Back in those days, not everyone had their own separate telephone land line. In many cases, you would share a land line with one or two other close neighbors. You might pick up your house phone, hear your neighbor holding a conversation with someone, and politely ask if you might use the phone when they finished their call. In the 1950s, not everyone owned a television set. You received your reception with a tall strange antenna on the roof of your house, and a funny set of rabbit ears on the top of the television that provided you with lots of static if they were accidentally moved. The IBM Selectric electric typewriter was introduced in July 1961. To those of us who pounded away on a manual typewriter like
F. Scott Fitzgerald, we were thrilled. We welcomed all the new gadgets that saved time and made us more efficient.
In 1965 gasoline was $.25 a gallon, a package of cigarettes were also $.25. First class stamps were $.03.
Farmers and ranchers farmed the same way as the generations before them had done. Everything we ate was not grown using genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The second McDonald’s fast food chain drive up restaurant opened in the town I grew up in Los Angeles in 1953. That jump-started start the fast-food craze, and the decline of our health in America.
There were no large health systems, no HMOs, a few small community hospitals, and many people received their medical care from their local chiropractic healer. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the first Medicare and Medicaid bill on July 30, 1965, the year I graduated from high school. Pharmaceutical companies were given the green light to advertise pharmaceutical drugs direct to consumer on television in 1997.
Drug companies spent over $1 billion dollars in 1997 in direct to consumer advertising, and it has skyrocketed from there. Only the U.S. and New Zealand allow prescription drug advertising, which in the U.S. went from just over $1 billion and 79,000 ads to $6 billion and 5 million ads in 2016. This strategic spending would all make good sense if we were a healthier nation, but we are not.
I am beginning to see a global awakening. People around the globe are beginning to become curious and more emotionally present. They are acknowledging that fear and anxiety is ever present no matter in which part of the world you live. Every day there is another documentary focusing on waking people up. It is estimated that number of “awakened” people could be as high as half the planet population. Dr. Mark McDonald has just released a book titled, The United States of Fear, in which he explores the state of fear and anxiety people are feeling and his comments are that if someone is addicted to fear and anxiety, they are frozen in time.