Having Only Fear Itself To Fear

THE OTHER DAY I was in the restroom at the library, and I overheard a father say to a young boy: "Don't touch the door handle!", in emphatic, excited tones, as if it was extremely important. I reflected on the possible number of harmful microorganisms on the door handle at a busy public library, and could see that father's point of view. Just being a good daddy, looking out for his kid, instilling good, clean, safe habits early. Either that, or being eaten up by paranoia, and being a total and complete "helicopter parent" I believe they're called now. You're starting to hear a lot about the phenomenon' parents who raise their children with extreme over protectiveness, who must hover and be right next to their children at all times, to fend of all manner of evil in the world, the term "helicopter: deriving, no doubt, from the aircraft's ability to hover motionlessly in one place. Most discussion of the growing parenting trend centers around our perception that the world has become an ever more dangerous place, with child molesters and sundry unsavory criminal types lurking, ready to do harm. it is widely taken for granted that this view of the world is correct, when in fact, it is not, at least not according to statistics. Statistically, the world is no more dangerous now than forty years ago. The crime rate has remained about the same, and incidents of harm being to children have not meaningfully increased. And yet, the paranoid perception of lurking danger is everywhere.Reasons for this are being investigated, and one interesting theory has to do with our present day level of saturation with electronic media, and information. Briefly, the idea is that information, even information not obviously or inherently frightening, often triggers the fear response in humans, which is perfectly normal, natural, and evolutionarily beneficial. But for the first few million years of our existence, people were impacted by a limited amount of information. Now, we are bombarded with a constant stream of electronic date, and our fear responses are triggered so often, the theory goes, that we have become saturated with fear, in effect, paranoid, and we externalize it by seeing the world as a changed place, a place inundated with danger as never before, when in fact it is not. So, we create a new society, one in which parents never leave children unguarded even for a moment, and we all find more weird ways to protect ourselves from fears which live only in our minds. The one comforting aspect to this theory is that it seems to give us half a chance, knowing that we may not need to change the world, as much as we might need only to change ourselves, by reducing our level of unreasoning fear, maybe by putting our smart phones down once in a while.----------PLEASE SHARE THIS WEBSITE WITH OTHERS. WE TRY TO ENCOURAGE ORIGINAL, CREATIVE SELF EXPRESSION.THANKS!