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Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

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Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#21

Post by Noseshine »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #12

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…

  > 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).

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#22

Post by dajohnson89 »

grecy wrote: post #13

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…

>When 330 million people don't know the truth, how can they make good decisions?

This isn't just America. See the brexit vote.

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#23

Post by cicero »

kukx wrote: post #20

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.

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.

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#25

Post by Gruselbauer »

cel1ne wrote: post #9

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 t…

There is no feasible way for me to agree more with this.

I very much belong to those negatively affected by this phenomenon. I'd wager many a HN commenter is. My RSS feeds are a carefully crafted web of information, as much of a not-echo chamber I can create. From stuff I don't agree with on almost anything - Breitbart and its national counterparts, neocon blogs, libertarian thinktanks - to sources I think of as pretty neutral - like the simple feeds of press conglomerates just feeding headlines - to the stuff I agree with vehemently and thus view as most dubious, I get it all, all day, all the time. Even syndicated across devices. I'm very rarely the one to ask "what are you talking about?" and constantly the one to explain topics. It's okay, being the AP of your social circles isn't the worst role to fill.

But it does something to you, doesn't it? I feel like my view of this world has darkened over the years. I'm only thirty years old now and I feel like we're headed for disaster on a dozen different concurrent tracks. My view of man has become shrouded in a perpetual gloom, my idea of a future a cycnical dystopia.

I know that isn't fair or true, but it's become increasingly hard to think otherwise.

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#26

Post by exergy »

astrocat wrote: post #2

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"…

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.

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#27

Post by demonshalo »

astrocat wrote: post #2

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"…

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.

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#28

Post by pjc50 »

wmccullough wrote: post #4
c2the3rd wrote: post #3

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.

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…

Universe 25 did not have all its needs met: it was chronically overcrowded. That was the whole point of Calhoun's experiments.

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#29

Post by pjc50 »

amelius wrote: post #7
dreamlayers wrote: post #6

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.

> 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?

By homoeostasis, same as all the other chemical processes that maintain the body.

Re: Why We're Living in the Age of Fear

#30

Post by jontayesp »

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.
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