State of Fear

Unquestionably, author Michael Crichton has a brilliant mind. His fiction is supported by detailed scientific information, even if you do not always agree with it. He must read innumerable scientific journals and reports to have such a vast array of knowledge. Furthermore, unlike simple folks like me, he understands what he reads!

His novel, State of Fear, is primarily a vehicle through which to expand some of his theories about rabid environmentalists and the political-legal-media influence on the thinking of the population. While the plot lends itself to the making of an edge-of-your-seat action movie, once Crichton makes his point, he quickly and predictably wraps things up. In doing so, he leaves some loose ends dangling. No matter. What I want to talk about is the thought-provoking ideas he puts forth.

One of these ideas is expounded upon in Chapter VI by a (seemingly) nutty professor. He rails about the "notion of social control."

". . . the requirement of every sovereign state to exert control over the behavior of its citizens, to keep them orderly and reasonably docile. . .To keep them paying taxes. And of course, we know that social control is best managed through fear.

. . . For fifty years, Western nations had maintained their citizens in a state of perpetual fear. Fear of the other side. Fear of nuclear war. The Communist menace. The Iron Curtain. The Evil Empire. And within the communist countries, the same in reverse. Fear of us. Then, suddenly, in the fall of 1989, it was all finished. . . . The fall of the Berlin Wall created a vacuum of fear. Nature abhors a vacuum. Something had to fill it.

. . . Industrialized nations provide their citizens with unprecedented safety, health, and comfort. Average life spans increased fifty percent in the last century. Yet modern people live in abject fear. They are afraid of strangers, of disease, of crime, of the environment. . . of the homes they live in, the food they eat, the technology that surrounds them. . .germs, chemicals, additives, pollutants. . . . They are convinced that the environment of the entire planet is being destroyed around them.

. . . How has that been accomplished?

. . . for the last fifteen years we have been under the control of . . . (a) complex, . . . powerful and . . . pervasive,. . . . the politico-legal-media complex. . . . it is dedicated to promoting fear in the population -- under the guise of promoting safety.

. . . it unites so many institutions of society. Politicians need fears to control the population. Lawyers need dangers to litigate, and make money. The media need scare stories to capture an audience. Together, these three estates are so compelling that they can go about their business even if the scare is totally groundless."

The professor then gives examples like: breast implants causing cancer and autoimmune diseases. Despite evidence to the contrary, there were "high-profile news stories, high-profile lawsuits, high-profile political hearings." Four years later, definite studies showed beyond a doubt that breast implants did none of these things. But by then, the politico-legal-media complex had moved on to other fears and terrors, with no system of checks and balances. And millions of dollars had been spent and/or wasted.

". . . If it is not all right to falsely shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, why is it all right to shout 'Cancer!' in the pages of The New Yorker? When that statement is not true?"

Other examples of perpetuated fears that never materialized are: killer bees, power-line cancer, global warming, and rising sea levels. And in his Appendix I, Crichton reminds us of a theory widely held a century ago, globally, by scientists, politicians, philanthropists, research institutes, and more. This theory was called eugenics. It claimed that the human race was deteriorating because the "best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones--the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit and the 'feeble minded.'" Fear spurred the deaths of millions of innocent people. Of course, after World War II, nobody was a eugenicist, and nobody had ever been a eugenicist - details conveniently left out of biographies and college courses.

State of Fear focuses primarily on environmentalism - global warming, rising sea levels, the need to manage nature. But through it, Crichton raises some interesting questions.

What do you think? Could this politico-legal-media machine truly be controlling how we think, make laws, spend taxes, vote, and face our daily lives?

I'm afraid it makes a lot of sense.