The U.S. of Anxiety

We don't mean to frighten you, only to explore fear, go on the journey into phobia, examine it and get out safely on the other side. Understand why our anxiety has increased. Why people are so jittery.

The reports slip out from government watchdog agencies announcing carcinogens in bread, grilled meat and mothballs. We hear about them on the news, read of them in the papers. Then the reports disappear, though they remain in the dark recesses of the mind, issuing vague warnings as you toss mothballs into the closet, whispering threats as you grill in the summer. We are either afraid of the truth or we don't believe those who issue these reports.

"One thing that happens is, we live in this environment . . . the culture of fear, where there are lots of fears and scares directed at us all the time," says Barry Glassner, a professor of sociology at the University of Southern California and author of "The Culture of Fear" and "The Gospel of Food."

In this kind of environment, people tend to look for fear everywhere and thereby produce more things to be fearful of, he says. "For example, it was from scares about tap water that the multibillion-dollar bottled-water industry emerged. So now we have ourselves in a situation where we are creating all kinds of new environmental hazards."

The fear of bacteria that has produced a billion-dollar industry of antibacterial products has had an unintended consequence: antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the new fear that has fostered.

The list of things we fear has grown long and rapidly: bioengineered corn, spinach, identity theft, the poor, the rich, racism, sexism, the ozone hole, drug companies, cellular phones, vaccines, water, video games and predators who could kidnap our children. (Many have fears about the Iraq war, too; others are just angry.)

"The irony is that the most common dangers, the ones that we really should be focused on, become a blur in all the exaggerated fears," Glassner said.

For instance: "You want to make your house safe," he says. So rather than buying things to protect you from unlikely dangers, people should instead take simple measures to keep themselves safe.

"You could make sure the carpets are secure; the bathroom is safe from falls; you have safety precautions around the backyard pool; that children are wearing helmets when they ride their bikes; that everyone in the car is wearing a seat belt. Those are the kinds of things we should be concerned about."

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Fear spreads, metastasizes. It is fed, nurtured, by so much of what we consume -- what is offered -- by the storm of information that surrounds us. From the government. From the news media. From anybody and everybody on the Internet.

"Free-floating anxiety is out there; 9/11 shook everybody to the bones. People felt for a long time [that] nobody will touch us. But 9/11 said, 'Yes they can,' " says Paula Danzinger, associate professor of counselor education at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. "Once people start getting that anxious and having those kinds of fears, it spreads to everything. I don't think it can be isolated."