Daisy 8/30

Thursday in class we spoke about living in a culture of fear. In class Dr. Rog said that fear is what sells in our culture and nothing else. I 100% agree with this statement. Fear has become normalized into our everyday lives and we don’t even realize. The media is the main advocator of fear and the more it is present the more we become fearful. The more I think about it, the more I realize that my everyday life is propelled by fear, every action I do seems to have some motivation of fear behind it.
I fear the recent economy and job market so I do my homework and get to class on time so I can get a college education in hopes of getting ahead and getting a better job than the average college graduate. I’m fearful of getting overweight and eating the wrong food so I buy a health magazine while I’m at the grocery store stocking up on healthy labeled food and then I go to the gym. I fear the h1n1 flu so I keep hand sanitizer in my pocket and am suspicious of people coughing and sneezing. I fear dying so I buckle my seatbelt every time I get in the car. I fear getting pulled over by the police so I stop at every stop sign and follow the speed limit. All of the things I just mentioned are part of my normal everyday life and I unconsciously do them. Why do I do them? Well, mostly because somewhere throughout my life I have learned from an aspect of the media that this is what I am supposed to do. I don’t think about doing these actions because I am fearful, I just do them and a good majority of the country follows the same social constructs as I do.
I can remember the day 9/11 happened, I was in 7th grade art class. We weren’t allowed to turn the televisions on and the whole school was sent home early. At the moment I didn’t fully realize what had happened, I didn’t even know what the World Trade Centers were and had never heard the word terrorists. I can remember getting home and my parents said how the world was going to change. The images of the planes crashing into the twin towers, people running away from the clouds of dust, and heartbreaking pictures of victims flashed across the news. Families sat glued to the media hoping that survivors would be found. I grew so used to these images on the news, on the front page of the newspaper, on talk-shows and in magazines that it didn’t even phase me. At the time it was a life-changing moment, little did I know that it would dominate my life from that moment on.
Now, I’m used to picking up the newspaper and seeing headlines about terrorist attacks, the Iraq War, the avian flu or swine flu. I’m used to walking through airport security and seeing the threat level as orange. None of these things bother me anymore, and it bothers me that they don’t. I’m tired of living in fear of so many things and not realizing it, but how do we change this. It has become such a driving force, why would the media stop it when it sells? Well unfortunately I’m not sure if it will ever stop but continue to get stronger.