A State of Unhappiness

I've been reading Michael Crichton's latest work titled State of Fear. It has made the headlines over controversial claims that the whole global warming theory is all just bunkum. He's made the claim quite well, I must say. It's very convincing. I've been checked up some of the references that he's put down and they hold good. The net also has quite a few sites saying that it is all just an unjustified claim. Makes you believe that maybe the US of A wasn't being all that irrational by not signing the Kyoto Protocol.

However, its not this theme or the plot which really caught my attention. It was a speech given by an eccentric scientist about the State of Fear which has been cultivated. He spoke about a PLM (Politico-Legal-Media) axis which had created an environment where inspite of life expectancy increasing and murder rates falling, people live with a perpetual sense of worry for their safety.

I largely agree with what he's said there. Open the newspaper and almost all pages have some factor of death or danger to mankind printed on it. The sports pages are largely spared of it but even a death caused in a boxing ring in the most remote part of the Ivory Coast would be publicized. In addition, the media would also make as much hype as possible about research such as chocolate being linked to cancer. The next day, there would be a second research stating that chocolate reduces cholestrol. The third day would have a research claiming that chocolate has been linked to an increased risk of impotency. Finally, there'll be some lawyer in US who would win a case based on these arbit research to prove that chocolate has caused the world to have a greater amount of sin. Politicians then move to ban advertising on chocolate and so on.

But if you look a bit deeper, media feeds only what we want to hear. The market forces would show that news articles related to death, danger and sex sell the most. If its the majority of us who want this type of news, then hey, why grumble! Maybe we all need a dash of worry in our lives. Maybe human beings just state they want happiness but happiness can't give them, well, happiness. But then, if you think about it, you wouldn't know happiness without knowing what sadness is...