Posted by Kathryn Hunt on April 1, 2008, 4:03 pm, in reply to "Re: Patricia Pearson's Anxiety (and Yours)"
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Patricia Pearson calls anxiety (I believe she's quoting someone else at the time) "fear in search of a cause." I think that's a wonderful description of it. Your brain is in a heightened state of arousal, and your logic searches for something to attach that fear to. If you live in a place where harsh conditions, poverty and violence are facts of life, then your fear has a cause - and more importantly, I think, it comes complete with something you can do about it, even if that's just to save money, shield your kids, or be aware of the danger around you.
In our culture, on the other hand, we are constantly told that there are things we should be worried about, or afraid of, and given very little that we can actually do about it. The media sells on the basis of fear - of global pandemics or of terrorist cells or of diseases like cancer that strike without reason, and it also relies on _not_ giving us any solutions, because if we felt we had the answer, we'd stop tuning in to the media.
Not that I'm blaming the media solely, because that seems a little knee-jerk and overdone. I just think that our anxieties seem more pronounced, and less logical, because we've got to go further, and work harder, to find something for our fears to latch on to.
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