28 Feb 2005
Fear Itself
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. -- FDR

We should be afraid, very afraid. For there is an epidemic of fear that sweeps across this land like a dark shadow, clouding everything we think, do and say.

We are scared to death of dying.

It's been growing in our culture since I was a kid - so the effect of being middle aged is serving me well. I can see the "before" and "after". And I now understand the impulse to nostalgia that is evident in may of our senior citizens.

You can see it in the health campaigns that regularly convulse our culture: we all want to live longer. When I was a kid, a mere 4 decades ago, seat belts weren't even standard equipment in automobiles. Car seats were unheard of. Smokers made up nearly 60% of the population, and a non-smoking bar would have gone out of business in a day or two.

Now, don't get me wrong: I don't particularly want to cross the Rainbow Bridge. I'm not suicidal. But neither am I obsessed to the point of rearranging the details of my life merely to prolong it by a year or two. Because, statistically speaking, that's the net effect of counting carbs, quitting smoking, selling our Harley and giving up skydiving: one to five years added to our life expectancy.

Fear drives this. I've tried to think of other motivating factors, but can find none: it's got to be raw, naked fear.

In 1965 we didn't dress our kids to look like the Michelin Tire mascot just to ride a bike or a skateboard. Huck Finn was still available in the school library. Drunk driving was a misdemeanor.

Today, protective gear for children is a multi-billion dollar market, anything remotely offensive to anyone has been pulled from the shelves of the library, and drunk driving is now a felony, with levels so low that you can be classified as drunk merely by looking at an unopened beer.

I'm not saying that any individual course of action for safety purposes is necessarily wrong. Of course driving drunk should be a felony. I'm saying that we're obsessed and terrified, and it's killing us more surely and swiftly than any of the calories we lost count of or any of the evil drugs we didn't inhale.

It's our collective, maniacal, obsessive reaction to fear of death that drives ever closer to a cultural edge - an edge we can't see past. And may the gods help us if we ever cross it.

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