Opinion: What Are We So Afraid Of?

(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.


To submit an op-ed or letter to the editor, write to opinion@aolnews.com.