本期主題
作者：Angie Pinchbeck
There's nothing to fear but fear itself I always say. Getting all 1)yellow-bellied during 2)slasher movies or 3)freaking out when you see a spider is for 4)sissies. You gotta be tough. Gotta be strong. Gotta face the world with confidence and self-assurance and never let the man get you down!
Well, okay, sure, there are some things that demand 5)trepidation. We've all got a healthy respect for certain dangers in life, most of which was 6)hammered into us in our early years. Don't play with fire. Don't put paper clips in the electrical 7)socket. Look both ways before you cross the street. Don't take candy from strangers. Wash your hands after using the bathroom. All of these little instructions are 8)ingrained in us to protect us from things like getting burnt, 9)electrocuted, run over, kidnapped, or sick. They are healthy fears that help us to proceed with our lives in an orderly—i.e. not dead or injured—10)fashion.
But what about when Fear becomes too much? What happens when we stop fearing Fear and just let it 11)run rampant through the streets, tearing up 12)sanity and leaving in its wake a quivering shell more commonly known as the "13)worrywart"? You all know one: the mom who won't let her son play because he might get dirty; the guy who can't leave his company for more than a second without panicking that it's going to 14)implode without him; the girl with an umbrella, sunglasses, arm protectors, and SPF 50 15)sunscreen on a partially sunny day; and let's not forget, the worst 16)culprit of all, popular media.
Because of course, popular media is where one of the most recent fear 17)mongering campaigns came from. I'm not saying that the nuclear crisis in Japan is all sunshine and roses—it's not. But when the run on salt happened in places like Shanghai, Beijing, and Hangzhou, I couldn't help but shake my head. Okay, sure, I can see one or two people not knowing that you'd need to ingest 3kg of salt at one time to get enough 18)iodine to have any effect—but entire cities? It was a classic case of people forgetting to worry about how much they were worrying.