Exaggerated culture of fear is not scaring anyone

I'm not scared.

It seems around every corner there is some message telling me to be afraid.

The terrorists are going to come and get me. I am going to be murdered on campus. Iran is going to drop a nuke. I am going to catch a disease in the UREC. My deodorant is going to stop working mid-day.

Around every corner someone is telling me to be afraid and worried about something. In his 2000 book "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things," Barry Glassner explores the things this country has become afraid of and why such fears are wrongly rooted.

We are all afraid of catching an awful disease, getting murdered by a homicidal maniac, becoming a victim of rampant crime and being unemployed. We think the drug problem in this country is an epidemic.

"Give us a happy ending, and we write a new disaster story," he writes. But Glassner goes on to explain that most of our fear is rooted in skewed statistics and the practice of the media to play up stories which make us scared - as well as ensure we subsequently pick up the next day's paper or tune into the next news broadcast.

During the '90s, unemployment was at its lowest levels, but people were still worried about getting a job. Crime dropped to is lowest rate in decades, but home security system sales soared. Statistically, if you are not involved in illegal activity - drug use, prostitution, theft - you are highly unlikely to become the victim of a violent crime.

A 2004 study by several professors from several European universities, titled "Danger and Fear Control in Response to Fear Appeals," printed in the Basic & Applied Social Psychology journal that fear-based appeals work when the reader feels a need for reasonable application. The study found that people who feel a need to process and consider the information are likely to become frightened.

I think this has a snowball effect - causing more people to become afraid as more people explain the fear message.

Generally speaking, I am a pretty easy to frighten. Scary movies are always a no. I have a drink every time I think about stepping on a plane

And lightning petrifies me.

However, I am regularly finding myself less jolted by frightening messages. My ability to distinguish between what is legitimate and what is not is becoming diminished.

Our comedians have started mocking President Bush for his use of the word "terrorism," and as a result, the word has greatly lost the power it held years ago.

Like the media critics of the early '90s suggested regarding violence on TV, we're becoming desensitized to fear.

Halfway through writing this column I received a broadcast e-mail alerting me to a "Campus Safety Forum" on Thursday to discuss safety concerns.

There has been an onslaught of talk about campus safety since the tragic murder of two students on campus in December.

I had an unusual experience the night of Dec. 13. I was standing on the sidewalk of the Edward Gay Apartments covering the homicide for The Daily Reveille when the coroner rolled the two victims' bodies out in bags.

It was a jolting experience to see body bags on my campus coming out of a building that is part of my school.

I kept thinking, "This can't be happening on my own campus." School is supposed to be a safe place. The walls of the academy are suppose to be protected. Sure, there are awful actions taking place in the world I live in everyday, but I always considered campus an island untouched by such elements.

But despite that horrific sight that moved me to tears, I still can't be afraid more than I was before Dec. 13. I'm supposed to be afraid of so many different things that I have lost my ability to prioritize my fears.

It's a coping measure, a way of dealing with the culture of fear-tactic messages around us. When we begin to lose the ability to separate information into distinct categories, we dump it all into one. Some people might move to the opposite end of the spectrum, living lives constantly afraid of everything.

But I suspect there are more people like me who have begun to just tune it all out.

Which is worse: getting murdered on campus or attacked by another nation? As a result of not being about to chose, I've resorted to just clinging to my irrational fear of lightning.

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Contact Ginger Gibson at ggibson@lsureveille.com