Mr. Villarreal
Sociology
19 February 2014
Living In Fear
In the "Culture Of Fear" article, Glassner claims that Americans fear all the wrong things because the media can tell them what to fear when in fact the greatest fears are right in front of their faces like poverty. For example, he states that Americans ranked drugs as the greatest danger to American youth when in fact two thirds of high school seniors have never used any illegal drugs. So why are people worried about drugs when that should be the least of their worries. The problem is when were not worrying about one thing were worried about another thing. As Glassner states "when we are not worrying about deadly diseases we worry about homicidal strangers." (Glassner 63). Once one bad thing happens Americans become afraid and think it's going to happened all the time , for example if one kid goes on a shooting rampage, the news hypes up the story to the point Americans think all kids are going to go on a shooting rampage. We need to learn to control our fears of the wrong thing and fear the right things. As Glassner writes " We had better learn to doubt our inflated fears before they destroy us. Valid fears have their place; they cue us to danger. False and overdrawn fears only cause hardship." (Glassner 64). One of the biggest problems with fear is we ignore the biggest problems. For example why is no one fearing poverty it correlates with the world's most fearful problems. One example poverty correlates strongly with child abuse, crime, and drug abuse. Poverty should be our biggest fear when it comes to death. As Glassner states "The larger the gap between rich and poor in a society, the higher its overall death rates from heart disease, cancer, and murder." (Glassner 64). Overall , the article claims that news media can make the public overact to any fears and that the real stuff Americans should fear are things poverty which can make this country fall apart.
This article goes over the human...