Do we live in a "State of Fear?"

Here is an interesting quote from Professor Norman Hoffman, a character in Michael Crichton's novel State of Fear:

"Has it ever occured to you how astonishing the culture of Western society really is? Industrialized natins provide their citizens with unpreciedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. They are afraid of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. They are in a particular panic over things they can't even see--germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. They are timid, nervous, fretful and depressed. And even more amazingly, they are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them. Remarkable! Like the belief in witchcraft, it's an extraordinary delusion--a global fantasy worthy of the Middle Ages. Everything is going to hell, and we must all live in fear. Amazing."

Our mainstream media requires one crisis after another to keep our attention. I don't watch shows like 60 Minutes or Dateline because they tend to overblow every negative story. We have relatives who do, and they make a practice of telling us everytime we visit what we need to be *very* careful of...we like to camp, so now we know about all the perverts who hide out in restrooms at state parks waiting for kids. Our kids like to play outside, so we hear about all the studies that show even kids that are carefully taught not to speak to strangers will still be fooled by a stranger. I guess we should just lock the kids up in the house!! Yet if you look at the statistics, crime rates have been steadily trending downward for years! We are safer, our environment is cleaner, we live longer, cancer is more readily cured...what *are* we so afraid of?

--Katie