Be very afraid: the cultural response to terror, pandemics, environmental devastation, nuclear annihilation, and other threats

Description

Perilous times -- The nuclear-haunted era -- What to mobilize against -- Waging war on terror -- Weapons of mass destruction -- Panics and pandemics -- Environmental catastrophe -- Setting a new agenda -- The call for action.;Robert Wuthnow has been praised as one of "the country's best social scientists" by columnist David Brooks, who hails his writing as "tremendously valuable." The New York Times calls him "temperate, balanced, compassionate," adding, "one can't but admire Mr. Wuthnow's views." A leading authority on religion, he now addresses one of the most profound subjects: the end of the world. In Be Very Afraid, Wuthnow examines the human response to existential threats--once a matter for theology, but now looming before us in multiple forms. Nuclear weapons, pandemics, global warming: each threatens to destroy the planet, or at least to annihilate our species. Freud, he notes, famously taught that the standard psychological response to an overwhelming danger is denial. In fact, Wuthnow writes, the opposite is true: we seek ways of positively meeting the threat, of doing something--anything--even if it's wasteful and time-consuming. The atomic era that began with the bombing of Hiroshima sparked a flurry of activity, ranging from duck-and-cover drills, basement bomb shelters, and marches for a nuclear freeze. All were arguably ineffectual, yet each sprang from an innate desire to take action.