Hooray for sanity and moderation!! And a good sense of humor. All liberal values, of course. The Stewart rally was estimated at over 200,000 - more than double the attendance at Beck's grandiose speech on MLK day from the steps of the Lincoln memorial.
The signs were great and the mood was reasonable and calm. Calm reasonable analysis is definitely the best way to solve problems and live in peace. The problem is, we humans have evolved to be motivated by emotions rather than reason. Advertisers know how to trigger our deep emotional responses. They use images rather than ideas, soundbites rather than analysis. Our ability to reason and analyse is a recent overlay of the emotional reaction centers of the brain. Emotional reactions trigger fast decisive action while analysis tends to make us more cautious. Emotional reactions are more useful to advertisers and politicians who wish to manipulate our behavior.
The lesson? Be ware of messages that make us feel scared, or angry. It's probably designed to elicit actions that benefit someone else at our expense.
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