Is the modern world caught in the grip of a fear psychosis and has a cult of safety entrenched itself the West? I think so. Today we live longer than ever before. Yet, our chance of dying from war, natural disaster, pandemics, or starvation are at levels our ancestors could only have dreamed of. But given all this security we are more fearful than ever before. From all corners of society we are bombarded with warnings of potential dangers and imminent disaster.

In fact, we are living in the most fearmongering time in human history. And the main reason for this is that there’s a lot of power and money available to individuals and organizations who can perpetuate these fears. But it is not just manipulative fearmongering that is responsible for the disproportionate fear that infects our society, for in one way or another we all accept, and reinforce, the normality of fearing. We continually remind ourselves and others that threats exist everywhere - in the streets, in the food we eat, in the technology we use, in our fellow man and woman, and even in the air we breathe.

The cultural narratives promoted by the mainstream propaganda media continuously informs us of how we make sense of the world seamlessly move from one fabricated reason to be fearful to another. Yet, hardly anyone questions, however, whether we should be so fearful at all.

This mass fear psychosis that is infecting society is socially conditioned into us from a young age, and it is fuelled by a pessimistic conception of what it means to be human which is deeply entrenched in our society. People are educated to be preoccupied with their safety, and to regard being fearful as a sensible and responsible orientation towards the world. Policy makers, opinion formers, and advertisers act on the basis that people are risk averse and feel powerless, and their messages normalize the perception that people are vulnerable. This pessimistic conception of the human being is fundamentally flawed. For if vulnerability was the essential feature of the human being, the human race would have perished long ago.

Although our lives are unpredictable and exposed, as human beings, we are more defined by our resilience and adaptability. Not only do we have a remarkable capacity to withstand threats, dangers, and hardships, but sometimes these even fast-track individual, familial, and societal growth.

The pessimistic pull of this culture of fear is strong. But if we can become more aware of how it operates, influences us, shapes our society, and who benefits from all of this fear-mongering, we can cultivate a more optimistic vision of the human condition and adopt a more courageous attitude toward the future. Only then will it be possible to free ourselves from its crippling influence.