Tag Archives: media

by | October 6, 2025 · 5:48 am

The Death of Truth in the Age of Outrage

In the early days of my journalism career, truth was sacred. Senior editors drilled into us one golden rule: get your facts straight. Every story passed through three rigorous gateways before it ever saw the light of day. And still, errors slipped through. But at least we tried. Accuracy was our north star.

Fast forward to today, and the landscape looks unrecognizable. In this noisy digital wilderness, truth no longer leads the conversation, struggling to be heard at all. The media ecosystem is thick with half-truths, deception, and outright hate. It’s as if honesty has been shoved into the backseat while outrage grabs the wheel.

Outrage sells more than sex

There was a time when the media industry lived by the motto “sex sells.” Not anymore. The new currency is outrage. Social media giants have learned that anger drives engagement, and engagement drives profit. So, the algorithms are tuned to reward the most divisive, shocking, and hate-fueled content. The more we rage, the more we stay online, and the more the profit margin rises.

And the result? We see it all around us. Acts of kindness, respect, and compassion are drowned out by cruelty and contempt. Civil disagreement has been replaced by digital warfare. When hate becomes the loudest voice in the room, it doesn’t just poison our feeds. It poisons the mind. It reshapes how we think, speak, and treat one another, leaving empathy gasping for breath.

I’ve often pondered how individuals can fabricate and obscure with such unwavering conviction that one might almost be inclined to believe them. It dawned on me that evil isn’t merely a religious concept but a stark reality, inhabited by individuals devoid of all moral compass, whose behavior lies far beyond what society deems ethical or humane.

In the murky waters of social media, these purveyors of malicious messaging are easy to spot if we care to look more closely. They lack empathy and have no qualms about causing harm or suffering. They are masters of manipulation, twisting language and gaslighting their audiences until truth itself becomes unrecognizable. They crave control, using pressure, humiliation, and intimidation to assert dominance.

Externally, they often appear charismatic. They draw people in, earning trust while quietly advancing their own self-serving agendas. We see this pattern time and again, especially among political demagogues and religious cult leaders.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: if you haven’t confronted your own inner darkness, your fear, anger, shame, and resentment, you are easy prey. These manipulators will tell you that your pain is someone else’s fault: the fault of those who look different, think differently, or believe differently. Once that narrative takes hold, it’s only a short step to blind allegiance, and then to violence.

Blind obedience is the enemy of truth. That’s why authoritarians always seek to destroy a free press — through lawsuits, legislation, imprisonment, torture, and finally murder, as we see in today’s Russia. Subservience and blind allegiance are the death knell of progress.

A free media and a free mind demand curiosity, nuance, and the courage to look between the lines. Authoritarianism thrives on division, drawing sharp lines between “us” and “them,” demanding loyalty to one story, one truth, one voice. But when we surrender our capacity for critical thought, we surrender reality itself. We live not in truth but in illusion.

In diverse societies like South Africa, the United States, Israel, or India, this danger is magnified. Each tribe, religion, or political party clings to its own version of truth, incapable of hearing another’s. From there, it becomes frighteningly easy to dehumanize the “other” — to see them as enemy, not neighbor. And from that poisoned soil, violence grows.

In Kabbalistic thought, this distortion is known as sheker — falsehood. It narrows our vision until reality itself bends and fractures. Truth, emet, by contrast, is expansive. It invites balance, curiosity, and humility. To tell the truth is not merely to report facts — it is to resist illusion and to participate in the divine work of sustaining and healing the world.

Because emet, truth, is eternal. Even when forgotten or ignored, it does not vanish. The truths we speak — the words we write, the stories we tell — become sparks of light woven into creation itself. Speaking truth is sacred labor. It matters, even when no one listens, even when the world seems to have moved on.

One of our most radical acts is to keep telling the truth, steadily, humbly, and with love. To quote the great 13th-century Mystic Meister Eckhart:

“Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go.”

Reino Gevers – Host of the LivingToBe podcast

P.S.: If you enjoyed this article, you might be interested in my latest book, Sages, Saints, and Sinners. Get it today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever good books are sold.

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by | June 16, 2025 · 4:00 am

When the Lights go Out

It doesn’t take a coup or a dictator to kill a democracy. Sometimes, the rot begins from within, in slow motion and in plain sight. 

Across America and other traditional democracies, the checks and balances that are foundational in free societies are being chipped away.

If history teaches us anything, it’s this: when authoritarianism rules everyone loses—freedom, dignity, truth, and the very social fabric that makes us human.

The grim reality of authoritarian rule

Envision yourself living in a country where even the mildest critique of the ruler could land you behind bars or strip you of your livelihood. The airwaves echo incessant hymns of praise for the leader, while simultaneously stoking hate towards both real and imagined adversaries. Meanwhile, your son lives in constant fear, knowing he could be conscripted at any moment into a futile war.

This is a grim reality in Russia and a growing number of countries, casting a shadow over the lives of its citizens. 

Alarmingly, this pattern could potentially spread to democracies where generations have relished unparalleled freedoms, blissfully unaware of the true implications of authoritarian rule and its pervasive influence on society.

Across the globe, we witness a gradual erosion of fundamental liberties and democratic principles. Even within Western democracies long considered bastions of stability, nefarious political factions are becoming mainstream, posing a major threat to the established order.

The Democracy Index for 2019 found that democratic backsliding across the world has led to the worst score since the index was first produced in 2006, with only 5.7 percent of the global population living in what could be considered a “full democracy.”

Rightwing extremist parties weakening entrenched democracies

A Berlin-based leading Civil liberties network has warned that the rule of law is declining across the European Union as far-right parties continue to weaken legal and democratic checks and balances. Liberties in entrenched democracies such as Sweden and Italy are in a gradual process of retreat and risk becoming systematic, according to the 2024 Liberties Rule of Law Report.

Democracy and civil liberties take many decades to be entrenched in society while it takes only one government to dismantle everything. Freedom of the press can be stifled overnight, opposition parties banned or intimidated, and judges and civil service members replaced with regime-friendly acolytes.  All this has played out in Hungary, once a democratic country but now under authoritarian rule of Victor Urban.

The frightening scenario is that the process takes place gradually and incrementally with an electorate sleepwalking into authoritarianism.

We need only to look at history to understand how quickly basic freedoms can be usurped when a society fails to heed the warning signs. Adolf Hitler’s ultimate plan to extinguish the Jewish population with a German Reich controlling all of Europe was clearly outlined in his 1925 autobiographical manifesto “Mein Kampf”, compounding existing beliefs, fears, and xenophobia.

When opinion becomes an entrenched belief when truth becomes a lie and the mind refuses to accept an alternative idea or perspective, it is but a short road to authoritarianism.

Hitler’s explicit racial theories were openly portrayed in “Mein Kampf” and in his speeches before coming to power: Jews, Slavs, and other non-Aryan groups were described as subhuman and deserving of extermination or subjugation. His vision for a racially pure society involved the systematic elimination of “undesirable” populations that eventually culminated in the Holocaust. People in the mid-1920s failed to fully comprehend Hitler’s intentions for territorial expansion (Lebensraum) and the establishment of a racially pure Aryan state.

The suppression of dissent, the elimination of political opposition, and the manipulation of propaganda to indoctrinate the German population with Nazi ideology was introduced gradually. The policy of appeasement with influential groups of Nazi sympathizers in the United States, Britain, and other countries, eventually paved the way for one of the darkest periods in human history.

Authoritarianism goes against all human dignity and essentially gives power to a single ruler or small clique that inevitably ends up enriching itself at a terrible cost to the majority of the population. It is a one-way street where everyone loses.

Democracy can only endure when it is grounded in a robust system of checks and balances, supported by a vigilant and critical civil society. The authoritarian regimes of the last century unleashed unimaginable catastrophes, including two world wars and a genocide unparalleled in human history.

At its core, democracy champions freedom of expression, individual liberty, and tolerance. It allows you to fully express and live your potential without fearing repression and control by a state. 

Democracy can be chaotic, messy and loud, allowing a platform and freedom of speech for everyone.

Yet, these very values are increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by extremists. Before we fully recognize the threat, power can fall into the hands of individuals whose sole aim is personal advantage, subjugation and control.

Authoritarianism, grounded in fixed belief and fanaticism ultimately creates a toxic emotional state, blending fear, anxiety, and anger. It fosters dehumanization, deepens political polarization, and fractures social cohesion.

On a personal level, it becomes a significant barrier to self-growth and spiritual evolution. In a rapidly changing world, adapting is essential for survival. Clinging to rigid beliefs not only limits personal transformation but also blinds you to the new opportunities and possibilities the universe continually offers.

Reino Gevers – Author –  Mentor – Speaker

P.S: If you enjoyed this article you might be interested in my very latest book: Sages, Saints and Sinners Get it today on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and where all good books are sold.

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by | October 14, 2024 · 5:08 pm

Disinformation: The Threat to Democracy

I had to read the headline twice to fully grasp what was happening: meteorologists in the U.S. have been inundated with abuse, including death threats, from conspiracy theorists accusing them and the government of manufacturing and controlling hurricanes.

This disturbing trend mirrors the threats scientists faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, when fake news spread claims that the virus was a hoax. Recently, I made the mistake of commenting on an article about the U.S. presidential elections, only to be bombarded with vile remarks and personal insults.

Violent threats are becoming alarmingly common, especially on platforms like Twitter, where safeguards against disinformation have largely collapsed since Elon Musk’s acquisition. Now, anyone with an internet connection can propagate wild conspiracies, with little to no oversight.

A key tactic of right-wing extremists is to vilify both independent and mainstream media, constructing a dystopian reality where truth is distorted into lies and falsehoods are presented as truth. By manipulating reality and eroding public trust in factual information, they create fertile ground for the rise of totalitarianism.

Hannah Arendt, the German-American political theorist and philosopher, best known for her works on totalitarianism, warned as long ago as six years after World War II:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Arendt’s concern with the fragility of truth in the public realm echoes today’s concerns about the impact of fake news on public trust in media, government, and institutions. When people no longer trust facts, they withdraw from democratic engagement and become vulnerable to authoritarian manipulation.

The reason why MAGA Trumpists and their acolytes such as Musk are targeting “mainstream media” is that Independent media is often at the forefront of exposing corruption, abuses of power, and misinformation, which might otherwise go unchecked.

Investigative journalism plays a pivotal role by digging into stories that powerful entities want to keep hidden. Independent media, free of government control, regularly fact-check falsehoods. Some examples include the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), The Guardian, and ProPublica.

PolitiFact is one of the most well-known fact-checking organizations in the United States. It is widely recognized for its Truth-O-Meter, which rates the accuracy of statements made by politicians, public figures, and media outlets. The ratings range from “True” to “Pants on Fire” for particularly egregious falsehoods.

Basic democratic freedom and liberty are being threatened in multiple countries. Authoritarian messaging is based on negativity and falsehoods to spread fear, anxiety, and division. The existing reality is exaggerated to much worse than it is. It promises the struggling working class a Utopian future. This future will, of course, never materialize.

Here are just a few examples of what you face if you allow authoritarianism to take control of your life:

  • Power is mostly concentrated in the hands of a single leader or a small ruling elite. Checks and balances are eroded allowing leaders to act without accountability or transparency.
  • Authoritarian leaders use their positions to enrich themselves and their acolytes. Public resources are diverted for personal gain, leading to a lack of investment in essential services like education, healthcare, and infrastructure.
  • Political competition is eliminated or severely restricted by changes in laws benefiting the ruling party. Opposition leaders may be imprisoned, exiled, or assassinated as we are currently seeing in Putin’s Russia.
  • Authoritarian regimes stoke hatred of “the other,” including ethnic and religious minorities, leading to social fragmentation violence and unrest.
  • Authoritarianism prioritizes control over economic liberalization, creativity and innovation. In the long term economies stagnate, and entrepreneurship is stifled.

Happiness is created by mindset and perspective. Foundational is a society with basic freedoms of democracy and expression. Authoritarianism ultimately has a devastating effect on every citizen. You end up being poorer, more desperate and living a life of quiet misery.

As Winston Churchill once summized: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried.”

Reino Gevers – Author – Mentor – Speaker

P.S. If you enjoyed this article you will be interested in my books available where all good books are sold.

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by | June 2, 2020 · 6:45 am

Why I despise racism

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

– Nelson Mandela – 

The image of a white policeman pressing his knee against the neck of a black man pleading for his life has triggered many emotions and memories from my own childhood growing up in apartheid South Africa.

To put it bluntly. Racism is wrong. It is evil and it comes from the lowest depths of human behavior.

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Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

Born as a white person, I never questioned why blacks did not attend the same good schools that I attended, why blacks were refused entry to restaurants, had a different entrance at the post office, were arrested for breaking a night curfew in white areas or could not sit on the same benches as white people in the parks.

But some things happened where even as a child I started questioning the world in which I lived. I witnessed a farmer whipping one of his laborers. He showed no mercy as the man screamed in pain. This was the same man who only hours earlier attended holy communion in church and made a point of emphasizing how good a Christian he was.

Some years later the Lutheran pastor of our white church invited his fellow black pastor and his brass band choir to play in the white church. Despite the pleas from the pastor that this was not the apocalypse and that Jesus would not tolerate racism, the choir was met with extreme antagonism by white congregation members. I never understood the hatred spewing from the mouths of these people who all called themselves Christian.

Years later while working as a reporter for a newspaper in Durban,  I attended a court case where two black politicians, detained under the country’s emergency laws, explained in great detail how the white security policemen sitting in the same court meted out electroshock and other torture methods on them. I will never forget the smug grins of those stocky policemen who seemed very sure of themselves that they would never be investigated for their crimes.

I remember the sad and resigned expressions in the faces of the aged black women and men forced to leave their ancestral lands because a government had designated their luscious agricultural land as a “white” area.

I recall the terrible rage of a white shopkeeper when I walked into the black entrance of his shop.

Years later after returning to my home country for a visit, I drove through what I remember as a staunch white-only community.  The children were out in the playground. There were white, black, mixed-race, and Asian children playing together in what would have been unheard of in my childhood.

And, I remembered Nelson Mandela’s famous quote that nobody is born to hate. It is what the societies in which we live make of us. They can fuel the flames of the worst part of human character or sow the seeds of compassion, love, empathy, and the meeting of hearts that recognize the humanity within beyond the pigmentation of a man’s skin.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor, and Consultant

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by | March 16, 2020 · 4:35 pm

Dealing with anxiety and fear

Our mind is primarily programmed to focus on the negative. It is part of our survival toolkit as a human species. We are magically drawn to sensational news and images of catastrophes. During this time it is particularly important to protect your mental health and to guard your mind against fear and anxiety.

Guarding the mind against fear and anxiety

The constant dosage of coronavirus trackers with updates on infections and deaths, the lockdowns and drastic measures taken by many countries with the accompanying huge economic fallout is already having a major effect on mental health.

We should be mindful and look after our health during every influenza epidemic because it always has a major impact on the elderly with a weak immune system and those people with a history of poor health.  Bear in mind that we are not reading much about two-thirds of the people who fell ill with the coronavirus who only had mild symptoms and have recovered. 

Learning the lessons from a crisis

Every crisis teaches us something.  We need to look beyond the surface. As a humanity we need to go into deep introspection on what we are doing to our earth and our fellow living beings.  Nature is teaching us that we need to move away from an exploitative to a more sustainable economic model.  Short-term external gratification cannot replace the soul’s yearning for spiritual growth and meaning.

The worst and the best of mankind

A crisis triggers both the worst and the best in mankind. While some folk are fighting over toilet paper and hoarding grocery items others are discovering an entirely new sense of community. We are social animals and need the cooperative support of each other. The image of the Italians singing from the balconies of their homes will be of lasting impact. China is finally clamping down on the meat trade of endangered species, with growing evidence that the virus probably emanated from the endangered pangolin. 

spring flower

Hope springs

Practicing control of emotion and thought

Being locked down in our homes gives us time for reflection on what truly matters. If we stay calm, centered and in alignment with the higher self we can be of much more support to those loved ones around us.  Here are some tips on how to stand guard at the doorway to your soul.

  • Whenever you have a negative thought or feel a negative emotion such as fear replace it with a good thought or happy moment. What image or memory makes your heart expand or makes you laugh?
  • Breathing meditation. Focus your mind on your breathing. At the count of one I inhale and at the count of one I exhale – counting until 21.  Check out my immune-boosting meditation on Podcast.
  • Take a walk in nature – if you can. Find a spot where you can focus your attention on one sound that you find comforting such as a bird singing, rustling of leaves in a tree or water running over a stone in a creek. Just concentrate on that one sound for several minutes.
  • Our environment, our associations and our thoughts have a major impact on our mental well-being.  Radically reduce associations with people who bombard you with negativity. Reduce the consumption of negative media to a minimum. What we read, watch and think is what we become.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor, and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

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by | August 27, 2019 · 6:39 am

Feeding the narcissist

We are living in the age of the narcissist. Social media has opened a Pandora’s Box which has provided the ideal tool for the narcissist personality to tap into toxic emotions that have swept him into political power.

Narcissists are obsessed with attention

The narcissist first and foremost feeds on attention. He is obsessed with it and will do anything to be the talk of the town. He will rant and insult with every tweet, knowing that this will keep fueling the fire of the boiling cauldron.

Narcissist leaders are especially dangerous because they are unaware of what effect their words have on certain ears. The rightwing extremist will read a tweet by the person in authority ranting about immigrants as validation to take a gun and open fire on innocent people of color in a supermarket.

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Insulting indigenous people for their calls to protect the Amazon rainforest is seen as the green light by illegal loggers and miners to set fire to the earth’s largest still intact ecosystem.  It gets to the point where a British prime minister and his supporters would rather take into account an unprecedented economic disaster than losing face on their commitment to leaving the European Union.

The narcissist is only in love with himself

The larger consequences for a country, society and our planet are of secondary importance to the narcissist. He is only in love with himself and in his self-aggrandizement.

A narcissist feels that it is his right to vent anger no matter what effect this has on everyone around. He is on a mission in dividing and polarizing a society, family, political party or religious group. It is a hallmark of this personality that they are immune to the effects their actions have on everyone else. The primary purpose is to keep on churning the marketing machine of name recognition.

Narcissist culture turns the lie into truth 

We are living in dangerous times where part of the narcissist culture is to turn the lie into a truth. Scientists are defamed as messengers of “fake news” and lose their jobs. Narcissists are experts at gaslighting where the truth is manipulated in such a way that the recipient of the message will start having doubts about his/her own sanity.  They are experts at changing the narrative to serve their own truth. Sowing confusion and spreading disinformation is part of the methodology of the narcissist who then postulates himself onto the stage as the only purveyor of the truth.  Their charisma will enchant people into their orbit but the narcissist will dump them like a useless object when they are no longer needed. Those who have the audacity to reveal the lies and deceit will find themselves at the receiving end of personal insult and bullying. The narcissist is very good at dishing out but is very thin-skinned when at the receiving end.

The Narcissist feeds on toxic emotion and drama 

The current crop of narcissist leaders will stop at nothing and have no problem in leaving scorched earth in their wake.  Especially the news media needs to stop falling for the bait that is thrown at them with every rant and tweet. We need to be mindful of the angry conversations centering around these disturbed personalities. It is the energy they are feeding on and that keeps them dictating the narrative of the day.

Smokescreens are thrown at us while the forest is burning. Narcissists are experts at tapping into the undercurrent of anger and drama that in most cases has its roots in bad personal choices or family history.  It is painful and a long process of self-introspection to accept responsibility for one’s own actions that have directly been responsible for a predicament.  But it is the precondition to the start of the healing process that needs to take place both individually and on a global level.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor, and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

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by | August 7, 2019 · 6:56 am

Are we heading for an apocalypse?

A barrage of negative news from the mass shootings of innocent people, trade wars and the melting of the polar ice caps from the effects of global warming easily creates the impression that mankind is heading for an apocalypse. But moaning about the state of the world is no solution and creates a mindset of negativity.

Where attention goes energy flows

In the duality of what is life, we are confronted constantly with light and shadow. There is good and there is evil.  Where attention goes energy flows. The human mind is unfortunately hard-wired to perceive the negative before seeing the positive. It is part of the survival instinct of homo sapiens.

Magic of the moment

The downside is that we at the same time have the capacity to dwell constantly in the past or in the future, missing the magic or the gratitude of the moment. I just need to observe my dog, who will jump with joy, wagging her tail, when I just mention the sentence: “Time for a walk, Klara.”

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It is particularly difficult to find the emotional shift to positivity when we are bombarded from all sides by news of negative events.  But instead of falling into the trap of wallowing in the cloud of negativity, we need to ask ourselves the question. What can I do to change it?

The emphasis on the negative puts mankind in a defeatest, “can’t do anything about it anyway” mode. The “fight climate change” campaigns have the opposite effect as intended because the problem seems so overwhelming.

Becoming pro-active

Enormous energy can be released in human beings if they feel they are doing something purposeful for the bigger whole. Ethiopia, India, and China are some of the countries that recently launched massive tree-planting campaigns to restore landscapes and to mitigate the effects of climate change.  If every human being on earth planted a tree or a shrub we would be well on our way to boosting a restorative mindset.

The world today is a better place

Life is living on the edge. Humanity has been on the brink of extinction on numerous occasions in history. But we have come a long way since the plagues of the Middle Ages, the burning of “witches” at the stake or the sacrificing of human beings in the name of religion.  In the bigger picture, humanity today is far better off than it ever was. The average middle-class family in the Western world today has a better lifestyle than any king or queen centuries ago when there was no such thing as central heating or running water.

The problem in the modern era is information overload. We are confronted with the constant pull of countless distractions that have a mainly negative message. Should we then be surprised at the enormous rise in depression and mental illness?  We need a radical reduction in the dosage of negative news and more messages that stir hope.  And, we need to seize those moments for stillness and peace of mind, creating the space for self-discovery and purpose. It is a space that every individual needs to vigorously defend. Do not let your mind be captured by apocalyptic negativity.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor, and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

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by | May 25, 2019 · 8:03 am

Are you living in a tribal bubble?

Our world is becoming dangerously fractured into tribal bubbles and we are losing our sense of a common humanity along the way.

As our world becomes more globally connected on a digital level, there is a growing tendency to align with a “tribe” that thinks, dresses, talks and believes in the same things that we do.

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Photo by Surya Prakosa on Unsplash

Tribes have a tendency to build defensive walls against all those who are not members of the same community.  It is then only a small step away to see them as the enemy targeting our watering holes.

The divisive narrative on both sides of the political spectrum in the current politics is symptomatic. Extremist leaders whose narrative is threatening the very fabric of societies are being democratically elected.

We desperately need such wise leaders as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi , Theodore Roosevelt and Dag Hammarskjöld who were multi-lateral and holistic in their thinking. Their narrative was one of serving a common humanity rather than a political ideology.

When wise leaders are at the helm,  the rest follow and an immense sense for the common good and higher purpose can result.

The western mind has very much lost its way. When there is a spiritual vacuum, loss of purpose and direction, it is fertile ground for demagogues. They fill the void in playing the “angst” game with nationalist or tribal rhetoric. Its us against them!  Political ideology has all the trappings of a pseudo-religion. Its black or white. A religious cult has the philosophy of either you believe what we tell you to or you will suffer eternal damnation.

An innate spirituality is liberated from belief.  It intuitively feels rather than believes itself connected to what is the fabric and the web that holds everything together on a different level.

When you live in a tribal bubble you will listen only to those people, and media outlets that share your opinion. You have a fixed belief and it becomes part of the ego and the self. Different opinions, irrefutable evidence and scientific fact are slated as “fake news” because they might threaten the image of a false identity that has been created.

If there is no willingness to even listen or to discern between the opinion and the humanity of the other, the inevitable result is confusion about those root cohesive and common values that solidify society.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

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by | April 1, 2019 · 5:42 am

Hate or Love: The language we speak

Much of social media has become a global ghetto-blaster of hate speech and vile language. We should not be surprised that deranged minds run amok with assault weapons in mosques, synagogues, churches and schools.
The language we speak can either unite or divide. A thought brings forth words and words trigger action. It is a frightening reality that there is a thin line between language that stirs toxic emotions and the violence on innocent people. Masses can be manipulated at will by fear-mongering demagogues.
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Hate speech is dividing communities across the globe. It is the downside of the digital revolution. The seeds of genocide are planted by the seeds of hate speech. Psychology has determined seven stages of hate speech leading to the final stage of killing. The boundary has been crossed in several countries with scapegoating of refugees, racial groups, religious minorities and ethnic minorities.
History has taught us lessons that cannot be repeated. There is an old black and white news documentary film of chief Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels stirring the masses in Berlin with fanatical screams of, “we want total war!” that cost the lives of about 50 million people in World War II.
The Nazi party in Germany was initially seen as a joke when it started parading through the streets of German cities in the 1920s, blaming the Jews for the economic ills of the country. But the hate speech escalated. Jewish shops were ransacked, then synagogues were torched before the mass-killing started at an unprecedented industrial scale.
Negative language not only spreads the fans of hate. It also does something to those who utter vile language. We can and should defuse hate language with words that have a healing energy.
In differential language analysis psychologists have found a correlation between language in social media and general well-being and health. Words such as “human, beings, nature, spiritual” suggested something larger than oneself and an important determinant of psychological well-being.” Happiness is contagious:
There is a stronger feeling of happiness living in a community with people who influence each other in their general feeling of well-being. Through geolocation researchers also determined a link between cardiovascular disease and language used in tweets. https.aaai.org/ocs/index
Negative words associated with disengagement and a feeling of lack of meaning and purpose in life were defined as “sick, hate, bored, chill, wtf, bored, soooo, freakin…” The karmic effect of hate language is that it will eventually trigger serious mental and health issues in the body of the perpetrator.
We know from our own experience that words with a harmonious ring such as love, harmony, beauty and light trigger an expansive energy, especially if they find expression in a choir sung with other people.
Humming the syllable OM has a particularly strong vibrational power. Many of the ancient Sanskrit, Aramaic and Latin syllables are known to have immense healing power across time and space. They also create a matrix of positive neuronal links in the brain and the vital body functions.
Hate language divides, separates and destroys. Positive language unites, heals and transforms.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

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by | November 29, 2018 · 12:45 pm

Thought control? Hope springs

The Trump administration released the dire warning of its own climate scientists from 13 agencies during Thanksgiving, hoping it would be buried at a time when most people in the US are spending time with their families and eating Turkey.

Trump told reporters that he did not believe the study from the 300 climate experts after reading “some” of their conclusions. But  instead of hiding the bad news, Trump succeeded in really focusing attention on the matter.

At about the same time the Brazilian government published data telling us that deforestation in the Amazon rain forest had jumped to its worst rate in a decade. The New York Times also published an in-depth report on how fast the rain forests in Asia are disappearing to fulfill an insatiable demand for palm oil.

A huge consensus of the world’s best climate scientists have been telling us for years that we have a serious problem and that the earth will become uninhabitable for humans in half a century if humanity does not gets its act together in the next few years in doing something about climate change.

The climate scientists are telling us that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is essential. Planting more trees, and keeping existing trees in the ground is essential if we want to meet that goal.

Only a small group of pseudo-scientists – nearly all of them funded by the fossil fuel industry- are in denial and pumping us with “thought control” fake news. It is much the same scenario that the world saw in the early 1960s when the tobacco industry paid “researchers” to deny the overwhelming evidence that smoking caused cancer. I don’t know how these people sleep at night or whether they really believe their own lies.

The danger is that when we hear all this bad news, it makes us fall into a paralytic state of in-action. What the anti-environmentalist governments in Brazil and the U.S. do is out of our control. The Amazon or Borneo is far away. We aren’t inhaling – yet – the smoke from all the burning forests.

Fact is that in our little worlds we can all do something. Here are only a few suggestions:

  • Each time we pick up a shampoo or cosmetic item in the supermarket we can check whether it contains palm oil.
  • Refuse to buy products equity or stock from agro-companies that are involved in deforestation. Check for the FSC label on sustainable forestry.
  • A vegan diet and food from the local organic farmer leaves the smallest carbon footprint. Mass animal production farms are dependent on monoculture farming that is destroying biodiversity.  For me personally a mainly vegetarian diet with a little organic meat every now and then is the best option.

Amid all the bad news, hope springs that we might after all get this climate issue solved if we really supported some very innovative ideas out there:

  • Dr. David Vaughan is a scientist who has achieved a breakthrough technology in bringing coral reefs back to life by making them grow up to 40 times faster than in the wild. Coral reefs are key to the ocean ecosystem and are major carbon sinks.
  •  Creating green roofs on skyscrapers in the major cities of the world could have a really positive effect in changing the micro-climate in urban areas and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
  • Vertical farming in skyscrapers is a very effective way of providing fresh organic produce in cities, requiring much less land than conventional farming that is the second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide after the energy sector.  The Swedish company Plantagon is working on making a first prototype by constructing a 16-story building called The World Food Building that could serve as an international model for industrial urban farming.

Reino Gevers – Author, Mentor and Consultant

https://www.reinogevers.com

     

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