You worry too much.

You're imagining things

I'm in a jam for nothing.

You always get worked up about nothing.

You see, all your worrying was for nothing.

You're all upset over nothing, boss.

Anyway, I never could understand this worrying about something all been done with.

You love it, only you worry about it too darn much, you and your little man.

But I did go on to be a reasonably astute, arguably world class worrier.

Scenarios like these may seem far fetched. But, while certainly discomfiting, they are hardly irrelevant.

But it's not a crazy concern, OK, because understanding behavior can lead to a kind of empathy, and it can make it a little harder to deliver tough love, and so on.

A tendency to discount the beliefs of others, especially of Muslims, had recently gained strength and in some countries, as alarmists had begun to speak out more stridently, Muslims had been stigmatized.

Baby, I'll tell her, remember, your momma is a worrier, and your poppa is a warrior, and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.

And those who didn't die lived often very tethered to the ground, could not experience pleasure, could not trust, because when you're vigilant, worried, anxious, and insecure, you can't lift your head to go and take off in space and be playful and safe and imaginative.

In the past, France and Germany were the motors of European integration. Now they are the countries that feel most threatened, and bookshops in both countries are full of alarmist and sensational accounts of national decline.

The need to cut greenhouse gases has become increasingly clear as predictions of global warming denounced as alarmist when they were first made just a few years ago have repeatedly turned out to have been too conservative. We are approaching a point of no return, at which feedback loops will kick in and continue to warm the planet, no matter what we do.

Most Western commentators continue to over simplify this debate, framing it in terms of the proverbial China hard landing scenarios that have been off the mark for 20 years. In the wake of this summer s stock market plunge and surprising devaluation of the renminbi, the same thing is happening again.

Emerging economies leaders fear spillover effects in commodity markets and distortions of exchange rates and capital flows that may compromise their own focus on financial stability. While it is difficult to track the cross border flows fueled by quantitative easing in the so called advanced world, these fears are far from groundless.

Following the 2013 riots over the amount of money being spent on the 2014 soccer World Cup, protests continued up to, and even during, the tournament in June. There were dire though ultimately misplaced predictions about chaotic conditions for participants, and then, of course, the catastrophic performance of the home team.

They will likely follow suit, and the more weapons proliferate in the volatile Middle East, the more likely it is that accidents and miscalculations could lead to their use. Moreover, there are genuine fears that rogue elements in a divided Iranian government might leak weapons technology to terrorist groups.

Aron preferred demonizing fellow intellectuals as alarmists than conceding that the Cold War might eventuate in a nuclear holocaust. Sartre castigated those who failed to resist oppression when they could have, while excusing those who enforced oppression given the chance.

The answer, as former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker implied at the meeting, is that we would be right back where we started in the panic and frozen credit markets that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Indeed, the idea that substantial shocks could soon hit the US financial system is not far fetched.