What is the world's biggest industry? Oil? Armaments? Religion? Terrorism? All of these, in one way or another, are subservient to one single industry which since the dawn of civilisation has been humankind's biggest motivator and money-spinner: fear.
It is fear that gave rise to religion, with all its vast booty, from the wealth of the Vatican to the treasure troves of Tirupati. Fear is the obvious instigator of wars and the arms industries they have spawned. The booming health industry - or, more appropriately disease industry - is also fuelled by fear.
While the world's health prognosis continues to be grim in reality - particularly in countries like India, where to take just one index, infant mortality rates are an appalling 32 per 1,000 - fear of actual or imagined disease acts as a spur to huge resource mobilisation (and almost equally huge misappropriation), as in the case of the international campaigns against AIDS which critics claim is one of the biggest and cruellest con games in history. And now we have the swine flu pandemic.
Fear is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, as in the case of rising food prices: anticipatory fears of further price rises by themselves ensure those rises, thanks to overbuying, hoarding and black-marketeering. Fear sells an awful lot of ancillary products, from climate change to murder.
Crime, particularly violent crime like murder, becomes a saleable commodity - an object of voyeuristic gloating rather than a bestial aberration to be shunned - marketed by fear.
Why is fear so endemic to humankind? Obviously, in that it promotes self-preservation, it has evolutionary value. But with equal validity it could be argued that fear can also be counter-evolutionary: if you resign yourself to fearing dark caves, you'll never invent fire to light them up; if you fear falling over the edge of the world you'll never discover that it's round by sailing across it.
Like any other major industry, the industry of fear (as represented by governments, religion, economists, health and environment experts, and, last but far from least, the media) requires regulation, with periodic cost-benefit analyses. How much should you really be scared of contracting swine flu? How much real risk do you run of being murdered? Does global warming really spell inevitable doom for the planet (it doesn't; the planet will survive, it's only we as a species who'll die out)? In short, we need to figure out just how influenced we are by that final sum of all fears: the fear of fear itself.
This is an excerpt from a blog by Jag Suriya.
It is fear that gave rise to religion, with all its vast booty, from the wealth of the Vatican to the treasure troves of Tirupati. Fear is the obvious instigator of wars and the arms industries they have spawned. The booming health industry - or, more appropriately disease industry - is also fuelled by fear.
While the world's health prognosis continues to be grim in reality - particularly in countries like India, where to take just one index, infant mortality rates are an appalling 32 per 1,000 - fear of actual or imagined disease acts as a spur to huge resource mobilisation (and almost equally huge misappropriation), as in the case of the international campaigns against AIDS which critics claim is one of the biggest and cruellest con games in history. And now we have the swine flu pandemic.
Fear is often a self-fulfilling prophecy, as in the case of rising food prices: anticipatory fears of further price rises by themselves ensure those rises, thanks to overbuying, hoarding and black-marketeering. Fear sells an awful lot of ancillary products, from climate change to murder.
Crime, particularly violent crime like murder, becomes a saleable commodity - an object of voyeuristic gloating rather than a bestial aberration to be shunned - marketed by fear.
Why is fear so endemic to humankind? Obviously, in that it promotes self-preservation, it has evolutionary value. But with equal validity it could be argued that fear can also be counter-evolutionary: if you resign yourself to fearing dark caves, you'll never invent fire to light them up; if you fear falling over the edge of the world you'll never discover that it's round by sailing across it.
Like any other major industry, the industry of fear (as represented by governments, religion, economists, health and environment experts, and, last but far from least, the media) requires regulation, with periodic cost-benefit analyses. How much should you really be scared of contracting swine flu? How much real risk do you run of being murdered? Does global warming really spell inevitable doom for the planet (it doesn't; the planet will survive, it's only we as a species who'll die out)? In short, we need to figure out just how influenced we are by that final sum of all fears: the fear of fear itself.
This is an excerpt from a blog by Jag Suriya.
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