I have an acquaintance of mine who tells me
that he is worried whenever I get on a plane (which
is more often than most people, though I’m
not a golden level frequent flier). You know the
reasoning: those things (the planes) are heavier
than air; we were not meant to be flying thousands
of feet above the earth; surely you heard about
how the airlines are cutting on maintenance because
of increasing costs; etc., etc., etc.
Interestingly, this same friend of mine is not
the least bit concerned about the fact that in
order to get to the airport I have to drive on
a road, Alcoa Highway, that the locals have nicknamed
“I’ll Kill Ya Highway” because
of the high number of accidents. Never mind that
the statistics clearly say that riding a car is
much more dangerous than being on a plane, that
if we were meant to do anything, that probably
did not include racing at 60 miles an hour on
asphalt, and that there is not an iota of evidence
showing that airlines have been slacking on repairs
(to the contrary, study after study shows that
the airline industry -- including commuter planes
-- has become increasingly safe over the past
decades).
Are we afraid of the wrong things? That is certainly
the thesis of University of Southern California’s
sociologist Barry Glassner, whose The Culture
of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong
Things should be mandatory reading for people
like my friend. Glassner makes an interesting
point, and backs it up with tons of anecdotal
as well as statistical evidence. We are more afraid
of terrorism than of dying of ill effects caused
by the operations of our own industries, and yet
the latter is a much higher cause of death than
the former. We are convinced by the media that
it is very dangerous for anybody to walk city
streets because of “random” crime. But,
as Glassner points out, violent crime is anything
but random: just consider that a black man is
18 times more likely to be murdered than a white
woman.
The examples can be multiplied almost endlessly,
but a regular pattern emerges. We tend to be afraid
of things that are constantly in the news, even
though the media have a stake in ratings (and
therefore in high-emotional impact stories), not
necessarily in informing us. We tend to be unduly
impressed by personal stories, either recounted
by people we know or broadcasted by talk shows,
and often lack the overall frame of reference
to reasonably interpret those stories. Surely
there are genuine examples of, say, the IRS “persecuting”
some poor chap well beyond the boundaries of reasonableness.
But does that constitute a pattern of abuse of
ordinary Americans by the tax people? More importantly,
does that require a special Congressional investigation,
and perhaps passing laws to curb such ghastly
abuses of power? Maybe, but the answer is to be
found in independent investigations of the problem
based on large numbers of cases, not on the occasional
horror story, as regrettable or even worrisome
(nobody wishes to become the next “anecdote”)
as that may be.
Is there a national conspiracy by the media,
the government, and the military-industrial complex
to keep Americans worried about the wrong things?
Hmm, yes and no. On the one hand, it is simply
natural for human beings to respond emotionally
to personal stories and to yawn when faced with
statistical analyses. It is also understandable,
if borderline unethical, of the media to go for
the gory aspects of life, as unrepresentative
of reality as they may be, rather than for the
more mundane but more relevant ones. Glassner
even suggests that perhaps we tend to fear the
wrong things because they neatly substitute fears
of things for which we either can’t do much
about or are in fact partly guilty of. For example,
it may be that an obsessive interest in the relatively
few cases of children killed by their mothers
makes us feel better about our own deficiencies
in our everyday exercise of the same role (along
the lines of “well, at least I’m not
as bad a parent as that”).
On the other hand, think of the recent and still
unfolding story about President Bush “doctoring”
the truth about Iraq’s nuclear program and
why the US went to war. (I’m sure that if
it were Clinton denying having received a blow
job in the oval office we would not be ashamed
of using the word “lying,” and perhaps
even of thinking out loud about impeachment.)
That one does indeed seem a case of the Government
purposely manipulating our feelings for rather
sinister ends.
Do we have a defense against being afraid of
the wrong things? Can we hope to channel our fears
where they belong? (After all, fear is a genuinely
useful reaction, if directed to genuine threats.)
Yes, but the answer is going to make you yawn
and wishing to turn the page or jumping into another
area of cyber space. The answer is slow, painful,
continuous education of ourselves. A process that
is mostly up to us, that requires reading widely
and discussing openly, that can eat into your
TV or golf time, and that would make you more
sociable only with the NPR-listening crowd. Then
again, perhaps the greatest responsibility of
the citizens of a democracy is exactly to educate
themselves, if nothing else in preparation for
the next trip to the voting booth.
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