Matt Beard has posted an interesting article about fear on an Australian Web site:
Fear is a lazy person’s out. It’s easily stoked because, as Martha Nussbaum argues, it is relatively stupid. Our fear rises in us without our needing to think about what’s worth fearing. This makes it a powerful motivator: if you can make your audience afraid, you can often get them to do what you want them to.The unfortunate reality is that fear sells, and many of us don’t have any awareness of its insidiousness, nor are we necessarily able to resist fear when it is being spoon-fed to us. From fitness companies to political campaigns, people’s fear of COVID-19, of infection, and, in the end, of other people, have been hugely profitable for some but degrading for us all. The reason for this degradation is, as Nussbaum reminds us, fear is a profoundly narcissistic emotion — my fear is mainly about keeping me safe; it does not consider others. “Its view of the world is exceedingly narrow”, she writes, and the result is that fear “threatens or prevents love.”
