The phrase “community of anxiety” was coined in 2004 by the writer Ian McEwan in Saturday, a novel about the events surrounding the Iraq war.
A similar idea is information pandemics. Both ideas describe the way that fear and anxiety are spreading throughout the world, fuelled primarily by the needs of 24-hour news channels and the interconnectivity of mobile devices.

We are, increasingly it seems, lurching from one supposed crisis to the next. It can start with a single tweet, spread to a blog and end up on Fox News. Furthermore, as the physicist, commentator and author Lawrence Krauss has remarked: “The increasingly blatant nature of the nonsense uttered with impunity in public discourse is chilling.” You might think that the Internet would create a world of open and democratic discussion without the barriers or filters erected by established media interests. But what appears to be occurring is a flood of disinformation in which no single source has the resources to discern the merits of individual stories.

The result is panic on a scale hitherto unseen and outbreaks are difficult to contain. What would once have remained a local story until it was fully analysed now moves so fast that we are unable to assess the real risks or think about the ultimate consequences.

For example, why was it that Bird Flu (as opposed to Swine Flu) was scarier when it was over ‘there’ (in Asia and Continental Europe) than when it actually arrived in Britain for the first time?  The answer is that fear has taken over from hope as the dominant cultural force of our times. This anxiety is fuelled by connectivity and we are constantly on the look out for new focal points for our fear. We therefore run from one imagined threat to another without taking the time to consider the actual level of risk posed.

Thus the exception is increasing becoming the rule.  If it’s not Bird Flu its Y2K, terrorism, deep vein thrombosis on long haul flights, rogue asteroids, paedophiles, binge drinking, climate change, teenage pregnancy:the list is almost endless. And don’t expect politicians or the media to help because both directly benefit from situations where they can claim some level of control or ‘expert knowledge’. A frightened populus is a complaint populus.

Fear and anxiety, spread by digital technology, are feeding a new culture of irrationality and we are becoming fatalistic and superstitious. And this, in turn, is fuelling our obsession with the past.

The present (and the future) are now seen as too scary, so people are retreating to eras that they believe offer safety, certainly and control. Hence the current boom in nostalgia. This is a shame because on almost every measure that matters life on our planet is becoming better, not worse, for the vast majority of people. Indeed, the only thing that might be coming to an end is a sense of perspective and a belief in the unstoppable ingenuity of the human race.