Does society need something to fear?
As a society do we need something to fear? Terrorism, pandemics, nuclear war, communists and witches have all featured prominently throughout our history as things to fear.
Between 1692 and 1693 over 150 people were arrested and imprisoned during the Salem witch trials. We like to think that as a society we have matured past the practice of accusing people of witchcraft. We like to think that as a people we have become more enlightened and tolerant of others. This certainly was not the case during the wave of McCarthyism that swept across the U.S. during the 1950's. Many thousands of Americans were falsely accused of being communists with little or no evidence. They were ostracized from society, lost their jobs or even imprisoned.
Many more examples litter our history. The rush to stock up on supplies as the Y2K bug loomed. The fear generated through pandemics and mad cow disease. Yet despite the panic generated humanity can sometimes take perverse pleasure in the preparation and counterbalancing of irrational fears.
During the cold war there was a massive increase in the number of home based nuclear shelters. These ranged from a simple converted basement to the fully equipment underground bunkers costing a significant amount of money. People would gladly outfit their shelters with food and water all ready for the onset of nuclear war.
Western governments were quite vocal about this sort of preparation and many resources were released to the public on how to survive a nuclear strike. Although it may seem laughable now there was the very real sense that you could live through it and rebuild your lives afterwards. The reality of course would have been much different. So were the public simply following the government recommendations or was there a desire to mitigate a risk that many people saw in their own lives? The answer is a bit of both.
The following is a quote from the 1980's Protect and Survive pamphlets produced by the British government for its citizens:
"If anyone dies while you are kept in your fallout room, move the body to another room in the house. Label the body with name and address and cover it as tightly as possible in polythene, paper, sheets or blankets. Tie a second card to the covering. The radio will advise you what to do about taking the body away for burial. If however you have had a body in the house for more than five days, and if it is safe to go outside, then you should bury the body for the time being in a trench, or cover it with earth, and mark the spot of the burial."
The tone is very clinical and to the point. It is also unrealistic. This was a sanitised version of what the government would want to happen, not the chaos that would likely ensue.
The latest threat is from terrorists. Western nations have spent billions in the name of improving our defenses and tightening security. But are we really that safe? How many hijackings have there been in the last year? Certainly less than the 82 hijackings that occurred in 1969. So why is it we feel less safe? One of the main reasons is the availability of information.
We live in a world besieged by media - newspapers, magazines, TV, radio and the internet all bombard us with the latest news stories, current affairs, investigative reports and opinion pieces. It is only natural that we become swamped by all this information. In addition the cutthroat world of current event reporting has shown an alarming trend to embellish and sensationalize the facts to gain higher viewer numbers.
There will always be risks that we think we can mitigate and there will always be people showing us how to. Both the media and the politicians are willing to give us advice in order to lead us through these troubled times. So it is not so much that we need something to fear rather we sometimes elevate that risk to levels where we start to fear it.
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