Overblown Fears: The Next Decade?
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
Newsweek looks at the most overblown fears of the last deade. They are, according to the magazine:
1. Y2K
2. Shoe Bombs
3. Vaccines Cause Autism
4. Immigrants
5. Bloggers
6. SARS, Mad Cow, Bird Flu
7. Web Predators
8. Teen Oral Sex Epidemic
9. Anthrax
10. Globalization
I think shoe bombs are a very good choice, given how much inconvenience they’ve cause all air travelers — and given that one unsuccessful attack has led to a burdensome regulation that will probably not be repealed in any of our lifetimes.
By the same token, might terrorism itself be a good addition to this list? After 9/11, the world didn’t change in anything like the way we thought it would. The amount of time the average American has spent worrying about terrorism, versus the individual’s chance of actually being harmed by a terrorist attack — the gap between those things has to be rather immense.
Meanwhile, was Y2K overblown, or did we fix it?
A fear tends to become overblown when it’s very easy for us to visualize a problem but very hard for us to put it in context — or when it’s very easy to see the costs, but difficult to see the benefits (e.g. globalization). Given that, what do you think will be the overblown fears of the next decade?
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
HT: Freakonomics
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I nominate George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the most overblown fears list. A lot of liberals were convinced we wouldn’t make it out of this decade alive, especially after 2004 (anyone else remember the solipsistic post-election Village Voice cover with Manhattan Island floating in the middle of a vast ocean?). America did.
I predict that Barack Obama will have a similar place in the top 10 overblown fears of the 2010s.
I agree with the suggestion of Barack Obama. That’s definitely up there.
I love that “bloggers” is up there with bombs, infectious diseases and child promiscuity. That makes me feel very proud.
Yeah, I’m not sure who was ever so afraid of bloggers. Newspapers? If so, given the state of the newspaper industry, I’m not sure that fear WAS so overblown.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Megan Cottrell, ryansager. ryansager said: What do you think will be the most overblown fears of the next decade?: http://bit.ly/7N1IzE [...]
Just an interesting thought here: Is the ’00s the first decade in a long time in which we didn’t have a musical form that inspired social panic? Rap/hip-hop and techno/raves in the 90s, punk rock and metal in the 80s, disco in the 70s, rock and roll in the 60s/50s?
I’m sort of panicked by Emo.
In response to another comment. See in context »How about global warming? Or peak oil?
Ah, we all knew global warming would pop its head up. Given that it was such a big concern in the 00’s, I’m going to disqualify it from this discussion of the teens.
In response to another comment. See in context »Access to water
For the next decade, I’d put mind control on the list. Or nefarious uses of neuroscience in general.
[...] we took a look at Newsweek’s list of overblown fears of the last decade. I asked for your suggestions for the next decade. So, here are your answers, from the comments, [...]
I think Y2K was overblown. Yet, if we had ignored it, I think we’d have been in serious trouble. The problem is that many managers, eager to avoid the stain of not preparing adequately for Y2K, over spent “just to be safe.”
The same goes for SARS, Mad Cow, and Bird Flu.
The problem is that our leaders do not truly understand the scope of the problems facing them. We expect them to be ridiculously well educated and intelligent, and it turns out they’re just ordinary people like us. We expect them to be able to discern scaremongering from real potential disasters.
They aren’t able. I don’t know what we can do to improve the situation except to demand better leadership. Good Luck with that…
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