Eugene Robinson: We the Paranoid

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR2007120301619.html

We the Paranoid

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A21

We Americans like to think of ourselves as strong, rugged and supremely confident -- a nation of Marlboro Men and Marlboro Women, minus the cigarettes and the lung cancer. So why do we increasingly find ourselves hunkered behind walls, popping pills by the handful to stave off diseases we might never contract and eyeing the rest of the world with an us-or-them suspicion that borders on the pathological?

Last week, I heard some of the nation's leading cultural anthropologists try to explain these and other phenomena. I came away convinced that we, as a nation, definitely should seek professional help.

The American Anthropological Association held its annual meeting here in Washington, and I was invited to an afternoon-long panel discussion titled "The Insecure American." I decided to overlook the fact that my hosts, Hugh Gusterson of George Mason University and Catherine Besteman of Colby College, had recently co-edited a book called "Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong."

"The Insecure American" turned out to be a revelation -- by turns alarming, depressing and laugh-out-loud amusing -- as scholar after scholar presented research showing just how unnerved this society is.

Setha Low, who teaches at the City University of New York, has spent years studying the advent and increase of gated communities. People decide to sequester their families behind walls because they are afraid of crime, they feel isolated from their neighbors, and they're nostalgic for a kind of idealized Norman Rockwell past, Low reported. Nothing terribly irrational about that.

But after extensive interviews with residents of gated communities in San Antonio and on Long Island, Low discovered that there isn't really less crime behind the walls, people don't really feel more secure, and there was no greater sense of small-town closeness among neighbors. Despite the gates and guard huts, people still felt they needed to set their alarm systems.

snip//

To recap: We're afraid of one another, we're afraid of the rest of the world, we're afraid of getting sick, we're afraid of dying. Maybe if we study our insecurities and confront them, we'll learn to keep them in check. Before we turn the whole nation into one big, paranoid gated community, maybe we'll learn that life isn't really any better behind the walls.

The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today athttp://www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address [e-mail].

[sinkingfeeling]

1. I read that yesterday. What's not answered is exactly 'why' the majority of the country

is like that.

[Wilber_Stool]

2. Read

this.
It will explain everything. How people can ignore facts and still maintain their own believes. Very entertaining as well. Should be required reading for anyone joining this board.