough of propaganda.
We live in a culture of fear.

On Doctor Phil this week, there were two activists talking about sex education in high school—one said condoms should be easily accessible, the other said kids shouldn’t even learn what they are because it will put “ideas” in their heads. Since when can kids not think for themselves? Since when do adults have the right to keep knowledge from kids that will help them to help themselves? Since when do we raise children on the basis that education will put ideas in their heads that might cause them to make “bad decisions?”

That’s like not explaining to a child what it means to be vegetarian out of fear that they might become one and not get enough protein. That’s like not telling a child about 9/11 for fear they might become a terrorist.

In addition, since when is sex so morally wrong? Since when is it such a horrendous thing to be a healthy human being? Kids will have sex, they will know about sex—if not from school, then from their friends who tell them about it—and they will get the idea to have it, and they will choose to do it whether it’s wrong or right, “sinful” or not. And if they don’t know about how to protect themselves, they’ll end up sick or with a baby. Not the other way around.

I’m sick of moral judgements.
We live in a culture of fear.

This week, the terror level on New York City subways went up. Lots of people called their kids, friends, family and said “Don’t take the subways, there’s going to be a terrorist attack.” Yeah, okay. Orange, green, magenta, Moroccan red…who cares? President Bush or someone up there in the untouchable tower realizes that Americans are getting tired of the war, losing faith in Bush and feeling vulnerable.

Hey! I have a brilliant idea! Let’s just scare the shit out of all of them! Let’s make them feel like we’re on the ball and our intelligence is up to speed because we’ve picked up on this terrorist attack, and throw them into a little hysteria so they start supporting and believing in everything we say again. Ahh…we’re back on track: we messed up with Katrina, but we’ll get away with being racist, elitist, self-serving manipulators as long as people are too scared to think about outing us.

Hello! If there was really going to be a terrorist attack on the subways, do you really think they would leave them open for millions of passengers to continue using?? That would be like leaving tenants in a building that you knew was going to collapse—yeah, against the law.

I’m fed up with the veil over our eyes.
We live in a culture of fear.

And I admit: I’m scared too.
But I’m not scared of the guy next door. And I’m not scared of being “immoral.” And I’m not scared of riding the subway.

We live in a culture of fear.
But what are you afraid of?

posted by iliza @ 6:21 PM