Scare-mongering produces a vicious cycle, according to Simon. The media quickly picks up on a story raised by environmental extremists. Then the public becomes frightened. Polls then reveal the public concern and this worry is cited by politicians as support for polices enacted to counter the supposed threat.

The most characteristic product of the Western humanist tradition is the free and autonomous individual- who is also the cultural pessimist’s worst enemy. The genius of the Enlightenment is that society is not an organism with a predetermined course and lifespan but is made up of individual organisms each with the power to more or less shape his own destiny. Society’s future is not the product of some inevitable law of progress, but is what society’s members make of it. At one stroke, says Herman, the cycle of disillusionment and despair is dispelled- not out in the world, but where it actually exists, in the minds of men and women.