The Culture of FEAR

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower

April 16, 1953

In this bestseller, sociologist Glassner indicts the media on several counts of fear-mongering, and claims that misappropriated fear causes both undue trauma over the feared issue and starves away concern over the real problems.

First, he argues, we are afraid of things that are mostly harmless. Road rage, delinquent kids, single moms, black men, hard drugs, strange illnesses seemingly from breast implants and desert wars, plane crashes, and Martians invading New Jersey (“The War of the Worlds”); all these are of little danger to most anyone. These fears often follow general rules that we can use to ferret them out (page 206-8), but regardless, they inspire worry in many people. The danger of fearing too much, Glassner argues, is that it “knocks the optimism out of us by stuffing us full of negative presumptions about our fellow citizens and social institutions” (page 208). This makes us believe that we cannot solve our real problems, which adds even more to our fear in a self-perpetuating cycle.

Second, and worse, fearing the harmless keeps us from seeing and solving the real problems that plague our society. Often the hyped-up fears are successful, in fact, because they are a stopgap solution, giving us a smaller battle to fight while we ignore the greater war because it has gotten “too big”. Glassner puts it this way: “The success of a scare depends not only on how well it is expressed but also, as I have tried to suggest, on how well it expresses deeper cultural anxieties.” For instance, the War of the Worlds was successful because it tapped into people’s current fears of the Nazis and World War II, which America had so far done nothing about.

What fascinates me about all this is the reasons we feel afraid of things that, statistically, have almost no chance of affecting us. I attended a talk by Glassner and other media experts (or “experts”), and a woman stood up in the middle of the talk to admonish Barry: “You can say all you want to pay attention to statistics, but I live in Manhattan, and we know what fear is there after 9/11.”

It seems that we’re experiencing what Robert Wright called “culture lag” in Nonzero–the idea that society hasn’t learned yet how to deal with the powers new technology affords. For millenia we lived in relatively small communities, with little knowledge of the lives of people outside them. If you heard about a murder, robbery, or plane crash (well, maybe wagon crash) then, it was because it happened close to you. You were well to be afraid then, because your likelihood of becoming the next victim had just increased. But today, thanks to tv and the internet, we hear about and see dozens of murders, robberies, and other dangers daily. Our minds still register that as threatening, because they still believe that what we see is what is physically around us.

This is a good read, if only for the reassurance in the validity of statistics. Everyone’s heard that “you’re more likely to die driving home from the airport than in a plane crash”–but we haven’t heard the other comforting facts as much, like the better odds that children and single mothers have today, and the drop in crime despite increased media coverage of what’s left. And it’s always nice to hear good news again–it’s news of a dying breed.

Notes

xvi Misplaced fear can get in the way of prevention; if you fear breast cancer you will be afraid to check for it.

xvii What we waste on unnecessary enforcement should be used to stop the real problems

xx Recurring evil/stress/fear; do we need it as a species? “Matrix”: we need evil.

xxiv Malcolm Gladwell started out by writing about real viruses.

4 Do we want to be afraid? After all, we love to watch the Dateline-type shows; those with power solidify it by becoming the oracle for a population that for some reason wants to be afraid.

5 Coverage on TV should be proportional to the item’s real effect; wouldn’t that be more successful anyway?

8 Canada checks for guns at its border; the U.S. checks for bad fruit

11 Possible ISIS motto? “We’ve found Osiris’ penis!”

16 Always look for the real examples of a debunked threat.

18 Not even “pure” academia is free from fear-mongering; examples of professors using it.

27 We assume we’re at risk because we hear about other instances, and assume they’re close because we heard them with our ears; something never possible without being physically close for millions of years. Culture lag–we’re not caught up mentally to technology’s breadth (Nonzero definition of culture lag)

27 National’s policy of security “to protect you, the workers”, is valid because most workplace murders are caused by outsiders, not disgruntled employees.

28 Avoiding the real problem again; journalists do so too.

28 Having personal stake in an article’s content (i.e. a piece about downsizing when your own job is at risk) can hinder truthful reporting; hence the value of the Internet’s anonymity, right?

30 Perhaps the increase in crimes of a certain nature are caused by the media glut giving criminals the idea?

34 Minority Report-esque: Police trolling for sex predators online may be tempting people to commit crimes they otherwise wouldn’t have–“But they would have, we know it”

37 Focus on bad priests has obscured serious issues in the Catholic Church; but those are less personal in nature, no scapegoat “villain”, so they go unreported.

40 Glassner blames guns again; no wonder Michael Moore wanted him in his movie

43 TV also shows us amazing acts of love, kindness, and bravery; perhaps why I want to live a “TV romance”/TV life?

44 TV’s real impact is that it makes us feel we live in a dangerous world and should protect ourselves (with guns, of course, plus increased policing and jails, which themselves make us feel unsafe when we see them more often–like at Stanford with its glut of cops).

45 We have an addictive reaction to this self-imposed matrix of fear-mongering media, police patrolling, and jailing; it feeds on itself and gets worse and worse.

46 Hindsight is 20/20; how do we recognize these hypocrisies when they are happening? Watch for similar hyperboles of speech, commonly-blamed perpetrators, trends in one publication (need a variety to stay balanced; online and off).

59 If it’s “too good to be true”, it probably isn’t. Ask, is this source reliable? before acting on it.

60 Censorship reduces media to the lowest common denominator; of course we may choose that on our own (Harry Potter?)

61 More self-perpetuation: fear–>lack of confidence–>a target of bullies–>more fear…

62 What trumps fear as a publicity tool? Knowledge, which can be used to show off at the water cooler/etc. (I hope it does)

66 Fear of distant dangers taps into a human desire to fix what’s missing; by buying things? Keep the people afraid, they’ll buy more that way?

68 Sure, being a scary, dangerous kid is bad; but creating one is worse, and that’s the real problem we should solve (like Nonzero)

74 Supercriminals are bred in prison, not in suburbs; keep them out of the company of older, hardened criminals to actually solve the problem.

76 Another over-policed school breeds feelings of fear instead of safety (like Stanford)

78 ISIS Blender needs ADD kids

80 Kids who are institutionalized for acting strangely often take that as further rejection, and feel powerless for not having proven their own capacity. A cornered kid is more dangerous than a simply rebellious one; empower to truly control?

81 Never use exclamation points in writing–ripe for misinterpretation, mocking.

83 Is the tendency to emphasize maladies of the poor (violence, drugs) just a way for middle-class people to feel better about treating them poorly? “Oh, they’d only waste it anyway…”

90 Only recently have teenage girls been asked to wait so long to have children; early puberty plus societal taboo make waiting even until 16 difficult for women. So what about 40? How could women think that was a good choice?

91 Reversing the cause/effect of fears often points to truth; do girls not go to college because they’re pregnant, or do girls get pregnant because they can’t imagine going to college?

92 A full-time teen mother is better than a no-time 30-year-old

93 But income is related to age, so shouldn’t mothers still be older? Only because society forces income to be related to age too, I suppose…

96 Possible Wild at Heart contrast: is any father a good father? Glassner says no; does Eldredge say yes?

98 Biased media coverage contributes to demonization of anyone even slightly “bad”; seemingly turns life into a “fairy tale for adult readers”, where everyone is simply good or evil. An example of “adult-sized versions of kids things”.

103 Expanding definitions also increases fear; perhaps only 500,000 kids may be “abused”; but 1.4 million are “endangered”.

112 A black man is 18 times more likely to be murdered than a white woman; at double the rate of American soldiers in WWII.

119 Are Jews a persecuted group because they are a minority who has generally “done good”?

119 Watch for surveys that show big percentage changes: generally from small to slightly less small.

131 Often things are picked on because they have no interest group to defend them; i.e. drugs (except for possibly Phish fans), child abuse.

133 Availability heuristic (defn. below) says that if someone hears a lot about a subject, they’re more likely to engage in it; so don’t hound kids about drugs.

138 Similarly, adolescent drug use is often a rebellious action; so parents saying no will only encourage it.

141 The bigger question: sure, an item may be a problem–but have we solved all the bigger problems already (i.e. fighting heroin when alcohol is a worse enemy).

143 The only substance users don’t give up after early adulthood is cigarettes.

148 A popular fear gives people something to blame for their own actions; Rohypnol (“roofie”) was responsible for only 0.6% of rapes; alcohol for about 66%.

154 Baudrillard: the Gulf War was more simulacra than real to most people, even to the soldiers (enemies simulated on radar screens).

158 Gulf War I similar to Gulf War II; no criticism of the actual war, which went smoothly; just the related incidents.

160 Ask what things would really be like if the fear were entirely true; likely things wouldn’t be as nice as they are.

163 Psychosomatic responses to media coverage increase the number of people with symptoms, which feeds media coverage, which feeds symptoms…fear actually creating something to be afraid of; “The only thing we have to fear is what fear of that fear creates”

165 FDA caved in and banned silicone breast implants despite no evidence; is the role of a leader in a democratic society to pacify or to lead?

202 Remember who it is that is telling you about this fear; are they especially prone to its effects?

205 “War of the Worlds” parallel; fear caused by media

205 Does media conglomeration (Lessig) threaten to increase fear-mongering as well as stifle creativity? It certainly can silence any criticism of sensationalist reporting…

206 How to monger fear:

a) Have people with fancy titles (“America’s Road-rage therapist”–what school gives out that degree?)

b) Testimonials from people the audience will find sympathetic

c) Professional narrators

d) Poignant anecdotes in place of scientific evidence

e) Saying that isolated incidents are actually trends

f) **Finding a fear that reflects deeper anxieties that we haven’t done anything about**(War of the Worlds martians reflected Nazis, wars in Europe while the U.S. stayed out of it)

208 Fear destroys our optimism and makes us believe we cannot solve our problems

Quotes

xi “Give us a happy ending and we write a new disaster story.”

xv “Valid fears have their place; they cue us to danger. False and overdrawn fears only cause hardship.”

xviii “Americans have always been united less by a shared past than by the shared dreams of a better future.” Robert Reich, Brandeis University

xxviii “People react to fear, not love.” Richard Nixon

xxviii “Immense power and money await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes.”

5 “The difference between a flower girl and a lady is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.” Liza to Colonel Pickering, Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw

8 “Pseudodangers represent further opportunities to avoid problems we do not want to confront”

38 “From a certain point of view, the sex scandals don’t so much disprove the Christian faith as confirm our need for it” Walter Russell Mead.

44 “Watch enough brutality on TV and you come to believe you are living in a cruel and gloomy world in which yo fell vulnerable and insecure” George Gerbner, UPenn

60 Censorial legislation can have the effect of “reducing the adult population to reading only what is fit for children” Justice Felix Frankfurter, Supreme Court, Communications Decency Act, 1996

66 “That a child is missing–not at home–also brings up fears that perhaps we as residents at home are missing something, too.” Marilyn Ivy, UWash, on the “missing child” postcards with advertisements on the back.

75 “There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.” Harry Truman

78 “Whether we view a high level of activity as Attention Deficit Disorder depends on our conception of the ideal classroom” Kenneth Gergen, Swarthmore

83 “We focus on the crack baby crisis, because, unlike our deeper fears, the crack baby crisis was contained. It existed only in other people’s neighborhoods…” Time

88 “To make an object seem to vanish, a magician directs the audience’s attention away from where he hides it.” — Possible BIG THOUGHT?

201 “News is what happens to your editors” LA Times reporter after ValuJet showed editors that a common activity of theirs (flying) was possibly dangerous; though for most people it was less important.

205 “Why do people embrace improbable announcements?”

208 “Fear mongers have knocked the optimism out of us by stuffing us full of negative presumptions about our fellow citizens and social institutions.”

Definitions

Cuisinart Effect: The mashing together of images and story lines from fiction and reality; John Schwartz, Washington Post; page xxiv

Mean-world Syndrome: The way watching TV makes you believe you live in a bad world and should be afraid; page 44

Conversion to Conventionality: What happens when people get jobs; get married; get babies; Joan Moore, UWisc; page 91

Unblees: “unidentified black males”; David Krajicek, Columbia U.

Availability Hueristic: We judge how common or important a phenomenon is by how readily it comes to mind; page 133