Fear has been scattered, not erased, and for some, that makes the world more frightening than ever. When we're not busy dealing with real threats, we have this luxury of looking inward. People who study fear have never seen a period in which rational sources of it were in such short supply. In response, politicians, interest groups and the media have served up a smorgasbord of overblown frights to fill the American appetite. In the past few years, the options have included Y2K, anthrax, flesh-eating bacteria, genetically modified foods, road rage, child abduction, carjacking, acid rain, and the ebola virus.
Psychiatrists call it symptom substitution.
When one fear vanishes, another takes its place. And when the most obvious bogeymen have disappeared, as they seemingly have today, people dig deeper to find substitutes. Something in human nature, it would seem, insists that people cling to fear even during times of prosperity. People really were afraid. With that scare over, he says, people may be searching for a new worry to fill the void.