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Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

astrocat 10y ago
Is incessant fear-mongering manipulation the inevitable dystopian end of a society that is always connected to channels of mass communication? This is the result of the race to the bottom for eyeballs and attention - the appeal to fear. Does this ever resolve? We spend so much time lamenting the demise of journalism, the sensationalization of media, the fear-mongering, etc... But it's not like distinct "bad choices" led to this state - it's the simple consequence of TPTB (well, anyone, really) having the ability to engage wider and wider audiences (and ultimately everybody) in increasingly real-time creating such fierce competition for attention that we must eventually use our most powerful emotional appeals for even the most trivial messages. I mean, look at me, being all fatalistic - I'm guilty too. But I'm legitimately curious where we go from here, or perhaps more accurately, where do people think the bottom really is, and what will happen when we get there?
- exergy 10y ago
  Have you ever felt this sense of weariness on the internet? The idea that nothing is new, you've seen and heard it all before, and just a state of the brain being fried? This happens with increasing frequency to me, and is part of the reason why I seem to be gravitating, inexorably as it were, towards a low-information diet. No facebook, no instagram/snapchat/social media du jour, minimal news, and certainly no trump fever. I have a feeling the future will look more like the past than we'd like to believe. That eventually, similar to banner-blindness, we'll develop clickbait-blindness and long form, carefully researched and nuanced pieces will be a prerequisite if one wants attention. That or /r/forwardsfromgrandma, but I hope it's the former.
  - pmyjavec 10y ago
    I've recently been on my own diet, and I have been experimenting with this method, when picking up the phone, set a timer, say 15 minutes and only allocate that much time to news, HN, social media etc. This is where magazines and some newspapers were good, journalists collated the interesting stuff for us and gave us a digest to read, which was published at most, once per day.
- demonshalo 10y ago
  I think the problem resides in the west's insistence on spreading the ideas of equality. Watching a youtube video from buzzfeed is (in the minds of many) a legitimate way to learn about things like group conflict or any other social phenomenon. Mass communication has indirectly given rise to mass access to bad information. However, that alone would not be a problem. What makes it a problem is once you are told that your opinion is equal to all others in society, you begin to believe that your buzzfeed backed opinion is on par with a nobel prize winning POLS professor.
  - losteverything 10y ago
    There is no such thing as a wrong opinion. Its an opinion. Advice is different. Facts are different. Some opinions are worth listening to. That to me is the trickiest part
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >Is incessant fear-mongering manipulation the inevitable dystopian end of a society that is always connected to channels of mass communication? No, it's the result of leaving nonfiction communication to the lowest-common-denominator of market forces. Just look at Great Britain: sure, they've got Rupert Murdoch, but they've also got the BBC.
  - astrocat 10y ago
    > it's the result of leaving nonfiction communication to the lowest-common-denominator of market forces. but seriously, what's the alternative? How do you avoid market forces? What process does a culture need to undergo to pull it's journalism away from market forces and enshrine it so that it is no longer a commodity afflicted by the market's weaknesses? Is the BBC one such isolated place where the culture of the UK that supports it simply expects it to always have a higher standard, market demands be damned? How did it get there? Or more cynically, how much longer can it last?
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  I'm more than half convinced that the problem is with how these things are monetized. Basically, I think the per-view/per-click model of profit is disastrous. I value a well-researched, well-analyzed, 3000 word Guardian piece far more than a 200 word CNN piece. But if I click through one of the former and three of the latter, I'm conveying (roughly) three times the value to CNN. And if I click a link, the 'transaction' is made (for CPC, at least); it doesn't matter if I hate the piece and click away. This has left us in a place where you can either be niche (producing high user value) or manipulative (producing high user volume). Both interfere with detailed, consensus-reality news. Thoughtful, public-interest journalism in the vein of Murrow is the lowest-profit option for embedded advertising. We've incentivized for a news model which is not just hostile to society, but hostile to users. I don't want my how-to guides to come as slideshows with slow page refreshes between panels, but that's what I get. And I don't want my news to come as hyperbolic fear-mongering with clickbait headlines, but that's also what I get. So I think we're a little doomed, because humans inherently respond to drama and uncertainty, so we get a race to the bottom. But not truly doomed - I value lots of other things as well, and it's the monetization model that emphasizes our baser instincts. We don't need to nobly abandon market forces, just find a way to monetize that's based on something deeper than "pages loaded".
- grillvogel 10y ago
  >Is incessant fear-mongering manipulation the inevitable dystopian end of a society that is always connected to channels of mass communication? This is the result of the race to the bottom for eyeballs and attention - the appeal to fear. Does this ever resolve? sure, all you need to fix that is a prescription for the latest anti depressants that the nice pharmaceutical companies have made to help you deal with all the existential angst that our society has been engineered to cause you.
c2the3rd 10y ago
I find this sort of answer unsatisfyingly incomplete. All the examples of people who profit off fear: mass media, lawyers, politicians, and industrial pharmaceuticals have all existed for decades longer than the current age of fear. That makes them insufficient as a cause. There must be something else.
- wmccullough 10y ago
  Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, sociologist, psychologist or any other -ist, so I'm not saying this from a quantitative place. This comes from a place of observation on my part. Take it for what it is. I think fear is a natural human attribute left over from an earlier time in human existence, I really do. From a young age, if we're lucky enough to have parents, we flock to them because we perceive that the monster under the bed will get us. In our teenage years, we fear the next steps of our lives and I'd dare say that even the most introverted kid wants to fit in. In our twenties, we fear being successful or not. These are gross oversimplifications, but I think the point is illustrated. I think there are two parts to this fear thing. I think we humans are naturally fearful due to thousands of years of biology, and I think we look to leaders out of fear, there's certainly enough evidence of this if you just look at society as a whole and how we behave. Time and time again, societies throughout history look to leaders to placate our fears. The Stanley Milgram experiments touch on this too. Now for what I perceive to be the dark part of this whole thing. Our leaders have learned that we can be controlled through fear. I say learned, but I possibly mean that this is biological too. If you look back throughout societies, all great societies either were, or eventually became autocratic. We live for someone else to make the scary monsters go away. Sadly, I think we need fear. Have a look at the Universe 25 experiments to see what happens when a society has all needs met. Spoiler: It appears to end in death and mentally ill behavior.
  - golemotron 10y ago
    > I think fear is a natural human attribute left over from an earlier time in human existence, I really do. It's not a leftover, it's a survival mechanism. If fear were stripped away from a person or a society, it wouldn't last long. It's easy to think that rational thought would keep people from dancing on the edge of a cliff but rationality can be undermined through persuasion, self-delusion, and lack of conscious attention. The limbic system evolved as a attempt to keep us safe prior to logical thought and it still does the job.
kawera 10y ago
For those wanting to go deeper on this subject, a very good book is Dan Gardner's "Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear".
dreamlayers 10y ago
There might be some kind of homoeostasis for anxiety. If you're not facing serious threats, anxiety gets amplified, and if you're facing serious threats it gets reduced, so it doesn't vary too much. It would be similar to how some say there is a happiness set-point.
- amelius 10y ago
  > If you're not facing serious threats, anxiety gets amplified By whom? And does this entity know whether or not you already have your share of anxiety?
  - pjc50 10y ago
    By homoeostasis, same as all the other chemical processes that maintain the body.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  That makes some sense to me. Similar to the physical "gain control" features of eyesight and hearing.
cel1ne 10y ago
We live in the age of fear because the hose of information that floods us is constantly opened further: Letters → Telegram → Telephone → Radio → TV → Internet → Mobile Internet. Human beings need time to manage their emotions. Time spent waiting. Time being bored. Time when NO new information, not even positive, is arriving. We are constantly distracted and thus increasingly unable to sort out our feelings. That is the reason. And distracted parents that can't give their children at least 15 minutes of absolutely undivided attention per day worsen their offspring's ability to manage emotions even further. That is why Zuckerberg/Facebook's idea "just flood everyone with everything and it will get better" is dead-wrong. What Facebook could do to really help the world is turning off it's platform for one day each week.
- acqq 10y ago
  > to really help the world is turning off it's platform for a one day each week For this to work, there would have to be solidarity among the other platforms, all of them turning off on the same day (yes, even HN!) But I can actually imagine the world's productivity boost on such a day.
  - Raphmedia 10y ago
    The one day of the week where every programmer work on its own social network platform.
  - pantalaimon 10y ago
    I don't know why you are downvoted, HN is a big part of my news addiction cycle, but I can't help it. There is a certain satisfaction in reading news, being in the know about new developments - even if 80% of the time it doesn't help you at all/you'll forget about it the next day. I'm wasting so much time on news sites and other pages that inform me about new developments, it's quite sad. Most of the time there isn't even any news to be had - it's just "oh, nothing new here, moving on" in a cycle through different pages - then the thought lingers on that there might be something new by now and I start again from the beginning.
- Gruselbauer 10y ago
kingkawn 10y ago
We'll get bored of fear soon too
guard-of-terra 10y ago
Well maybe we should stop backing people into a corner then? For example, why don't back down on immigration? Instead, it sounds like "we're not listening to your concerns, rightful or not, your opinion won't affect how things are done". Hard to imagine how this treatment won't lead to panic attacks. Actually, countries definitely become harder and harder on immigration but there's a failure to project these changes to fellow voters. While reading this article I've got the exact feeling that, to the author, it's much more important to reinforce immigration than care about fellow citizens' feelings.
- Noseshine 10y ago
  > Well maybe we should stop backing people into a corner then? I agree with you thus far... > For example, why don't back down on immigration? But why this? I would ask for one thing: Rationality and existence of a connection. For example, if my country Germany is any guide, the parts of the country with the most fear of immigration are the ones least affected by it! Given that missing connection, how would it solve anything to listen to the demand of people in those regions to limit immigration? I agree with you - but only if the people demanding something are actually affected by it, both ways (i.e. by the thing itself as well as by what they demand).
  - guard-of-terra 10y ago
    "how would it solve anything to listen to the demand of people" First of all, maybe they'll be less scared? You see yourself as a filter who will determine which requests are reasonable and which aren't. This is where trouble is.
    - Noseshine 10y ago
      What on earth are you doing? You quoted only part of the sentence!!! Of course, the entire context would have ruined your artificially gained point.
  - megous 10y ago
    In Czech Republic, it's even more pronounced. The government accepted in total about 20 immigrants from Syria so far and if you read comments on the internet, or watch demonstrations, it's like the end of the world is coming. Also some of the fear might be quite shallow. There was a report of some old lady in the village that accepted some refugees. She was first afraid when asked about newcomers, stating fears that are commonly represented in the media. Then when she was told that they have children, and lack some stuff, she went there and donated some clothes. Hardliners that join fringe political parties are probably quite different. But also less open to reason. But I suspect that most people's fears can be quite easily ameliorated.
grecy 10y ago
I'm traveling in West Africa right now, and it's fascinating me how different the reality here on the ground is to what thousands of people tried to warn me off. A huge percentage of people think "Africa" is a war-torn, disease infested hell hole and that I would be murdered on day one. I have spent a massive amount of time wondering why people have such a distorted view of reality, and are so adamant about it - even though they have zero first, second or even third hand experience. I honestly believe it's caused by the 24-hour "news" spin-cylce in America. Those "news" stations discovered long ago they need sensationalist stories to continually hook people in. They need shock value, they need over-the-top. And so it goes that when they report on "Africa" they report about some war. Then a month later it's Ebola on the other side of the continent. Then a month later it's famine in some other distant part of the continent. Never mind that in the mean time hundreds of millions of warm, kind, generous people are happily living their lives, smiling, partying and loving life. The picture mass media paints simply does not include 99.9% of what actually happens here, because it's not sensationalist enough for their ratings. And so the average American sitting at home is told that "Africa" is war/disease/famine, which is only a tiny percentage of the whole picture. The "news" stations are not actually lying, they're just painting a fraction of the overall truth. And it's the fraction that gets them good ratings, not the fraction that everyday people need to know about to be well informed about the world. Exactly the same thing is true of the reporting of Australia in America. Australia is actually a very stable place, nothing much really happens (no civil war, no prime ministers assassinated, little violence etc.) Of course, the media looks for something sensationalist, and now a massive number of people think Australia is "full of deadly animals waiting to kill you". The first time I saw a report of a shark attack in Australia on TV in America I was gob smacked and thought 50 people must have died by the way they were carrying on for 5 hours. In fact one person had a small bite on their leg that needed a few stitches. Having lived there for 23 years I can tell you the majority of Australians have never even seen a deadly animal, but that doesn't stop the American media painting that false picture and the false story continuing. In the case of Australia it's mostly funny/harmless, and characters like Steve Irwin even played up to it really successfully. Obviously in the case of Africa it's extremely harmful. I think it's terrifying when the outlet a society relies upon to receive information about the world is so utterly biased and wrong. When 330 million people don't know the truth, how can they make good decisions?
squozzer 10y ago
Mass media fear-mongering has been around as long as I have been alive, and as easy to reach as the evening news.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
This flood of information, especially negative information, is one reason why I think time meditating is so important. I find that meditation helps me concentrate on what is important and I feel primed to take care of what needs to be done, as far as maintaining personal relationships, what work is most important, looking after spiritual, mental, and physical health, etc. Turn off the TV and stop binging on the news media.
rimher 10y ago
Michael Crichton was right
kukx 10y ago
Is this time any different than previous? Well at least the fear of nuclear annihilation is smaller. It's kinda normal for the US to think it's on the brink of a disaster. And it's normal for Europeans to think the US supremacy will end at any moment. And still it doesn't and the US is better off than any time before.
- cicero 10y ago
  What is different today is the Internet. Before that we had TV and radio, which also magnified fear, but not to the extent as the Internet where you can find the "news source" that best fits your particular fears.
  - kukx 10y ago
    I don't think it makes much, if any difference. The internet can be used to spread misinformation, but it can also be used for fact checking. So the net outcome is not that obvious. I'm curious to see some hard data on this subject.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jontayesp 10y ago
Also, don't discount the role religion plays on fear (yes I am a Christian.) The popular idea in the church is that we are currently living in the end times and the world will progressively become more sinful/dangerous until the earth is destroyed and recreated by Jesus. This is a relatively new idea since the 19th century, but represents the current theological and emotional state of the church today. Look at Islam and you will see a similar expectation of the apocalypse. I think a lot of fear and paranoia in our culture stems from unhealthy religious belief systems.
- DonaldFisk 10y ago
  You're implying that all Christian denominations believe this by your blanket use of the term "the church". I don't know where you get that idea from.
  - mhurron 10y ago
    I doubt you can find one that doesn't. Christianity is basically a death cult that has believed for 2000 years that the end of the world is imminent.
- cholantesh 10y ago
  Isn't this mostly a Protestant idea? Most all Catholic/EO christians that I know dismiss 'end times' theology.
  - jontayesp 10y ago
    Yes I should clarify not all denominations believe this, but it is the most dominant view within Protestant circles (see Left Behind, etc).
    - quantumhobbit 10y ago
      I wouldn't consider it the dominant Protestant view at all. Maybe amongst Evangelicals ( a subset of Protestants). Even amongst Evangelicals I doubt such literal Millinialist views as expressed in Left Behind are the overwhelmingly majority.
busterarm 10y ago
This story's opening hits too close to home. I grew up in what was predominantly a minority and gay neighborhood in NY. My mom was moderate-left and a musician who you can easily associate with the things and people you'd associate with NY musicians in the 70s. Bob Grant, Curtis Sliwa and Rush Limbaugh irrevocably changed my family. My mom is now a religious-conservative, homophobic, racist bigot. She shouts at people for no reason. She's gotten into arguments with family members at family dinners and then called the cops on them to have them removed. My brother is, thankfully, just conservative. Small miracles.
dbingham 10y ago
I think some of the fear is justified. Climate change is a very real threat and it's justifiably scary. Our government, in the last 8 years, used remotely operated drones to carry out extrajudicial killings of American citizens -- including a teenage boy. Our security state now engages in mass surveillance of us in a time when our government is engaging in extraordinary rendition of suspected "terrorists" in secret with limited oversight. Economic inequality is worse than at almost any time in human history, including the gilded age prior to the great depression. That's not rhetoric, those are simple statements of fact. Those things are scary and fear of them is justified. We may be -- in this very moment -- at the safest point in human history. But the fear isn't about where we are. It's about where we're headed.
- SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago
  > Climate change ... extrajudicial killings ... those are simple statements of fact. Those things are scary and fear of them is justified. The funny thing is though, the anxieties that you see on TV are pretty much fear of anything but those things. You will see big-league fear-mongers using "hit them harder" with more extraordinary rendition and "climate change is a con to handicap us" lines of thought.
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    This. The people talking about fear the most are not talking about any of the things in the grandparent post, and instead are asking to double down on that behavior.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > Our government, in the last 8 years, used remotely operated drones to carry out extrajudicial killings of American citizens -- including a teenage boy. Not my government, but still I can't help but wonder why it should matter that they are American citizens. A very large multiple of citizens of other countries is murdered in this way and from where I'm sitting I don't see much difference between the two.
  - 10y ago
jessaustin 10y ago
According to [some survey], Americans are most afraid of corruption of government officials... This is so rational (obviously corruption is common) and long-term-focused (corruption will eventually destroy the state, but it will take a really long time) that I'm a bit impressed by my fellow citizens...
- mwfunk 10y ago
  I suspect that it's the opposite of what you might hope it would be. I suspect that the fear of corruption of government officials is almost entirely based on accusations of corruption from their political opponents, and that those same Americans don't believe that "their" politicians are equally corrupt. I do think there is actual corruption on all sides, simply because of the fact that money and campaign donations are such huge factors in the political process. I think every American should be horrified by this and should be doing everything they can to take money out of what is effectively our hiring process for high-level government officials. However, I fear that this is not what [some survey] picked up on. I fear that [some survey] picked up on fans of politician X believing X's accusations of corruption on the part of politician Y were true, while simultaneously not believing allegations of corruption about their own candidate. And vice versa. I fear that all [some survey] picked up on is the sheer toxicity of the process nowadays, and not people who are concerned about the integrity of the political process itself.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    There are probably some true believers left, but everyone I've talked to in the last several years sees the corruption that exists on both sides. The surprising thing about the survey for me was that lots of people see that corruption as a major problem.
chippy 10y ago
I suspect that this is due to a human psychological flaw based in living in the present. Consider this: We all think, right now, that this time is the most important time that has ever happened in history. Right? Consider this also: Everyone has always thought that about their own moment in time. Every time in history has been considered to be the most important moment in time. Consider this a bit more: Think about yourself in ten years time - you would be thinking your time then as being the most important time. People in the future will think their own time as the most important. We can either assume two things from this: 1) That time increases the importance, value and crucialness of the present continually from when humans begun until the infinite future. or 2) that we have a flaw in our thinking. When I've brought this up in this forum, people will defend today. They will say that today really is the most important, and bring up examples from technology etc. They will demonstrate their bias of living in the present day. Think about risk - is today more or less risky in terms of nuclear war than during the Cuban missile crisis? Is today more or less risky for your family in terms of disease and quality of life? We are biased, and it's in our very brains. We want to defend our faulty perceptions of reality, as they are literally our reality. But it's not the truth of the matter, and it's not logical. So I expect you to defend the current day. The article touched on this - in terms of crime, it's much better than it has been. It's easy to say, but we don't feel or believe this. It must be wrong, right? Perhaps it always has felt wrong. Another flaw about memory - which is probably related. We don't tend to remember ourselves being as scared or anxious in this kind of daily effect, in the past. Thus the past feels better through our memories. I've studied the fear of crime. This is perceptions compared with the actual risks and actual levels of crime. One way to ask people about how fearful is to consult their memory - "how many times in the last week, when walking down the high street, did you see something that made you fearful". This is a better question than "do you think the high street is more dangerous these days?". So, in conclusion - we are biased to our present days. We have trouble comparing what we felt like in the past with the time now. We cannot easily extrapolate how we think and feel about today with the future. We are not really living in the age of fear, we just are currently feeling that we do. Indeed, we always think and feel that we are. We need to recognize our perceptions of reality shape our realities.
nkoren 10y ago
Slightly OT, but when it says "Every day there are 96 deaths from car accidents," I think: Rubbish -- that's the number of deaths every 42 minutes. Then I realise: Oh, they're just giving statistics for America. The non-existence of the rest of the world is assumed. In fact I largely concur with with the central thesis of this article, but this is a global phenomena and needs to be seen in that perspective.
- grecy 10y ago
  > this is a global phenomena and needs to be seen in that perspective You are correct that it's global, though like many negative-cultural things, America is currently clearly "leading" the way, and the west of the developed world is trailing far behind, though, unfortunately, they are trying to catch up.
protomyth 10y ago
Perhaps Rolling Stone would like a little introspection given their fear mongering and false reporting about the University of Virginia. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/business/media/rolling-stone-stays-focused-as-defamation-trial-is-set-to-begin.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/business/media/rolling-sto...
- xexers 10y ago
  Are you willing to give "Rolling Stone" a second chance? They've been quite apologetic about that incident. Op's piece seems pretty good to me.
  - protomyth 10y ago
    Nope, since frankly, I wasn't giving them a chance before the incident. They had their heyday, but they are just another outrage press now. Their Boston Bombing cover was reprehensible. Its just another data point of a trend line.
    - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
      IMO it was responsible of them publish that viewpoint and I respect them for doing so while the rest of the media was busy grabbing pitchforks and pouring gas over crosses. The guy was guilty as all hell but the way it all went down was shady. Getting him sentenced to death would have been a cakewalk if done by the book. Instead it was years of press releases making him look more and more guilty and getting that spun around in the media. Even if the result was the same he didn't get a fair trail because the media had him hanging before the dust settled. At least someone had the balls to play devil's advocate.
      - protomyth 10y ago
        Their cover tried to glorify him like a rock star. Getting caught in the act generally results in a guilty verdict.
- cha-cho 10y ago
dudul 10y ago
Maybe because of media and news websites publishing stories such Jackie Coakley's... and then wondering why we live in the Age of Fear...
wu-ikkyu 10y ago
>Bad news gives people a great survivor emotion. There's a great euphoria that pours off the bad news item... This survivor emotion is very necessary for news papers and news reports, also it helps to sell advertising which is all good news and is therefore very threatening. Good news threatens people with change. Bad news merely enables them to enjoy the grief of their neighbours. -Marshall McLuhan
roymurdock 10y ago
As a 23 year old I can only imagine what it was like to live through the cold war with the colossal fear of nuclear annihilation soaking into every activity/decision. I feel like it must have been so overwhelming yet intangible - in some ways a nuclear holocaust is much less painful than losing a loved one in a car accident or seeing your country splinter into violent factions. A nuclear holocaust is a quick, binary event - either it happens, or it doesn't. I also can't imagine what the fear of being drafted into a WWII or Vietnam War situation would feel like. Would love to hear what anyone with experience has to say about those "ages" of fear relative to this new one of mass-media/technology-produced fear.
- SandersAK 10y ago
  There's nothing binary about a nuclear attack. Ask any survivor or family member of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
  - roymurdock 10y ago
    I'm thinking more about MAD - mutually assured destruction of entire nations/much of the world, rather than 1 or 2 "isolated" nuclear attacks. Point taken though.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- losteverything 10y ago
  <I can only imagine what it was like to live through the cold war with the colossal fear of nuclear annihilation It was NEVER top of mind. Remember, the only news was evening broadcasts for 30 minutes or ap/upi reports in local papers. New York times didn't make it to my state except Sundays. It was NEVER a conversation growing up. Back then to find out if your team won you would have to wait for the paper 2 days later if it was not the local team. <drafted into a WWII or Vietnam War situation would feel like We Wwii everyone enlisted. No question. Different times. Vietnam draft was real anxiety.
- malz 10y ago
calimac 10y ago
Face it. We live in a time where mass media persuasion is extremely sophisticated,as a result of 85 years of refinement, that your version of the "truth" is highly dependent upon what information source you started with. At some point you established a baseline of credibility which was the foundation your beliefs were built on. You must realize that your "facts" are mostly opinion. EVERYONE needs to take time to ask questions about their foundational beliefs. Was the source of your beliefs credible? CNN, Credible? MSNBC Credible? internet Credible? Uncle, neighbor, dorm roommate credible? Whatever the source most have proven to be bias; some nefarious others innocent. The absolute irrefutable examples of media manipulation and deceit are easy to find these days. Take a look at Wikileaks and pick your flavor of lies.
deleted 10y ago
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droopybuns 10y ago
Fear, like Sex, is a foundational human motivator that has been shown to persuade people to buy things. I don't believe there is anything new going on now. https://youtu.be/IKqXu-5jw60 https://youtu.be/IKqXu-5jw60
losteverything 10y ago
Just stop watching tv and listening to radio. Cold turkey. I quit on 2011. We need campaigns like the "quit smoking" or "keep america beautiful" (anti trash): no tv and no radio I always intended to write a summary on my transition from media junkie to my present state. I don't need to know about a person I have never met or a place I will never go. BUT with the internet I can (on my terms) find out about said person or said place when I need to. If something is important, a friend or family member will tell me. Some irony I think: educatable people spend their working lives building retirement plans and associating with like minded others. Then once they no longer work they are in front of a tv (or worse have the TV on all the time at home) watching less minded and less educated and less sophisicated people. Watching tv is going back in the progress you made building your life. Why on earth would a college educated person watch talk-tv? Its like undoing your entire education.
- reality_czech 10y ago
  And yet, here you are on HN, commenting on a clickbait article. <trump>Sad!</trump>
mouzogu 10y ago
Using biology to justify simple laziness, prejudice and bigotry seems contrived and unnecessary to me. My amygdala, as far as i know, cannot tell whether my fears are real or imagined. Whether the imminent danger will really kill me or whether i will just wake up in a cliched hot sweat. We are supposed to be reasonable, open minded and balanced people. This is the criteria by which we should analyse the politics of fear. As opposed to looking for some primeval trigger within our supposedly fatalistic brains.
sickbeard 10y ago
People living in times of peace have a distorted reality field where they believe things are about to get them and the end of times is imminent. When you look at actual data, none of these are true.
throwaway98237 10y ago
Strong AI on the horizon, about the same horizon as quantum computing and pervasive robotics; the new triad. Nuclear arsenals capable of destroying the world several times over. Biological weapons that can be created and deployed by organizations much, much smaller than traditional state actors. Social media educating us that systemic racism has been causing systemic killings of certain parts of our population. Whistle blowers educating us that privacy is all but dead. Trump is on the ballot. Yeah, there is reason to be afraid.
mancerayder 10y ago
(Off Topic) I posted a similarly-minded article, also from Rolling Stone, and it got flagged. While Trump was in the article's title, the flagger may not have read it since it was a bigger-picture article about the media and political system as a whole. What's the line between flaggable and acceptable when it comes to articles such as these?
- daveloyall 10y ago
  Especially since user comments about candidates are the new norm, at least for the past several days.
Ccecil 10y ago
I have asked no less than 10 people why they listen to talk radio when it is clearly propaganda. The response is strangely always almost verbatim "I like to stay informed". It amazes me that they always say the same thing in response. I have found a similar thing when I mention I have no Facebook account...the response is almost always "I just like to keep in touch with people"...but they never seem to point out these are typically people that they stopped talking to years back for a reason. Has this person called you in the last 10 years? When was the last time you actually saw them in person? Whenever I get the exact same response from multiple people I start to question the role of social media and "news" in brainwashing of the masses.
- edanm 10y ago
  I have lots of family that I am not in daily contact with. I still like to see pictures of them and know what's going on in their lives. Same goes for some friends that I'm not in active contact with. You can disagree with how other people conduct their lives, but I'd be careful to conclude it's "brainwashing".
  - Ccecil 10y ago
    When was the last time you just called one of them? Or stopped by for a visit? I apologize if I upset you by implying mass brainwashing...I just find it odd that many share the same reasoning. In my personal opinion...social media furthers the disconnect from actual relationships and creates imaginary ones that are based on reading posts and looking at pictures but you never really get to see the real person.
    - edanm 10y ago
      And in my personal opinion, social media allows me to be almost 100% more in touch with my family that lives on the other side of the globe, who I would probably barely think about if it wasn't for Facebook. Personally, I find this a good thing. In the counterfactual world in which FB didn't exist, I would have zero contact with them - now I have some. I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, everyone can make their own choice about what's better for them. I'm just saying: 1. It's a huge leap to go from "many people disagree with me" to "may people are brainwashed". Note that tons of the HN population share your views, but I never said I think you are all brainwashed, and I think it would be pretty silly to say so. 2. Saying that social media furthers the disconnect from actual relationships is a pretty big statement, and without real proof it's mostly anecdotal. Everyone has opinions on what is good or not, worthy or not, moral or not, etc - I really think more people should just trust that others know what they're doing. If people use FB and say why they use FB, it's not a 100% certainty that they're right, but give people the benefit of the doubt regarding their own choices! 3. Most people share the same reasoning on why balls fall to the floor when released from the hand. That's not a weird thing - it's because gravity is real. Btw, I'm not upset at all, just disagree :)
pklausler 10y ago
The best defense: honing one's critical thinking skills.
- BOOSTERHIDROGEN 10y ago
  any books ?
  - pklausler 10y ago
    I am fond of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".
bksenior 10y ago
There was a big change to consumerism around the second WW. I cant recommend this doc enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&feature=youtu.be
- nyolfen 10y ago
  incidentally, the director of this film released a new film last night which is relevant to the topic at hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtsrjlsclQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtsrjlsclQ (if it's yanked off youtube before you can watch, the title is 'hypernormalisation')
life_is_short 10y ago
What's the tldr? After 1000+ words I still can't see it. I wish articles said the main point in the beginning.
wnevets 10y ago
Is this age of fear really any different than the previous?
- mwfunk 10y ago
  Perhaps. If you think of irrational or uninformed fears as memes (in the classic sense, not the "pictures with captions" sense) that propagate through a society, the Internet provides mechanisms for those memes to spread much more quickly, and with far less resistance, than before. At the same time, these same communications mechanisms allow falsehoods to be debunked much more effectively, assuming that readers would rather believe hard boring truths than comfortable exciting falsehoods. Then again, I've seen enough people (even on HN!) say things like, "I would rather be passionate about a lie than bored by a truth" (paraphrasing) that I wonder if even this is true.
anigbrowl 10y ago
As a practical matter, when large parts of the population are heavily motivated by manufactured/social fears (as opposed to practical fears of things like bad weather bringing famine), civil unrest and instability is not far behind. The United States faces a grave situation in which a significant portion of the electorate may reject the outcome next month if it does not go their way, and the side that is more likely to lose is also the side that is most heavily armed because it is most fearful. Scared people with significant access to weapons is a recipe for disaster, as we already see in the context of many individual situations. This might seem an overly pessimistic view of the US election context, which after all has often evoked bitter rivalries many times in the past only for them to evaporate by election day. I think this time is significantly different not only for historical reasons that need not be rehearsed here, but because this time the Us is in line with a global trend of rejecting democratic institutions and market solutions in favor of ideology and force - hence the rise of so many far-right parties and strongmen everywhere from Europe to the Philippines. Most people don't have the intelligence or education to fully comprehend the complexity of a global marketplace and the regulatory and technological structures that underpin it. Further, most people don't have the resources or patience to wait for long-promised economic benefits to reach them in a time of deep economic uncertainty. The last 25 years have been a fantastic time to make money - if you're inclined or drawn towards certain styles of entrepeneurship. If you're not a business person and just want to make a living and raise a family, and you didn't happen to pick a career in the right sector of the right growth industry, they've been pretty shitty; a lot of people have seen their household incomes fall in real terms, and the ones without the know-how to see the reasons for such economic changes are pretty angry. Most people just want to go to work, get paid, and raise a family with a similar or slightly better standard of living than they experienced as children. They're not interested in becoming too knowledgeable in economics, political theory, law, technology and so on. Their parents didn't bother with much of that and they did fine, because the developed world saw huge economic growth during the cold war and earlier generations experienced at great standard of living at a reasonable cost, in many cases leaving much of the bill for future generations. This seemed rational at a time when unlimited economic growth seemed inevitable and there was no real awareness of global environmental impacts. Automation was supposed to allow us all to work a bit less and enjoy more and more leisure, etc. etc. The fact that many of these expectations have turned out to be ill-founded may be the result of conspiracy, or of simple naive optimism, or some combination of the two. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the socio-economic-political consensus of 'western civilization' has broken down and we are now facing the possibility of massive structural instability and existential risk. To put it bluntly, I would say there's a 50% possibility of global scale war within the next 5 years. The best outcome I foresee is limited civil unrest followed by a second cold war. Long-time readers may recall that I'm not big on hyperbole.
Animats 10y ago
One of the big drivers of fear in the US is the basic feeling that life is harder than it used to be. The implicit guarantee from society that if you finished school and worked hard you would have a good life is broken. Trump has tapped into this feeling, with unexpected success. In reality, we have met the enemy, and them is us. The US's major problems are internal, not external. The US's economic problems are mostly because we haven't figured out what to do about automation. What are average people with an average high school education going to do? That's the big problem. As for threats, terrorism is down in the noise of routine shootings. ISIS can hurt us a little now and then, but no way could they invade the US and take over. Militant Islam will continue to be a headache worldwide, but most of the strongly Islamic states are failed states. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt - all were once strong states able to project power, and now they can't. Climate change is more of a threat outside the US than to the US directly. The US isn't going to get unlivable temperatures like parts of the Middle East. Rising temperatures mean agriculture moves north, and the US has lots of underutilized north. Most of the US is above the levels affected by sea level rise. (Except Florida. Florida has a big problem. Miami already has to pump out their city regularly.) Nuclear weapons proliferation is a worry, yet one that doesn't show up much politically. North Korea has nuclear weapons, at least medium-range ballistic missiles, and a dictator with the power to use them. It's getting too easy to make nuclear weapons. After all, the technology is 70 years old now. China is the next superpower, and nobody knows what they'll do. Probably nothing really foolish. Their leadership is not stupid. Are we really living in an age of fear, or is that a feeling people in the media get from listening to their own output too much?
- makomk 10y ago
  In reality, the US media and political system have two sides, both of which are determined to set fixing the broken economic system and racial equality/"social justice" against each other. In reality, the media have responded to demagogues blaming the underlying economic problem on other races by insisting that the problem doesn't exist, that it's just something made up by the white working class to justify their racism. In reality, the US's problems may be internal but that doesn't make it any less fucked.
nsxwolf 10y ago
How come I'm not afraid?
dreta 10y ago
Funny to see this on a site that publicly crucified a guy falsely accused of rape, and pushed the “1 in 5 women get raped on campus” myth.

Is incessant fear-mongering manipulation the inevitable dystopian end of a society that is always connected to channels of mass communication? This is the result of the race to the bottom for eyeballs and attention - the appeal to fear. Does this ever resolve? We spend so much time lamenting the demise of journalism, the sensationalization of media, the fear-mongering, etc... But it's not like distinct "bad choices" led to this state - it's the simple consequence of TPTB (well, anyone, really) having the ability to engage wider and wider audiences (and ultimately everybody) in increasingly real-time creating such fierce competition for attention that we must eventually use our most powerful emotional appeals for even the most trivial messages. I mean, look at me, being all fatalistic - I'm guilty too. But I'm legitimately curious where we go from here, or perhaps more accurately, where do people think the bottom really is, and what will happen when we get there?

exergy 10y ago
Have you ever felt this sense of weariness on the internet? The idea that nothing is new, you've seen and heard it all before, and just a state of the brain being fried? This happens with increasing frequency to me, and is part of the reason why I seem to be gravitating, inexorably as it were, towards a low-information diet. No facebook, no instagram/snapchat/social media du jour, minimal news, and certainly no trump fever. I have a feeling the future will look more like the past than we'd like to believe. That eventually, similar to banner-blindness, we'll develop clickbait-blindness and long form, carefully researched and nuanced pieces will be a prerequisite if one wants attention. That or /r/forwardsfromgrandma, but I hope it's the former.
- pmyjavec 10y ago
  I've recently been on my own diet, and I have been experimenting with this method, when picking up the phone, set a timer, say 15 minutes and only allocate that much time to news, HN, social media etc. This is where magazines and some newspapers were good, journalists collated the interesting stuff for us and gave us a digest to read, which was published at most, once per day.
demonshalo 10y ago
I think the problem resides in the west's insistence on spreading the ideas of equality. Watching a youtube video from buzzfeed is (in the minds of many) a legitimate way to learn about things like group conflict or any other social phenomenon. Mass communication has indirectly given rise to mass access to bad information. However, that alone would not be a problem. What makes it a problem is once you are told that your opinion is equal to all others in society, you begin to believe that your buzzfeed backed opinion is on par with a nobel prize winning POLS professor.
- losteverything 10y ago
  There is no such thing as a wrong opinion. Its an opinion. Advice is different. Facts are different. Some opinions are worth listening to. That to me is the trickiest part
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Is incessant fear-mongering manipulation the inevitable dystopian end of a society that is always connected to channels of mass communication? No, it's the result of leaving nonfiction communication to the lowest-common-denominator of market forces. Just look at Great Britain: sure, they've got Rupert Murdoch, but they've also got the BBC.
- astrocat 10y ago
  > it's the result of leaving nonfiction communication to the lowest-common-denominator of market forces. but seriously, what's the alternative? How do you avoid market forces? What process does a culture need to undergo to pull it's journalism away from market forces and enshrine it so that it is no longer a commodity afflicted by the market's weaknesses? Is the BBC one such isolated place where the culture of the UK that supports it simply expects it to always have a higher standard, market demands be damned? How did it get there? Or more cynically, how much longer can it last?
Bartweiss 10y ago
I'm more than half convinced that the problem is with how these things are monetized. Basically, I think the per-view/per-click model of profit is disastrous. I value a well-researched, well-analyzed, 3000 word Guardian piece far more than a 200 word CNN piece. But if I click through one of the former and three of the latter, I'm conveying (roughly) three times the value to CNN. And if I click a link, the 'transaction' is made (for CPC, at least); it doesn't matter if I hate the piece and click away. This has left us in a place where you can either be niche (producing high user value) or manipulative (producing high user volume). Both interfere with detailed, consensus-reality news. Thoughtful, public-interest journalism in the vein of Murrow is the lowest-profit option for embedded advertising. We've incentivized for a news model which is not just hostile to society, but hostile to users. I don't want my how-to guides to come as slideshows with slow page refreshes between panels, but that's what I get. And I don't want my news to come as hyperbolic fear-mongering with clickbait headlines, but that's also what I get. So I think we're a little doomed, because humans inherently respond to drama and uncertainty, so we get a race to the bottom. But not truly doomed - I value lots of other things as well, and it's the monetization model that emphasizes our baser instincts. We don't need to nobly abandon market forces, just find a way to monetize that's based on something deeper than "pages loaded".
grillvogel 10y ago
>Is incessant fear-mongering manipulation the inevitable dystopian end of a society that is always connected to channels of mass communication? This is the result of the race to the bottom for eyeballs and attention - the appeal to fear. Does this ever resolve? sure, all you need to fix that is a prescription for the latest anti depressants that the nice pharmaceutical companies have made to help you deal with all the existential angst that our society has been engineered to cause you.

c2the3rd 10y ago

I find this sort of answer unsatisfyingly incomplete. All the examples of people who profit off fear: mass media, lawyers, politicians, and industrial pharmaceuticals have all existed for decades longer than the current age of fear. That makes them insufficient as a cause. There must be something else.

wmccullough 10y ago
Disclaimer: I'm not a scientist, sociologist, psychologist or any other -ist, so I'm not saying this from a quantitative place. This comes from a place of observation on my part. Take it for what it is. I think fear is a natural human attribute left over from an earlier time in human existence, I really do. From a young age, if we're lucky enough to have parents, we flock to them because we perceive that the monster under the bed will get us. In our teenage years, we fear the next steps of our lives and I'd dare say that even the most introverted kid wants to fit in. In our twenties, we fear being successful or not. These are gross oversimplifications, but I think the point is illustrated. I think there are two parts to this fear thing. I think we humans are naturally fearful due to thousands of years of biology, and I think we look to leaders out of fear, there's certainly enough evidence of this if you just look at society as a whole and how we behave. Time and time again, societies throughout history look to leaders to placate our fears. The Stanley Milgram experiments touch on this too. Now for what I perceive to be the dark part of this whole thing. Our leaders have learned that we can be controlled through fear. I say learned, but I possibly mean that this is biological too. If you look back throughout societies, all great societies either were, or eventually became autocratic. We live for someone else to make the scary monsters go away. Sadly, I think we need fear. Have a look at the Universe 25 experiments to see what happens when a society has all needs met. Spoiler: It appears to end in death and mentally ill behavior.
- golemotron 10y ago
  > I think fear is a natural human attribute left over from an earlier time in human existence, I really do. It's not a leftover, it's a survival mechanism. If fear were stripped away from a person or a society, it wouldn't last long. It's easy to think that rational thought would keep people from dancing on the edge of a cliff but rationality can be undermined through persuasion, self-delusion, and lack of conscious attention. The limbic system evolved as a attempt to keep us safe prior to logical thought and it still does the job.

kawera 10y ago

For those wanting to go deeper on this subject, a very good book is Dan Gardner's "Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear".

dreamlayers 10y ago

There might be some kind of homoeostasis for anxiety. If you're not facing serious threats, anxiety gets amplified, and if you're facing serious threats it gets reduced, so it doesn't vary too much. It would be similar to how some say there is a happiness set-point.

amelius 10y ago
> If you're not facing serious threats, anxiety gets amplified By whom? And does this entity know whether or not you already have your share of anxiety?
- pjc50 10y ago
  By homoeostasis, same as all the other chemical processes that maintain the body.
wyldfire 10y ago
That makes some sense to me. Similar to the physical "gain control" features of eyesight and hearing.

cel1ne 10y ago

We live in the age of fear because the hose of information that floods us is constantly opened further: Letters → Telegram → Telephone → Radio → TV → Internet → Mobile Internet. Human beings need time to manage their emotions. Time spent waiting. Time being bored. Time when NO new information, not even positive, is arriving. We are constantly distracted and thus increasingly unable to sort out our feelings. That is the reason. And distracted parents that can't give their children at least 15 minutes of absolutely undivided attention per day worsen their offspring's ability to manage emotions even further. That is why Zuckerberg/Facebook's idea "just flood everyone with everything and it will get better" is dead-wrong. What Facebook could do to really help the world is turning off it's platform for one day each week.

acqq 10y ago
> to really help the world is turning off it's platform for a one day each week For this to work, there would have to be solidarity among the other platforms, all of them turning off on the same day (yes, even HN!) But I can actually imagine the world's productivity boost on such a day.
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  The one day of the week where every programmer work on its own social network platform.
- pantalaimon 10y ago
  I don't know why you are downvoted, HN is a big part of my news addiction cycle, but I can't help it. There is a certain satisfaction in reading news, being in the know about new developments - even if 80% of the time it doesn't help you at all/you'll forget about it the next day. I'm wasting so much time on news sites and other pages that inform me about new developments, it's quite sad. Most of the time there isn't even any news to be had - it's just "oh, nothing new here, moving on" in a cycle through different pages - then the thought lingers on that there might be something new by now and I start again from the beginning.
Gruselbauer 10y ago

kingkawn 10y ago

We'll get bored of fear soon too

guard-of-terra 10y ago

Well maybe we should stop backing people into a corner then? For example, why don't back down on immigration? Instead, it sounds like "we're not listening to your concerns, rightful or not, your opinion won't affect how things are done". Hard to imagine how this treatment won't lead to panic attacks. Actually, countries definitely become harder and harder on immigration but there's a failure to project these changes to fellow voters. While reading this article I've got the exact feeling that, to the author, it's much more important to reinforce immigration than care about fellow citizens' feelings.

Noseshine 10y ago
> Well maybe we should stop backing people into a corner then? I agree with you thus far... > For example, why don't back down on immigration? But why this? I would ask for one thing: Rationality and existence of a connection. For example, if my country Germany is any guide, the parts of the country with the most fear of immigration are the ones least affected by it! Given that missing connection, how would it solve anything to listen to the demand of people in those regions to limit immigration? I agree with you - but only if the people demanding something are actually affected by it, both ways (i.e. by the thing itself as well as by what they demand).
- guard-of-terra 10y ago
  "how would it solve anything to listen to the demand of people" First of all, maybe they'll be less scared? You see yourself as a filter who will determine which requests are reasonable and which aren't. This is where trouble is.
  - Noseshine 10y ago
    What on earth are you doing? You quoted only part of the sentence!!! Of course, the entire context would have ruined your artificially gained point.
- megous 10y ago
  In Czech Republic, it's even more pronounced. The government accepted in total about 20 immigrants from Syria so far and if you read comments on the internet, or watch demonstrations, it's like the end of the world is coming. Also some of the fear might be quite shallow. There was a report of some old lady in the village that accepted some refugees. She was first afraid when asked about newcomers, stating fears that are commonly represented in the media. Then when she was told that they have children, and lack some stuff, she went there and donated some clothes. Hardliners that join fringe political parties are probably quite different. But also less open to reason. But I suspect that most people's fears can be quite easily ameliorated.

grecy 10y ago

I'm traveling in West Africa right now, and it's fascinating me how different the reality here on the ground is to what thousands of people tried to warn me off. A huge percentage of people think "Africa" is a war-torn, disease infested hell hole and that I would be murdered on day one. I have spent a massive amount of time wondering why people have such a distorted view of reality, and are so adamant about it - even though they have zero first, second or even third hand experience. I honestly believe it's caused by the 24-hour "news" spin-cylce in America. Those "news" stations discovered long ago they need sensationalist stories to continually hook people in. They need shock value, they need over-the-top. And so it goes that when they report on "Africa" they report about some war. Then a month later it's Ebola on the other side of the continent. Then a month later it's famine in some other distant part of the continent. Never mind that in the mean time hundreds of millions of warm, kind, generous people are happily living their lives, smiling, partying and loving life. The picture mass media paints simply does not include 99.9% of what actually happens here, because it's not sensationalist enough for their ratings. And so the average American sitting at home is told that "Africa" is war/disease/famine, which is only a tiny percentage of the whole picture. The "news" stations are not actually lying, they're just painting a fraction of the overall truth. And it's the fraction that gets them good ratings, not the fraction that everyday people need to know about to be well informed about the world. Exactly the same thing is true of the reporting of Australia in America. Australia is actually a very stable place, nothing much really happens (no civil war, no prime ministers assassinated, little violence etc.) Of course, the media looks for something sensationalist, and now a massive number of people think Australia is "full of deadly animals waiting to kill you". The first time I saw a report of a shark attack in Australia on TV in America I was gob smacked and thought 50 people must have died by the way they were carrying on for 5 hours. In fact one person had a small bite on their leg that needed a few stitches. Having lived there for 23 years I can tell you the majority of Australians have never even seen a deadly animal, but that doesn't stop the American media painting that false picture and the false story continuing. In the case of Australia it's mostly funny/harmless, and characters like Steve Irwin even played up to it really successfully. Obviously in the case of Africa it's extremely harmful. I think it's terrifying when the outlet a society relies upon to receive information about the world is so utterly biased and wrong. When 330 million people don't know the truth, how can they make good decisions?

squozzer 10y ago

Mass media fear-mongering has been around as long as I have been alive, and as easy to reach as the evening news.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

This flood of information, especially negative information, is one reason why I think time meditating is so important. I find that meditation helps me concentrate on what is important and I feel primed to take care of what needs to be done, as far as maintaining personal relationships, what work is most important, looking after spiritual, mental, and physical health, etc. Turn off the TV and stop binging on the news media.

rimher 10y ago

Michael Crichton was right

kukx 10y ago

Is this time any different than previous? Well at least the fear of nuclear annihilation is smaller. It's kinda normal for the US to think it's on the brink of a disaster. And it's normal for Europeans to think the US supremacy will end at any moment. And still it doesn't and the US is better off than any time before.

cicero 10y ago
What is different today is the Internet. Before that we had TV and radio, which also magnified fear, but not to the extent as the Internet where you can find the "news source" that best fits your particular fears.
- kukx 10y ago
  I don't think it makes much, if any difference. The internet can be used to spread misinformation, but it can also be used for fact checking. So the net outcome is not that obvious. I'm curious to see some hard data on this subject.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jontayesp 10y ago

Also, don't discount the role religion plays on fear (yes I am a Christian.) The popular idea in the church is that we are currently living in the end times and the world will progressively become more sinful/dangerous until the earth is destroyed and recreated by Jesus. This is a relatively new idea since the 19th century, but represents the current theological and emotional state of the church today. Look at Islam and you will see a similar expectation of the apocalypse. I think a lot of fear and paranoia in our culture stems from unhealthy religious belief systems.

DonaldFisk 10y ago
You're implying that all Christian denominations believe this by your blanket use of the term "the church". I don't know where you get that idea from.
- mhurron 10y ago
  I doubt you can find one that doesn't. Christianity is basically a death cult that has believed for 2000 years that the end of the world is imminent.
cholantesh 10y ago
Isn't this mostly a Protestant idea? Most all Catholic/EO christians that I know dismiss 'end times' theology.
- jontayesp 10y ago
  Yes I should clarify not all denominations believe this, but it is the most dominant view within Protestant circles (see Left Behind, etc).
  - quantumhobbit 10y ago
    I wouldn't consider it the dominant Protestant view at all. Maybe amongst Evangelicals ( a subset of Protestants). Even amongst Evangelicals I doubt such literal Millinialist views as expressed in Left Behind are the overwhelmingly majority.

busterarm 10y ago

This story's opening hits too close to home. I grew up in what was predominantly a minority and gay neighborhood in NY. My mom was moderate-left and a musician who you can easily associate with the things and people you'd associate with NY musicians in the 70s. Bob Grant, Curtis Sliwa and Rush Limbaugh irrevocably changed my family. My mom is now a religious-conservative, homophobic, racist bigot. She shouts at people for no reason. She's gotten into arguments with family members at family dinners and then called the cops on them to have them removed. My brother is, thankfully, just conservative. Small miracles.

dbingham 10y ago

I think some of the fear is justified. Climate change is a very real threat and it's justifiably scary. Our government, in the last 8 years, used remotely operated drones to carry out extrajudicial killings of American citizens -- including a teenage boy. Our security state now engages in mass surveillance of us in a time when our government is engaging in extraordinary rendition of suspected "terrorists" in secret with limited oversight. Economic inequality is worse than at almost any time in human history, including the gilded age prior to the great depression. That's not rhetoric, those are simple statements of fact. Those things are scary and fear of them is justified. We may be -- in this very moment -- at the safest point in human history. But the fear isn't about where we are. It's about where we're headed.

SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago
> Climate change ... extrajudicial killings ... those are simple statements of fact. Those things are scary and fear of them is justified. The funny thing is though, the anxieties that you see on TV are pretty much fear of anything but those things. You will see big-league fear-mongers using "hit them harder" with more extraordinary rendition and "climate change is a con to handicap us" lines of thought.
- karmelapple 10y ago
  This. The people talking about fear the most are not talking about any of the things in the grandparent post, and instead are asking to double down on that behavior.
jacquesm 10y ago
> Our government, in the last 8 years, used remotely operated drones to carry out extrajudicial killings of American citizens -- including a teenage boy. Not my government, but still I can't help but wonder why it should matter that they are American citizens. A very large multiple of citizens of other countries is murdered in this way and from where I'm sitting I don't see much difference between the two.
- 10y ago

jessaustin 10y ago

According to [some survey], Americans are most afraid of corruption of government officials... This is so rational (obviously corruption is common) and long-term-focused (corruption will eventually destroy the state, but it will take a really long time) that I'm a bit impressed by my fellow citizens...

mwfunk 10y ago
I suspect that it's the opposite of what you might hope it would be. I suspect that the fear of corruption of government officials is almost entirely based on accusations of corruption from their political opponents, and that those same Americans don't believe that "their" politicians are equally corrupt. I do think there is actual corruption on all sides, simply because of the fact that money and campaign donations are such huge factors in the political process. I think every American should be horrified by this and should be doing everything they can to take money out of what is effectively our hiring process for high-level government officials. However, I fear that this is not what [some survey] picked up on. I fear that [some survey] picked up on fans of politician X believing X's accusations of corruption on the part of politician Y were true, while simultaneously not believing allegations of corruption about their own candidate. And vice versa. I fear that all [some survey] picked up on is the sheer toxicity of the process nowadays, and not people who are concerned about the integrity of the political process itself.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  There are probably some true believers left, but everyone I've talked to in the last several years sees the corruption that exists on both sides. The surprising thing about the survey for me was that lots of people see that corruption as a major problem.

chippy 10y ago

I suspect that this is due to a human psychological flaw based in living in the present. Consider this: We all think, right now, that this time is the most important time that has ever happened in history. Right? Consider this also: Everyone has always thought that about their own moment in time. Every time in history has been considered to be the most important moment in time. Consider this a bit more: Think about yourself in ten years time - you would be thinking your time then as being the most important time. People in the future will think their own time as the most important. We can either assume two things from this: 1) That time increases the importance, value and crucialness of the present continually from when humans begun until the infinite future. or 2) that we have a flaw in our thinking. When I've brought this up in this forum, people will defend today. They will say that today really is the most important, and bring up examples from technology etc. They will demonstrate their bias of living in the present day. Think about risk - is today more or less risky in terms of nuclear war than during the Cuban missile crisis? Is today more or less risky for your family in terms of disease and quality of life? We are biased, and it's in our very brains. We want to defend our faulty perceptions of reality, as they are literally our reality. But it's not the truth of the matter, and it's not logical. So I expect you to defend the current day. The article touched on this - in terms of crime, it's much better than it has been. It's easy to say, but we don't feel or believe this. It must be wrong, right? Perhaps it always has felt wrong. Another flaw about memory - which is probably related. We don't tend to remember ourselves being as scared or anxious in this kind of daily effect, in the past. Thus the past feels better through our memories. I've studied the fear of crime. This is perceptions compared with the actual risks and actual levels of crime. One way to ask people about how fearful is to consult their memory - "how many times in the last week, when walking down the high street, did you see something that made you fearful". This is a better question than "do you think the high street is more dangerous these days?". So, in conclusion - we are biased to our present days. We have trouble comparing what we felt like in the past with the time now. We cannot easily extrapolate how we think and feel about today with the future. We are not really living in the age of fear, we just are currently feeling that we do. Indeed, we always think and feel that we are. We need to recognize our perceptions of reality shape our realities.

nkoren 10y ago

Slightly OT, but when it says "Every day there are 96 deaths from car accidents," I think: Rubbish -- that's the number of deaths every 42 minutes. Then I realise: Oh, they're just giving statistics for America. The non-existence of the rest of the world is assumed. In fact I largely concur with with the central thesis of this article, but this is a global phenomena and needs to be seen in that perspective.

grecy 10y ago
> this is a global phenomena and needs to be seen in that perspective You are correct that it's global, though like many negative-cultural things, America is currently clearly "leading" the way, and the west of the developed world is trailing far behind, though, unfortunately, they are trying to catch up.

protomyth 10y ago

Perhaps Rolling Stone would like a little introspection given their fear mongering and false reporting about the University of Virginia. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/business/media/rolling-stone-stays-focused-as-defamation-trial-is-set-to-begin.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/business/media/rolling-sto...

xexers 10y ago
Are you willing to give "Rolling Stone" a second chance? They've been quite apologetic about that incident. Op's piece seems pretty good to me.
- protomyth 10y ago
  Nope, since frankly, I wasn't giving them a chance before the incident. They had their heyday, but they are just another outrage press now. Their Boston Bombing cover was reprehensible. Its just another data point of a trend line.
  - dsfyu404ed 10y ago
    IMO it was responsible of them publish that viewpoint and I respect them for doing so while the rest of the media was busy grabbing pitchforks and pouring gas over crosses. The guy was guilty as all hell but the way it all went down was shady. Getting him sentenced to death would have been a cakewalk if done by the book. Instead it was years of press releases making him look more and more guilty and getting that spun around in the media. Even if the result was the same he didn't get a fair trail because the media had him hanging before the dust settled. At least someone had the balls to play devil's advocate.
    - protomyth 10y ago
      Their cover tried to glorify him like a rock star. Getting caught in the act generally results in a guilty verdict.
cha-cho 10y ago

dudul 10y ago

Maybe because of media and news websites publishing stories such Jackie Coakley's... and then wondering why we live in the Age of Fear...

wu-ikkyu 10y ago

>Bad news gives people a great survivor emotion. There's a great euphoria that pours off the bad news item... This survivor emotion is very necessary for news papers and news reports, also it helps to sell advertising which is all good news and is therefore very threatening. Good news threatens people with change. Bad news merely enables them to enjoy the grief of their neighbours. -Marshall McLuhan

roymurdock 10y ago

As a 23 year old I can only imagine what it was like to live through the cold war with the colossal fear of nuclear annihilation soaking into every activity/decision. I feel like it must have been so overwhelming yet intangible - in some ways a nuclear holocaust is much less painful than losing a loved one in a car accident or seeing your country splinter into violent factions. A nuclear holocaust is a quick, binary event - either it happens, or it doesn't. I also can't imagine what the fear of being drafted into a WWII or Vietnam War situation would feel like. Would love to hear what anyone with experience has to say about those "ages" of fear relative to this new one of mass-media/technology-produced fear.

SandersAK 10y ago
There's nothing binary about a nuclear attack. Ask any survivor or family member of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  I'm thinking more about MAD - mutually assured destruction of entire nations/much of the world, rather than 1 or 2 "isolated" nuclear attacks. Point taken though.
deleted 10y ago
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losteverything 10y ago
<I can only imagine what it was like to live through the cold war with the colossal fear of nuclear annihilation It was NEVER top of mind. Remember, the only news was evening broadcasts for 30 minutes or ap/upi reports in local papers. New York times didn't make it to my state except Sundays. It was NEVER a conversation growing up. Back then to find out if your team won you would have to wait for the paper 2 days later if it was not the local team. <drafted into a WWII or Vietnam War situation would feel like We Wwii everyone enlisted. No question. Different times. Vietnam draft was real anxiety.
malz 10y ago

calimac 10y ago

Face it. We live in a time where mass media persuasion is extremely sophisticated,as a result of 85 years of refinement, that your version of the "truth" is highly dependent upon what information source you started with. At some point you established a baseline of credibility which was the foundation your beliefs were built on. You must realize that your "facts" are mostly opinion. EVERYONE needs to take time to ask questions about their foundational beliefs. Was the source of your beliefs credible? CNN, Credible? MSNBC Credible? internet Credible? Uncle, neighbor, dorm roommate credible? Whatever the source most have proven to be bias; some nefarious others innocent. The absolute irrefutable examples of media manipulation and deceit are easy to find these days. Take a look at Wikileaks and pick your flavor of lies.

deleted 10y ago

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droopybuns 10y ago

Fear, like Sex, is a foundational human motivator that has been shown to persuade people to buy things. I don't believe there is anything new going on now. https://youtu.be/IKqXu-5jw60 https://youtu.be/IKqXu-5jw60

losteverything 10y ago

Just stop watching tv and listening to radio. Cold turkey. I quit on 2011. We need campaigns like the "quit smoking" or "keep america beautiful" (anti trash): no tv and no radio I always intended to write a summary on my transition from media junkie to my present state. I don't need to know about a person I have never met or a place I will never go. BUT with the internet I can (on my terms) find out about said person or said place when I need to. If something is important, a friend or family member will tell me. Some irony I think: educatable people spend their working lives building retirement plans and associating with like minded others. Then once they no longer work they are in front of a tv (or worse have the TV on all the time at home) watching less minded and less educated and less sophisicated people. Watching tv is going back in the progress you made building your life. Why on earth would a college educated person watch talk-tv? Its like undoing your entire education.

reality_czech 10y ago
And yet, here you are on HN, commenting on a clickbait article. <trump>Sad!</trump>

mouzogu 10y ago

Using biology to justify simple laziness, prejudice and bigotry seems contrived and unnecessary to me. My amygdala, as far as i know, cannot tell whether my fears are real or imagined. Whether the imminent danger will really kill me or whether i will just wake up in a cliched hot sweat. We are supposed to be reasonable, open minded and balanced people. This is the criteria by which we should analyse the politics of fear. As opposed to looking for some primeval trigger within our supposedly fatalistic brains.

sickbeard 10y ago

People living in times of peace have a distorted reality field where they believe things are about to get them and the end of times is imminent. When you look at actual data, none of these are true.

throwaway98237 10y ago

Strong AI on the horizon, about the same horizon as quantum computing and pervasive robotics; the new triad. Nuclear arsenals capable of destroying the world several times over. Biological weapons that can be created and deployed by organizations much, much smaller than traditional state actors. Social media educating us that systemic racism has been causing systemic killings of certain parts of our population. Whistle blowers educating us that privacy is all but dead. Trump is on the ballot. Yeah, there is reason to be afraid.

mancerayder 10y ago

(Off Topic) I posted a similarly-minded article, also from Rolling Stone, and it got flagged. While Trump was in the article's title, the flagger may not have read it since it was a bigger-picture article about the media and political system as a whole. What's the line between flaggable and acceptable when it comes to articles such as these?

daveloyall 10y ago
Especially since user comments about candidates are the new norm, at least for the past several days.

Ccecil 10y ago

I have asked no less than 10 people why they listen to talk radio when it is clearly propaganda. The response is strangely always almost verbatim "I like to stay informed". It amazes me that they always say the same thing in response. I have found a similar thing when I mention I have no Facebook account...the response is almost always "I just like to keep in touch with people"...but they never seem to point out these are typically people that they stopped talking to years back for a reason. Has this person called you in the last 10 years? When was the last time you actually saw them in person? Whenever I get the exact same response from multiple people I start to question the role of social media and "news" in brainwashing of the masses.

edanm 10y ago
I have lots of family that I am not in daily contact with. I still like to see pictures of them and know what's going on in their lives. Same goes for some friends that I'm not in active contact with. You can disagree with how other people conduct their lives, but I'd be careful to conclude it's "brainwashing".
- Ccecil 10y ago
  When was the last time you just called one of them? Or stopped by for a visit? I apologize if I upset you by implying mass brainwashing...I just find it odd that many share the same reasoning. In my personal opinion...social media furthers the disconnect from actual relationships and creates imaginary ones that are based on reading posts and looking at pictures but you never really get to see the real person.
  - edanm 10y ago
    And in my personal opinion, social media allows me to be almost 100% more in touch with my family that lives on the other side of the globe, who I would probably barely think about if it wasn't for Facebook. Personally, I find this a good thing. In the counterfactual world in which FB didn't exist, I would have zero contact with them - now I have some. I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong, everyone can make their own choice about what's better for them. I'm just saying: 1. It's a huge leap to go from "many people disagree with me" to "may people are brainwashed". Note that tons of the HN population share your views, but I never said I think you are all brainwashed, and I think it would be pretty silly to say so. 2. Saying that social media furthers the disconnect from actual relationships is a pretty big statement, and without real proof it's mostly anecdotal. Everyone has opinions on what is good or not, worthy or not, moral or not, etc - I really think more people should just trust that others know what they're doing. If people use FB and say why they use FB, it's not a 100% certainty that they're right, but give people the benefit of the doubt regarding their own choices! 3. Most people share the same reasoning on why balls fall to the floor when released from the hand. That's not a weird thing - it's because gravity is real. Btw, I'm not upset at all, just disagree :)

pklausler 10y ago

The best defense: honing one's critical thinking skills.

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 10y ago
any books ?
- pklausler 10y ago
  I am fond of Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark".

bksenior 10y ago

There was a big change to consumerism around the second WW. I cant recommend this doc enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&feature=youtu.be

nyolfen 10y ago
incidentally, the director of this film released a new film last night which is relevant to the topic at hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtsrjlsclQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtsrjlsclQ (if it's yanked off youtube before you can watch, the title is 'hypernormalisation')

life_is_short 10y ago

What's the tldr? After 1000+ words I still can't see it. I wish articles said the main point in the beginning.

wnevets 10y ago

Is this age of fear really any different than the previous?

mwfunk 10y ago
Perhaps. If you think of irrational or uninformed fears as memes (in the classic sense, not the "pictures with captions" sense) that propagate through a society, the Internet provides mechanisms for those memes to spread much more quickly, and with far less resistance, than before. At the same time, these same communications mechanisms allow falsehoods to be debunked much more effectively, assuming that readers would rather believe hard boring truths than comfortable exciting falsehoods. Then again, I've seen enough people (even on HN!) say things like, "I would rather be passionate about a lie than bored by a truth" (paraphrasing) that I wonder if even this is true.

anigbrowl 10y ago

As a practical matter, when large parts of the population are heavily motivated by manufactured/social fears (as opposed to practical fears of things like bad weather bringing famine), civil unrest and instability is not far behind. The United States faces a grave situation in which a significant portion of the electorate may reject the outcome next month if it does not go their way, and the side that is more likely to lose is also the side that is most heavily armed because it is most fearful. Scared people with significant access to weapons is a recipe for disaster, as we already see in the context of many individual situations. This might seem an overly pessimistic view of the US election context, which after all has often evoked bitter rivalries many times in the past only for them to evaporate by election day. I think this time is significantly different not only for historical reasons that need not be rehearsed here, but because this time the Us is in line with a global trend of rejecting democratic institutions and market solutions in favor of ideology and force - hence the rise of so many far-right parties and strongmen everywhere from Europe to the Philippines. Most people don't have the intelligence or education to fully comprehend the complexity of a global marketplace and the regulatory and technological structures that underpin it. Further, most people don't have the resources or patience to wait for long-promised economic benefits to reach them in a time of deep economic uncertainty. The last 25 years have been a fantastic time to make money - if you're inclined or drawn towards certain styles of entrepeneurship. If you're not a business person and just want to make a living and raise a family, and you didn't happen to pick a career in the right sector of the right growth industry, they've been pretty shitty; a lot of people have seen their household incomes fall in real terms, and the ones without the know-how to see the reasons for such economic changes are pretty angry. Most people just want to go to work, get paid, and raise a family with a similar or slightly better standard of living than they experienced as children. They're not interested in becoming too knowledgeable in economics, political theory, law, technology and so on. Their parents didn't bother with much of that and they did fine, because the developed world saw huge economic growth during the cold war and earlier generations experienced at great standard of living at a reasonable cost, in many cases leaving much of the bill for future generations. This seemed rational at a time when unlimited economic growth seemed inevitable and there was no real awareness of global environmental impacts. Automation was supposed to allow us all to work a bit less and enjoy more and more leisure, etc. etc. The fact that many of these expectations have turned out to be ill-founded may be the result of conspiracy, or of simple naive optimism, or some combination of the two. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that the socio-economic-political consensus of 'western civilization' has broken down and we are now facing the possibility of massive structural instability and existential risk. To put it bluntly, I would say there's a 50% possibility of global scale war within the next 5 years. The best outcome I foresee is limited civil unrest followed by a second cold war. Long-time readers may recall that I'm not big on hyperbole.

Animats 10y ago

One of the big drivers of fear in the US is the basic feeling that life is harder than it used to be. The implicit guarantee from society that if you finished school and worked hard you would have a good life is broken. Trump has tapped into this feeling, with unexpected success. In reality, we have met the enemy, and them is us. The US's major problems are internal, not external. The US's economic problems are mostly because we haven't figured out what to do about automation. What are average people with an average high school education going to do? That's the big problem. As for threats, terrorism is down in the noise of routine shootings. ISIS can hurt us a little now and then, but no way could they invade the US and take over. Militant Islam will continue to be a headache worldwide, but most of the strongly Islamic states are failed states. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt - all were once strong states able to project power, and now they can't. Climate change is more of a threat outside the US than to the US directly. The US isn't going to get unlivable temperatures like parts of the Middle East. Rising temperatures mean agriculture moves north, and the US has lots of underutilized north. Most of the US is above the levels affected by sea level rise. (Except Florida. Florida has a big problem. Miami already has to pump out their city regularly.) Nuclear weapons proliferation is a worry, yet one that doesn't show up much politically. North Korea has nuclear weapons, at least medium-range ballistic missiles, and a dictator with the power to use them. It's getting too easy to make nuclear weapons. After all, the technology is 70 years old now. China is the next superpower, and nobody knows what they'll do. Probably nothing really foolish. Their leadership is not stupid. Are we really living in an age of fear, or is that a feeling people in the media get from listening to their own output too much?

makomk 10y ago
In reality, the US media and political system have two sides, both of which are determined to set fixing the broken economic system and racial equality/"social justice" against each other. In reality, the media have responded to demagogues blaming the underlying economic problem on other races by insisting that the problem doesn't exist, that it's just something made up by the white working class to justify their racism. In reality, the US's problems may be internal but that doesn't make it any less fucked.

nsxwolf 10y ago

How come I'm not afraid?

dreta 10y ago

Funny to see this on a site that publicly crucified a guy falsely accused of rape, and pushed the “1 in 5 women get raped on campus” myth.