RE: weapons of mass panic

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Feb 26 2003 - 17:44:46 MST

  • Next message: Lee Corbin: "RE: weapons of mass panic"

    Steve writes

    > Amara [wrote]
    >
    > > Apparently, I'm not 'getting the message' that many of you are
    > > getting, because I find myself more and more frustrated and sad to
    > > see people's obsession with fearful thoughts. This is *your life*.
    > > Do you really want to spend it this way?
    > >
    > > I won't change my life for the latest government / media report of
    > > the scare-of-the-week, because it looks like more Paranoia-Ville.
    > > and I refuse to buy into that.
    >
    > I can't express how strongly I agree with this. Like Amara I am both amazed
    > and disturbed by the obsession so many people have with an unattainable
    > ideal of "safety", to the point that they are prepared to sacrifice
    > everything else to it.

    I am frankly bewildered by this. Am I not watching enough television
    or something? The people at work and on this list seem rather normal,
    and I'm not hearing of untoward incidents in the Bay Area (that is,
    California). I did hear one report of a guy back east who wrapped
    his entire house in plastic, but I thought that this was an aberration.

    > [The] powerful feed and stimulate panic and paranoia. They at least have
    > ascribable motives but why has this mania got such a hold on the general
    > public, particularly (I have to say) in Anglo-Saxon countries?

    What mania is this? People seem about as unconcerned as all during
    the sixties when the chances of personal injury (due to atomic war)
    were actually much greater. Yes, starting in the eighties, there
    was a certain amount of "panic", but mostly in intellectual circles,
    about the nuclear overkill, nuclear winter, and so on, and that has
    indeed been replaced by worries about global warming, genetically
    modified foods, alien abductions and so on; but the people who I
    know that are worried about the latter seem to be affected in only
    a superficial matter---almost as though some part of them regarded
    it merely as entertainment. In short, they didn't exhibit real
    symptoms of worry and anxiety.

    Spike had written

    > Some months ago I speculated similarly, that a terrorist could
    > easily obtain some type of legal and harmless radioactive material
    > such as Americium from smoke detectors, power it, spread it using
    > ordinary commercially available fireworks, then watch the proles
    > panic.[...]

    but not in any noticeable tone of anxiety or panic, and I'm certain
    he's as cheery as ever. So his message can't really be the source
    of the sadness and frustration Amara reported in

    > I find myself more and more frustrated and sad to
    > see people's obsession with fearful thoughts.

    If I were to speculate, I might wonder if some of us are more sensitive
    than others, and if that were somehow at the base of it. But I'm quite
    willing to entertain any kind of explanation, so bemused am I.

    I haven't noticed whatever it is Amara and Steve are talking about,
    unless we've got a communication problem/misunderstanding at work.

    Lee



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