irrational fear

Fear is a very powerful emotion and one that affects everyone, even if they don't want to acknowledge it. Fear is an important driver of human behavior and it is blatantly obvious everywhere. Marketers and politicians exploit it constantly. However, pointing that out is fraught with danger and people often react violently to insinuations or claims that fear drives their behavior. Acknowledging fear is displaying weakness. It is largely a taboo subject.

Fear is a primary driver in suburban development. People move to suburbia because they fear violence and crime. They also fear others who are not like them. Suburbs are often segregated in many ways. Many "require" overt signs of group identity such as manicured lawns. These are cleverly disguised as "rules" and enforced by home-owner associations. Fear lurks behind racism, gay bashing, and other xenophobic behaviors and attitudes. When combined with suppressed anger it is often expressed as deep hatred.

Fear also drives the search for a "good education," and a rather violent reaction to "illegal immigration." It is not so much education -in the sense of learning- that people are after, but conformity and social ranking. The citizens who want a good education may not want the school to teach subversive ideas such as evolution for example. Never mind reality.

The same applies to immigration policies. People fear the poor, especially the poor from different ethnicities. Because they are out to get us, to steal from us. But we don't mind if they clean our house, or tend to our garden. We don't even mind if they watch our kids. As long as they have limited rights and are under control.

Fear is used extensively in politics. After 9-11 it has become very fashionable and very effective to use fear to implement all kinds of unpopular policies. But it is not just limited to merely unpopular. Many rules and laws have been pushed through that people would normally strongly object to. Basic constitutional protections such as habeas corpus that are at the core of a free society have been abolished or rendered ineffective. It is surprising to see how quickly people surrender their personal freedoms in exchange for a vague promise of security.

Fear is also part and parcel of military recruitment. Be all that you can be, delivers the message that you can overcome your fears. You can take action and be strong. This is underscored by the use of music and images of powerful machines and technological gadgetry. The trend has also spilled over into civilian life. There are more military style vehicles on the road now. And even "regular" vehicles have seen an increase in the aggressiveness component. Beefier looks, larger headlights, and more pronounced radiator grilles that look like fangs or teeth. Young people have embraced this phenomenon and military style boots, camouflage, tattoos, and body piercings are more common.

But fear marketing is also invading the home. And it is not just long term favorites like surveillance items and weaponry. Fear is entering the household with novel products that aim to kill invisible germs. It all started rather innocently with disinfectant wipes and cleaning products. Then came clothing, bedding and carpeting with stitched in silver and copper. Anti-bacterials and anti-infectives were added to soaps and deodorants. And now it has moved to major appliances such as steamers, dishwashers, laundry machines, vacuum cleaners and the like.

Most of this fear is irrational. Terrorism kills very few people. The US is in no danger of being overrun or overthrown. No world power has ever met its inevitable demise that way. They usually fall apart from within. Most foreigners are people just like us. They like to get ahead in life, live in peace, and get a good future for their children. The vast majority of people are honest and display a fair amount of altruism. Random violent crime is rather rare, even in big cities. And the military is there to convince smaller countries to give us free or highly discounted access to their goodies such as oil and minerals. Even Alan Greenspan knew that the Iraq war was largely about oil. We don't intervene in other regions -such as Africa- unless they have goodies we want. We certainly prefer a trustworthy puppet dictator over the "wrong democracy." We don't want elections where the "wrong" parties win. But all of that is rather trivial really.

What is not so trivial is our war with parasites such as bacteria and viruses. That is rather fundamental. And our misunderstandings here have serious consequences. The over-use of antibiotics is already creating huge problems. The new rage to disinfect everything can only add fuel to fire. People don't realize that we have a pact with the parasites. We often tolerate and even encourage "good" bacteria to inhabit our bodies. This is not without risk and when we are ill or immune suppressed the friendlies may kill us. But our pact is far better than the alternative. And more realistic too. The good ones keep the bad ones from growing. They deprive them of resources.

This is a far better strategy than attempting the impossible goal of sterilizing everything. Not only is sterilizing prohibitively expensive, it doesn't work. As in all of life, it is often better to strike a deal with the enemy than to sink in a never ending quagmire.