Opinion
Opinion: What Are We So Afraid Of?
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Marcia Meier
Special to AOL News
(May 26) -- Fear. Can you feel it? Right there in the pit of your stomach. It's a gnawing, knotty presence that makes your pulse quicken and your mouth go dry. Fear has taken the nation hostage.

It's a collective anxiety rooted in 9/11 and fueled by years of war on two fronts. Add to that the collapse of many of the nation's biggest banks and two years of job losses, bankruptcies, home foreclosures and lack of health insurance. Mix with divisive politics driven by radio talk show hosts and special interests, and you have a recipe for a destructive us-vs.-them mentality.

Surveys show we have fears about national security, about job losses, about the American dream dying.

Tea partiers, health care reform opponents, the "party of no" -- all take their cues from a fear that remains deeply fixed in our stomachs and our psyches. When we live with a sense of loss -- or even perceived potential loss -- we retract, drawing in all our possessions, holding tightly for fear someone will take more. Fear fosters protectionism, demonization of others, jealousy and stinginess -- all emotions that stem from our baser natures.

The recent brouhaha over Arizona's new law on immigration and the attempted bombing in Times Square only ratcheted up the collective anxiety.

Evolutionarily, the emotion of fear helps protect us from predators and dangers. The "fight or flight" jolt comes from adrenaline whenever we detect a threat, real or imagined. There is a physical response: heightened awareness, quickened heart beat and rapid breath, trembling and tenseness, increased sweating and dry mouth. It puts us in position to confront or flee.

But prolonged fear is debilitating. A constant readiness state over time can lead to psychological and stress-related physical problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, tension headache and a host of other ailments.

It doesn't have to be.

Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California and the author of "The Culture of Fear, Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things," says that when we succumb to fear, we are being manipulated by someone who stands to benefit from our anxiety.

"It's important to know that in the United States, we live in about the safest place and in the safest times for most people. Yet people are very frightened. Something's out of whack there," Glassner said.

Many individuals and organizations make their livings by keeping us afraid, Glassner explained.

Television news reports on the most heinous crimes, politicians peddle a particular belief system, even companies sell products based on fear. Glassner says ads for car and home alarms and security systems are just a few examples.

"My favorite," he said, "is anti-bacterial soap. Unless you work in a hospital or similar setting, you don't need it. Hand washing with regular soap suffices."

Politicians are particularly adept at using fear, Glassner said. Political ads are designed to do three things: grab your attention, plant a specific message, and motivate people to go out and vote to prevent some calamity from happening.

How to inoculate against this wave of fear-mongering?

"The main advice I give is ask yourself who's trying to benefit from making you afraid," Glassner said. If someone is trying to sell you a belief or a product, you're being manipulated with fear.

Also, keep things in perspective.

The fight-or-flight response is triggered in the ancient reptilian brain, but there is opportunity to bring higher thinking to bear, thinking that is based on true risk assessment.

If there is a 1 percent chance of something happening -- say, a terrorist attack -- the opposite perspective is there is a 99 percent likelihood that one will not happen. Yet fear of a terrorist attack is repeatedly recounted as one of the top fears Americans share today.

We are at far higher risks of death from smoking (1,200 Americans every day), obesity (306 daily) and flu (174 per day) than from, say, E. coli bacteria (1.4 daily). Yet, when one death was reported from possible E. coli contamination in spinach last fall, the media went into full alarm mode and grocery stores pulled bags of packaged spinach and all fresh spinach from shelves for weeks.

When it comes to choosing between driving and flying, most people opt for driving, even though statistically one is far safer in the friendly skies (1.5 deaths per day in 2008, the latest statistics available) than on the nation's highways (102 deaths daily that same year). In the months after 9/11, even more people eschewed flying for driving, and the number of highway deaths rose by more than 1,200.

In the end, fear is an emotion, a fleeting feeling that can be controlled with an awareness of the actual risks we face on a daily basis, which are -- in the great scheme of things -- relatively small.

Marcia Meier is a journalist and editor who has written for the Los Angeles Times and has been the editorial page director for the Santa Barbara News-Press. She is the author of the new book "Navigating the Rough Waters of Today's Publishing World: Critical Advice for Writers from Industry Insiders," and you can read her blog on Red Room.


http://www.aolnews.com/opinion/article/opinion-fear-grips-america-but-what-are-we-so-afraid-of/19492474


Fearmongering isn't healthy for this country.

So we need to let those who do it know that we are going to pick our health over all this mularky they spew constantly.

Rush, birthers, tea baggers, right wing hate sites, Faux (Fox) News Network, etc... they are trying to make us sick and weak from fear of nothing.

Time to revolt and say no to fear and hatred.

It is an interesting article, really

Another biased partisan atricle.

Since fear is the opposite of love.....

?

Fear mongering has been used in politics and advertising for as long as I can remember.

The place it has been used THE MOST is in RELIGION.

For they will tell you that if you do not accept their savior as your personal savior you will not be saved. If you are not 'saved' you will spend eternity in hell. If that's not fear mongering I don't know what it is. As a child my parents sent me to Sunday school. I heard these stories and believed them temporarily and worried that my parents weren't saved and when I got to heaven they would not be there to greet me. Now as a small child, this was a fearful thing. I could not be happy in heaven knowing my parents were being tortured for eternity in hell.

I once saw a teen who wore a T-shirt and on that shirt it said: "NO FEAR!" At the same time, I heard a paster of a local church react to that sign with disgust. He hated it. He had spent his entire life peddling his religion by instilling the fear of God into people he felt a total loss of power over these kids who lived with a motto like: "NO FEAR!"

If you decide to live with no fear, you will render helpless anyone who rules by fear. You will destroy their power over you.

Example:

Are you afraid of what the future holds? Then pay me for a tarot card reading and we will have a peek....

????????????????????????????

I have more questions than you do.

Obama did not use fearmongering. Hasn't yet.

Word.

People love reading about a bunch of BS stories. Conspiracy theories, wild ideas etc...

With the help of the web, I could put together any sort of "news" that would look scary, heck i would even use sources to "back it up".

Also, the amount of information now available is many gazillion times more than 10 years ago or before. Just because all these things happen all over the place and we can read about it within seconds, doesn't mean, that "back in the day" didn't happen.

It just wasn't available, unless you bought all the newspapers from every state and country you could put yourself into a fear-coma about all the bad things happening.

I think Yoda said it the best:

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

We're NOT 'afraid' ... we're PISSED ... ! there's a difference ...

I agree with Yoda.

And I see it in this country today.

Not really, it started with fear. Debate that until you are blue in the face, doesn't matter, it is true.

No. It started with ANGER at seeing our Nation trashed by a malignant little narcissist who is always the most incompetent person in any room he enters, and who has an active, ongoing hatred for the nation he supposedly 'represents' ....

I guess it depends upon the church and the pastor. I wasnt taught through fear of some fire and brimstone, I was taught through love of my Creator, a desire to please and be with Him similar to my desire to please my physical parents.

as far as fear,, I think its like sunshine,, its necessary to survive but too much can be damaging,,,

Oh please get real.You really think that the things the majority of Americans are afraid of is a priest telling them they will go to Hell?I think a Christian telling a Athiest they are going to Hell is probably the last thing in the world people are worried about right now.Even if they do why would you care?If you don't believe in Hell then it's the same worrying about the boogie man coming to get you.That was nothing but a cop out and cheap shot.In case you haven't noticed the only time our Government talks about religion is when it is putting it down.I have yet to hear our President say that Americans better read and obey the bible "or else".I also don't remember any of our Presidents telling us we were going to Hell.So saying our Government works hand in hand with Christianity as a tool for fear mongering is way,way out there and has no facts to back it up.

When it comes to fear mongering I would have to say the economy,inflation,terrorism,the environment,wars,job loss,unemployment,and too much Government spending are what Americans are concerned about.Maybe you main concern is going to hell but 99.9% of Americans are worrying about other things.

As far as I am concerned I am not afraid of anything.These radical changes in our Government is because we have a liberal idiot in the white house that has no idea what he is doing.The tea party movement is taking out the garbage.

I am mostly afraid of times moving backwards, where everybody gets thrown into a single category from which some inane concept of 'us vs them' can be fueled into an uncontainable fire,,,


otherwise,, life is good,,lol

too much thinking

Like I said, argue until you are blue in the face, it did start with fear.

umm no kings, it started with America meddling in middle eastern affairs and trying to tell the rest of the world how to live