It's perhaps a bit philosophical but perhaps also can be of use when we look at the world. Think about it: nothing that is thought of as 'dangerous' was dangerous unless we said it was. I've been reading Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid recently and it's full of stuff that wasn't dangerous until we said it was. Smoking for instance. But it's also not just a matter of science. Some things we know are a risk to us which we thought before were good for us. We progress. But we also construct danger. We ascribe danger to phenomena that could be thought of otherwise.
Today I encountered a danger feared more than most.
I was out shopping with my mother, a wonderful experience that has not happened for a number of years and was without the stress, strain and ultimate sweat for the fact that we both found what we needed in the first two shops we entered - delightful. The afternoon was topped off with a wonderful hot chocolate with more chocolate in a brownie, wonderful - but that's not the point.
The point was, that I went to the loo before heading home, again a comment of anecdotal irrelevance. BUT: as I wandered to the cubicle I noticed to my right was a man at a urinal with his willy in one hand and his child's hand in his other. The man was so conscious of child-snatchers that could seemingly attack at any moment, that he couldn't even leave his child unarmed and vulnerable for the time it took to pee.
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Being critical of danger, is not itself critically dangerous. Sometimes we have to keep things in perspective. I leave with a closing thought:
More people were killed in the year after 9/11 on the roads chock-a-block with cars for their new fear of flying than were killed in 9/11 itself.
I think you're right regarding the creation of 'fears' - and I guess that is what Beck tried to get across when he spoke of the 'risk society' that we now live in.
ReplyDeleteContinuing on a more philosophical line, Jiddu Krishnamurti once said that fear is generated only when 'event' meets 'thought' - that is, a sense of fear is only ever created when we start thinking about something like death. Fear, he thus concludes, is not innate but instead is very much created by ourselves, by our thoughts and anxieties.
Perhaps then, when we are confronted with new security regulations, for instance at airports, that are meant to make us even more safe from the 1001 threats that otherwise would destroy our lives, we should take a minute to just stop and try and understand what we are afraid of, and why.