Fight or flight - But fear is running you

This was a Good Weekend article, that I have compressed:
Fear is in control of our world, and is corroding our humanity. Once, people's fears were specific, such as fear of spiders or heights. Losing touch with other people and becoming more lonely, we’ve adopted a perspective of "the worst possible outcome". Although Sydney’s water quality has been improving every year, a greater proportion report lack of trust in it and resort to bottled water. Even as the incidences of murder, rape and pedophilia have been decreasing, the perception is that these crimes are on the rise. We are healthier and live longer but are also more paranoid about health (health-consciousness raises life expectatancy, though, I suppose). The fear of taking risks is creating a society that celebrates victimhood rather than heroism. The celebration of safety alongside the continuous warning about risks constitutes a profoundly anti-human intellectual and ideological regime. Aversion to fear eliminates excitement and enjoyment. It continually invites society and its members to constrain their aspirations and to limit their actions. Children grow up thinking the world is a dangerous place full of risky strangers. The proportion of British children taken to school by car quadrupled between 1971 and 1990, even as transport improved both in safety and efficiency. Parents are more likely to accompany their child in any activity now. This is wrong not only because risk-taking is part of humanity, but because it makes children less capable of dealing with the unexpected. Protectiveness towards children is now at absurd levels. Fathers worry about photographing their children playing football unless he gets the permission of other parents. That’s because everyone is looking at the world from the perspective of a paedophile. We think every parent is a potential paedophile, and ultimately, that’s a triumph of paedophilia over common sense. Before there used to be traditionalists and futurists. There are now neither. We are living in a kind of infinite present. We are in post-political times. Politics has lost the desire and confidence to change things in a big way. The larger debates of the past have been replaced by single issues such as literacy in classrooms or school lunches. These issues don’t have much to do with traditional politics, and they don’t concern the future or morality. They concern people’s lifestyles. Sometimes, people’s most heated debates today are around individual preferences such as who likes the “Big Brother” TV program, and who hates it.