America has a deeply-embedded culture of fear, and it is the cause of many problems. Lots of us live in fear all the time. We are scared to go outside alone at night, scared of our bosses, scared of the police, scared of losing our stock portfolio, the list goes on and on. Fear is natural, right? I mean, fear is what kept us alive long enough to evolve into an intelligent species. Fear is the most practical emotion, but in our supposedly advanced society shouldn't we be relatively at ease?
Fear causes people to act more quickly and predictably than other forms of inspiration, this fact was not missed by people trying to convince us of something. The science of marketing has developed quickly over the past 100 years, and fear is now a staple in its grab-bag of mind-control devices. Advertising, however, is not the big problem. We can easily rationalize away fears that arise from advertisements because we know they're trying to sell us something.
The American news media is what I find truly sickening. The way they spread fear under the guise of, "The public has a right to know," is abhorrent. Just look at what kinds of stories they run. Local television news in particular always seems to have a story like "Four level 3 sex offenders live next to this park, find out which one at 10," or "Are your kids safe at school? Find out what school administrators aren't telling parents" (both actual ads for television news). Sure, we have a right to know, but is it really what we need to know? Probably not, but it wouldn't guarantee that we remember to turn on the TV at 6 o'clock. I'm not advocating fluffy happy news where nothing bad is every mentioned, I just think the media grabs onto things and blows them far out of proportion of rational fear. In the past reporting used to cover actual events. Now, following in the footsteps of sensationalism pioneers like 20/20 and Geraldo Rivera, every mom-and-pop news program seems to be going on hidden-camera 'sting' operations to uncover some foul plot.
Another place where fear mongering is quite prevalent is in American politics. For years politicians have gotten elected by pandering to people's fear of crime by vowing to make longer sentences and hire more police. In the last congressional election, Republicans won clear majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives on the platform of Regime Change in Iraq, and more broadly the War on Terrorism. The rhetoric of attacking Iraq with or without international support could be inspired by many things, yet with the decidedly thin evidence the American public has been presented with, it seems most likely that the Bush Administration is simply scared of what could happen.
I never really gave so much consideration of fear as a cultural force before watching 'Bowling for Columbine' by filmmaker Michael Moore. The film addresses America's gun violence problem, and makes a very convincing argument for fear being the root cause. It's enough to make an American want to move to Canada.