Ron Burgundy 8/30

This week’s discussion in class sparked many thoughts in my head about the social environment that we live in today. The discussion was based upon the idea of “postmodernism” specifically what it is, when it came about, and how it functions. At one point in the lecture Dr. Rog discussed the notion of “fear” that has played a prominent role in our lives, in a sense dictating our lives. This function of “fear” to drive the masses to do what you want them to do was a concept that was discussed in my CMC 200 class as we looked at the government in media and how they instill fear into the masses in order to get them to act or respond a certain way. Dr. Rog discussed how “fear” of nuclear warfare was in existence when he was a child in school and how he remembers the drills and warnings he was given in his classes on what to do in case of an emergency. Today we have a similar case of a prominent concept of “fear” that currently dictates our behavior and the way we live our lives today, exemplified in the chaos that is the Swine Flu. I first heard about the swine flu at the end of last spring semester and heard that it was something that was only in Mexico but that it was still a serious threat to America and that we all needed to be careful. At that point the only precaution I could think to take would be to not plan any trips to Mexico anytime soon, which wasn’t in my agenda anyhow. Fast forward to today though we see that the swine flu is a serious threat to the entire nation spreading quickly to all corners of the continent. A certain elevated level of fear is seen now not only in the media but in all our social environments as everybody’s lives our dictated by taking precaution from this sickness. For instance, on campus there are hand sanitizer stands pretty much in every gathering place for students to use which serve as a constant reminder of this notion of fear that is associated with the swine flu. Not to mention of all my classes when discussing the attendance policy have gone into in depth discussions about the great probability that our campus will soon be effected by this sickness and students will be sick and can expect to miss class. Looking at the two scenarios, Dr. Rog’s notion of fear with nuclear warfare, and today the fear associated with the swine flu, it looks like “fear” is what consistently dictates our lives. Now taking this and looking at the media its scary to think that they can play on this fear and possibly manipulate us to behave certain ways, in a sense also dictating our lives.