Final Farewell to Fear

After an eye opening course on the culture of fear I feel as if I’ve finally been let behind the curtain to discover the Wizard of Oz... an old fragile man serving to trick us all. The Wizard’s powers turned out to be mere fantasies held in the imaginations of dreamers: the media, politicians, and unfortunately us. We have constructed this culture of fear and fed into the fabrications created by power hungry advocates who profit from our trepidation. Like a clever magician deceiving his audience we have been distracted by a masquerade in order to misguide us from the real problems in our society. Rather than worry about economic disparity, making healthcare affordable, or addressing the growing gun problem in America we occupy ourselves with sensational stories, which only keeps us from fixing the situation.

Subduing our appetite for hopes of change with fears of monster moms, terrorists, and killer kids keeps society at bay and politicians on top. Politicians divert our concerns, but more importantly our tax dollars. Billions of dollars go to faulty legislation, prison systems, and unnecessary safety precautions that inevitably go to waste. The solution then is simple: allocate our tax dollars to positive programs like education, rehabilitation, and social services. Unfortunately, the culture of fear is a business and destroying it would put certain people of power out of a job, so the cycle continues. Profit hungry fear mongers perpetuate lies and exaggerate statistics and we literally buy into it.

I think I’ve learnt more from Glassner’s novel Culture of Fear more than anything else I’ve read in my entire college career. I was shocked by the real statistics he gives, and how I was so easily fooled by the fake numbers from the media representations. Clearly, like mostly everyone else in America, I put too much faith in the media and elected politicians. Not that no one should be trusted because that would just add to the culture of fear in a whole other way, instead I urge people to look into the facts themselves. At the end of the day don’t believe everything you hear because taking everything at face value will leave you shortsighted. It’s time we go to the root of the problem and look in the mirror because even though we may not create fear, we keep it alive.