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When I was growing up, my parents had plenty of things to be afraid of.
Fear of polio was palpable. Cars had no seat belts or air bags, and drum brakes and bias ply tires and all roads were 2-lane and there were pointy things sticking of the dashboard. Faulty furnaces set houses on fire. Blizzards could not be predicted. School sports had cardboard football pads and no batting helmets. Nut houses were minimum security, with goofy people wandering away. Every boy carried a jackknife to school.
The average number of children per year who were abducted by strangers and harmed was less than 100. But it still is. So what are you afraid of?
There was no unemployment insurance, no health insurance. People went bare. No sick pay. Food basicly uninspected, smell it first. No antibiotics. No birth control. no abortions. When your parents get old, you put them in a back room and take care of them and keep them comfortable. at your expense.
When I was growing up, my parents had plenty of things to be afraid of.
Fear of polio was palpable. Cars had no seat belts or air bags, and drum brakes and bias ply tires and all roads were 2-lane and there were pointy things sticking of the dashboard. Faulty furnaces set houses on fire. Blizzards could not be predicted. School sports had cardboard football pads and no batting helmets. Nut houses were minimum security, with goofy people wandering away. Every boy carried a jackknife to school.
The average number of children per year who were abducted by strangers and harmed was less than 100. But it still is. So what are you afraid of?
There was no unemployment insurance, no health insurance. People went bare. No sick pay. Food basicly uninspected, smell it first. No antibiotics. No birth control. no abortions. When your parents get old, you put them in a back room and take care of them and keep them comfortable. at your expense.
So, what are you so afraid of?
I would wager that your parents did not watch 4 - 6 hours of television every night, as most people do today. Fear = control. Fear mongering by the media is for the PURPOSE of controlling the masses. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you wish, but it's working.
Read "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander (available here http://tinyurl.com/nypky7for less than $5). Draw your own conclusions.
hmmm...interesting thoughts...maybe it's because people nowadays are lazy spoiled brats of assumed entitlement and they're afraid of not being lazy spoiled brats of assumed entitlement anymore?
that's my guess.
Examples: I would hold a snake (and have) but don't want one appearing out of nowhere if I'm just walking along. I can drive just fine but don't want to see some vehicle come flying out of nowhere over the guard rail towards my car. Bad lab findings at a routine check-up with no symptoms. The maintenance guy knocking on my door when I'm not dressed. Car dropping dead in the middle of nowhere.
many people seem to fear things that they have no control over. I just don't see why that is. I can't control the weather only prepare for it. I can't control others, only prepare for those that are a physical threat to me. Most are not, but I like to think I am prepaired for the few. I can't control the economy but can control my spending, budget and other things.
People are not nearly as RESOURCEFUL as they used to be. "Way back when" a lot more people grew their own food and even made their own clothes. Sewing is almost a dead art, as is canning. People darned their socks instead of running out to buy new pairs right away. Men were a lot quicker to try and mend a broken fence, and automobiles were a lot easier to work on themselves.
People ARE sick a lot more often now, I think because of "more people" around to spread contaminants.
Yes, there were nut houses, but at least they weren't ALL roaming the streets like they do now. Yes, health insurance was still not a common privilege; however, costs weren't nearly as far out of reach as they became in due time.
The biggest change to pose an obstacle to a lot of things, as far as I'm concerned, is the wildfire spread in population.
Interesting question posed here...I've often thought that we've been sold a steady diet of fear through the recent years...the media and our past govt. have emphasized fear...Why? Well, it's a good way to keep the population under control. Take a look at the article on this web site and see what you think.
Personally, I feel more content when I drastically limit my media viewing of "news" to a bare minimum and concentrate more on working within my community to grow friends, relationships and community involvement. Otherwise, one thinks they live in a horrible world filled with violence, evil happenings and impending disasters...not a very pleasant way to live.
Community action and involvement banishes this fear-based way of living. Isolation is not healthy for humans, we're a tribal people, with a need for relationships.
REPLY: Fear is something that can be a healthy thing for us ; it can keep us away from doing stupid things that would harm us . Then there are fears that we shouldnt have and often go back to a previous time in our lives when a tramatic thing happened to us. Personally, i still have somewhat of a fear about snakes but have made progress . Often, directly confronting our fears can be beneficial, so, a while back...i chose to take a trip to a Pet store and held a baby Boa Constrictor trying to make friends with it. It helped , but i need a few more trips. The biggest thing that has helped me with fears , is my relationship with God who gives me strength , wisdom, and fortitude to deal with fears.
I think people in general are quite bad at assessing risk. A lot of people don't know how to interpret basic statistics, which ends up meaning that anecdotes mean everything to them, and data means nothing.
Also, I was raised in something of a millenarianist Christian sect, and those folks were deeply invested in promoting a narrative of "decline and decay and falling-away." That's because all of their end-times prophecies were contingent on the litany of things described in the Biblical "last days" coming to pass, and most of those things are bad (increased lawlessness, earthquakes, etc.)
So, if your worldview is shaped by the anticipation of decline, you will be actively searching for signs of that decline, and in accordance with the "infinite cornucopia" principle, you will find those signs (that's just the idea that for basically any proposition, you can gin up an endless stream of claims and 'evidence' in its support).
I fear that something bad will happen to my kids. I think I could deal with everything else, but if something really bad happened to my kids I'd lose it.
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