The Fear Years. now more than ever.

[mahina]

I think this is the best article I've read in years. It's short and sweet. Check the date

John Carroll, SF Gate

"We are scaring ourselves silly. We are surrounded by invisible enemies. We are beleaguered on every side. We are barely hanging on.
Worse yet, we are scaring ourselves stupid. There are real enemies, but we are not doing battle with them. We are facing in the wrong direction. We are listening to bad advice. We are terrified for our children. We believe that they have enemies everywhere. We are suspicious of all adults who come near. We are sending only one message to our children: Be very afraid.

Teachers can no longer touch children because touching might be bad. It might be sexual. It might be abusive. It might be anything, except something good. We no longer believe in hugs, or roughhousing, or piggyback rides. We are frightened of piggyback rides. It's come to this. We believe that there are strangers on street corners who wish our children harm. On every street corner, another stranger. In every schoolyard, churchyard, faculty lounge, vestry room, day care center, dining hall -- another stranger. We are not paying attention. Statistically speaking, our children are not in any danger from strangers. On the playground, the humans who most endanger our children are other children. The teachers protect our children. That's the way the world actually works.
Statistically speaking, our children are not endangered by strangers in their homes. Statistically speaking, our children are endangered by people they know. It is not the lurking man in the bushes; it is the familiar man in the living room. Statistically speaking, we are the people most likely to harm our children. No wonder we're scared.

All around, there are tributes to our own dark natures. Almost every consumer item is triple- wrapped for our protection. Almost every consumer item is very hard to open. Knives and teeth and nails and scissors may or may not work. But there is no significant problem with tampering of consumer items. Most of the news stories have turned out to be false alarms. Most of the scare stories about vile additives or contaminants have turned out to be false or overstated or statistically insignificant. We are protecting ourselves from imaginary dangers. Letters bombs, luggage bombs, car bombs -- not big problems. Better you should worry about tobogganing. Better you should buckle your seat belt.

What is actually amazing is how safe we are. Hundreds of people have our credit card numbers by now, and yet mostly we are not defrauded. We drive on roads with crazy people, and mostly we are unharmed. But still we are scaring ourselves silly. In many ways, it is not our fault. We swim in a sea of fear. Powerful forces, for profit or power or because they don't know another way, are daily pouring doses of terror into our national reservoirs. We need to be smart in spite of the fear. We need to remember that love conquers all, and it's hard to remember that when we are confused. Fear sows confusion. It is very hard to be smart when you're afraid. It is very important to be smart when you're afraid. Tomorrow, I want to talk about the things that are making us afraid. I want to talk about the culture of unreasoning fear. But first, reasoning fear. What is the thing we should be most afraid of? What is this nation's No. 1 killer? Poverty. Disease and crime and accidents -- all increase rapidly as the family income dips below the poverty line. That is the stranger that lurks on every street corner. As wealth continues to be maldistributed, more children are at risk. Malice is not the enemy. Greed is the enemy. That's the bouncing ball you're not supposed to follow. That's what's up the magician's sleeve."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1997/01/07/DD25422.DTL

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. It would be startling to find out that some wars were won with

nail clippers... I mean that would be one for the books.

[mahina]

2. for real.