Explores why Americans are more fearful today than in the past & often most fearful of the wrong things. Scholars & journalists commonly invoke the specter of premillenial tensions, while other ...explanations focus on the news media. It is argued here that the primary culprits for the production of mass fear in the US are those who profit from tapping into moral insecurities & providing false kinds of symbolic substitutes. Advocates of scary scenarios capture public attention through sophisticated marketing techniques that capitalize on the news media need for constant provocative content. Reporters are shown to do an extraordinary job of exposing the scare tactics of many of these organizations. However, once a scare catches on, it is very difficult to stop until it has run its course. Several examples of this process are discussed: the early-1990s political correctness scare, the youth-at-risk scare, the monster mom scare caused by a concern over teen pregnancies, & scares over the menace of black men, illegal drugs, & plane wrecks. Each of these cases is characterized by the use of poignant anecdotes in place of scientific evidence & the use of isolated incidents to stand in for entire social dynamics or trends. Actual statistics demonstrate that these fears were largely overblown, but the alarms were successful because they were rooted in deeper cultural anxieties. Moreover, they succeeded in diverting tens of billions of dollars to mythical hazards like road rage or to programs for more prisons or technology to make air travel safer. It is in this kind of diversion that irrational scares have their most pernicious effect, because those resources might more profitably be used to combat serious dangers that threaten large numbers of people. The text contains an Introduction & 9 Chpts with Notes. D. Ryfe
Some philosophers hold that trust grows fragile when people become too rational. They advocate a retreat from reason and a return to local, traditional values. Others hold that truly rational people ...are both trusting and trustworthy. Everything hinges on what we mean by 'reason' and 'rational'. If these are understood in an egocentric, instrumental fashion, then they are indeed incompatible with trust. With the help of game theory, Martin Hollis argues against that narrow definition and in favour of a richer, deeper notion of reason founded on reciprocity and the pursuit of the common good. Within that framework he reconstructs the Enlightenment idea of citizens of the world, rationally encountering, and at the same time finding their identity in, their multiple commitments to communities both local and universal.
