Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Recession belly

One of my favorite sociological ideas is the culture of fear--that various people have incentive (financial, prestige, etc...) to scare people. Understanding this idea highlights the some of the crazy things that people claim to create fear.

This weeks entry: "recession belly". We're apparently all so upset about the financial crisis that we're eating too much bad food, getting fat (fatter), and ruining our health. (Read in a newspaper recently, not worth digging up to cite.)

Wow, just thinking about that makes me, well, stressed.

Not to worry, though, for when things get better we'll celebrate the economic recovery by eating more!

2 comments:

kent said...

Fear is highly profitable. It is a powerful short-term motivator. Even if it is not true, the fear card somehow sounds right.

It is also a measure of how immature we have become a society.

Brad Wright said...

It's certainly the case that fear sells, as long as people are buying....