The world has never been safer or more prosperous.

Today we live healthier and longer than ever. Our chance of dying from war, disaster, starvation and even pandemics are at levels our ancestors could only have prayed for.

But despite all this security, we’re more fearful than ever before. We see potential dangers and imminent disasters everywhere, coming from every direction, all the time.

Fear-mongering has become the default position of our politicians and media. Why work to inspire change when you can just turn up the dial on fear. All the better to capture and manipulate attention.

Politicians bereft of ideas cynically stoke a culture of fear and impending danger that they can save us from. It’s like firefighters starting fires. And then pouring gasoline on them.

Capturing more attention requires ramping up of more fear. So a handful of spirited immigrants fleeing poverty and violence in their country for the American dream are recast as a rampaging nightmare horde of thousands of bloodthirsty drug dealers, criminals and rapists flooding over the border armed to the teeth, ready to loot and pillage everything we hold dear.

We used to carry an optimistic belief in our ability to subdue the unknown and the perils ahead. It gave us hope, it gave us strength.

But now that flame of hope is increasingly overshadowed by a dark mood of intangible and unsettling anxiety. Rather than hope for the best we now fear for the worst.

Many of us are consumed by fear. We see everything through the distorted lens of fear. It’s seen as the safest option, as common sense. Any other perspective is seen as risky thinking, dangerous thinking.

Today the risk-taker is castigated as foolish, selfish - a danger to both themselves and others. This negative perception of risk-taking is driven by worst-case thinking.

But the worst-case is (by definition) what’s less likely to happen. What’s more likely to happen is something positive.

Yet worst-case thinking has infiltrated the highest levels of government. Some politicians and policy-makers want to socially engineer a zero-risk society. Risk-free is lauded as a noble and necessary goal.

Completely abolishing uncertainty is impossible. Avoiding risk and dangers is avoiding life. Even doing nothing brings its own risks.

An abundance of safety rules and restrictions is not making people feel safer. Instead they’re contributing to our culture of fear. Seeing the future as inherently unsafe limits our freedom to explore, experiment and make our own choices. Rules and restrictions implicitly communicate to us that we’re incapable of making our own risk assessments and assuming responsibility for our own life.

The modern cult of safety is infantilizing us, ensuring we remain dependent on overbearing authority figures who promise to keep us safe from what we’ve been socialized to believe is a dangerous world.

It normalizes the perception that we’re innately vulnerable. It turns us all into potential victims.

Thankfully this dismal, pessimistic conception of humanity is fundamentally flawed. If vulnerability was the essential feature of the human being, the human race would have perished long ago.

Yes, our lives are unpredictable and exposed, but we’re inherently resilient and adaptable. Not only do we have a remarkable capacity to withstand threats, dangers and hardships, but sometimes these fast-track individual, familial, and societal growth.

We’re not the sum of our fears. We have far more courage and strength than we imagine. There’s no reason to be fearful at all. Live’s an adventure.

Don’t pull away from uncertainty.

Welcome it with open arms

And an open heart.

Reference

“Fear psychosis and the cult of safety – why are people so afraid?” Academy of Ideas (2022)