So this week I HAD to face a number of quandaries. Not least, a new study out of Pittsburgh (or some equally ignominious a setting) has revealed (for the thousandth time) that cellular telephones cause cancer. The quandary is this: do I start holding my cell phone an inch away form my face like those putzes who speak into their cell phones while holding them an inch away from their faces (lest they grow a tumor), or do I ignore it? I mean, really, there has to be a limit. There's salmonella in the tomatoes and the jalapeños, there's mad cow in the beef, there's anthrax in the mail, and there are gays in the agenda.
When does it end? Where does it stop? At what stage can I eat salsa, open my mail, chat on my cell, and watch "Queer Eye" (commensurate activities, by the way) without fearing for my life, freedom and heterosexuality?
I watch too much television, I admit. God only knows the condition of my retinas. And I eat high cholesterol snack foods. And I smoke. And I drink beer. And I ride my bicycle without my helmet (sometimes while smoking and having had a few beers). So, in a nutshell (WARNING: THIS NUTSHELL MAY CONTAIN PEANUT PRODUCTS!): I'm going to die. Soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe by virtue of a stroke caused by sitting here staring into whatever sort of rays are projected by this screen.
Which brings me to the real question: who are we to believe we deserve to live forever? What, really is the function of all the fear-mongering if not to vouchsafe our sense that we, of all people, are worth worrying about.
Worry with a capital "W".
Because we have it so rotten? There's so much that could go wrong? Because we have so much to lose? There's the aluminum in the coke cans, for one. We could go mad. And the drugs in the drinking water (God forbid that we should ingest a minute dose of antidepressant pissed out by some unhappy person). And then there's the mercury in the fish, the semen on the toilet seat, the mites in our mattresses, the germs on our dollar bills.
At what stage does all this start becoming an excuse not to worry about anyone other than ourselves?
So...this is a general survey, A genuine question: What is the ideological purpose of all these worries? What does it uphold? What does it DO? Do we buy it? If so, why?
Help me. I'm scared.
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4 comments:
This phenomenon of increasingly viewing the world as a dangerous place against which you need to protect yourself at all costs has, I think, three components to it. First of all, we have a much better understanding of cell phone radiation and food allergies and transfat now than we did, say, 50 years ago. Under many circumstances, just because something is known scientifically doesn't mean people will act on that information. But this leads to the second component to this equation: the luxury to pay attention to such info. Simply put, we Americans freak out about cholesterol in eggs because we have the luxury of doing so - a farmer in Cambodia is satisfied that he has an egg to eat, cholesterol or not. The fact that we as a culture are freaking out about these things at all indicates that we have way too much time and money on our hands. While some countries worry about street violence, starvation, and AIDS, we worry about mites and cell phones.
This leads to the final component, and really the only one in the equation that can be properly termed "ideological." The escalation in consumer product-related fear has created a booming industry for "safe" goods. Bottled water, organic foods, air filter systems... all of these things benefit, at least in part, from a scared and easily pliable public. (Not to say that any of these things are "bad," except bottled water, which is evil.) There's a lot of money being made because of our irrational fear, and this perpetuates the cycle.
On another level, fears of this nature are a result of a 24-hour news cycle that feeds off of exposés and "Mean World" spin. When you've got hours of airtime to fill, loading it with stories of what consumer product of the month can kill you has proved a winning formula.
It's an important question you ask: when will all this stop? When will people be able to rationally assess risk and make informed decisions knowing that everything in life possesses some degree of danger? In a sense, our economic downturn is helping this process along: who would worry about talking on their phone when they've just lost their house? As soon as real problems overbalance manufactured ones, we'll turn a corner on this. Of course, is that a good thing?
Funny you mention people losing their homes, Zach. What better way to get middle-class society under heel than to take their homes, force them to start renting, and further their allegiance to a singular power entity?
I think a good way to visualize your scenario and question, Furner, is to look at Los Angeles. The California gold rush is still active and well as people flock to LA for its strong economy, perpetual good weather, and dreams of stardom in the entertainment industry. All of these things come at a gamble though. Street violence (heavily over-hyped), ruin, and a toxic environment aside, any of those 12.9 million people can get swallowed into the Earth at any minute. The warnings are there: the San Andreas fault is active and can erupt violently at any moment, yet the city still has 12.9 million people.
All of the things you mention are ways we play the game. It's just the gamble we take. The people you mention holding the cell phone an inch from their face, perhaps they're the ones too bashful to go all-in on modern life. Humans are obviously beyond striking a balance in their ecosystems, modernity is all that's left.
Another thing to consider is we're among the first to watch a generation die at the hands of this society. We're the ones who get to see our grandparents die of smoking-related causes. We get to see everyone 40+ get various forms of cancer. These scare tactics work because we see what a horrible way to die it is. No more do people get the nice, peaceful, in-your-sleep, "of old age" deaths.
One more potential ideological explanation for this phenomenon that runs a little more in the sinister direction: perhaps we are pumped full of fear about these things as a deliberate strategy to keep us distracted from those real problems Ruxton and I refer to. There is nothing we can do about troop levels in Iraq, or about the faltering economy: but we can choose to talk with the cell phone inches away from our faces and buy bottled water. I wonder if the escalation of consumer product-related fear is correlated in any with with the escalation of the War on Terror, and decline of American geopolitical prominent, and the tanking of our economy...
Your comments were strangely serendipitous, Ruxton. LA residents such as myself are still a bit shaken by the 5.4 quake we had this Tuesday. The San Andreas is a mean ol’ bitch!
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