Weaponized Fear
“The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else.” ― Ernest Becker
Regardless of how much we advance as a society, our fear of death and dedication to our self-preservation will always drive our decisions. It is human nature to delay the inevitable by identifying imminent threats and finding ways to protect ourselves or our loved ones.
When these threats are legitimate, this fear can lead to important public policy outcomes that keep our nation safe. However, our fears can often be exploited and lead to policies that limit our freedom and harm our individual and collective prosperity.
Take the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. We were given apocalyptic predictions about infection rates of "40 to 70 percent" and told millions would die. And yet over a year later, only ten percent of the nation has caught the virus, while less than .17% have passed away. I make this point not to underplay the tragedy of these deaths or the seriousness of the illness but to show how our fear of mortality can lead to groupthink at such a scale that it is capable of shutting down our entire country and setting aside our liberties indefinitely.
Sometimes politicians feel they have no option but to act on this collective fear due to the massive public demand (we call this the “We Gotta Do Something” principle). Other times, politicians will use collective fear to shift the public’s focus away from tangible, specific issues to nebulous, societal problems like social justice. It is easier to superficially "signal" your support for marginalized communities than it is to eliminate the national debt, improve our geopolitical position with China, or actually improve education, reform criminal justice, and put into place other policies that actually lift these communities up.
The truth is the world becomes a safer and more prosperous place every year. Between 1770 and 2019, global life expectancy increased from an average of 29 to 73 years, while child mortality decreased from 1 death in 11 to 1 death in 27 over the last thirty years. Between 2000 and 2016, 134 million fewer children were exploited through child labor. In 2019, America reported its lowest poverty levels in history, and worldwide extreme poverty dropped from thirty-five percent in 1987 to under eleven percent in 2013.
These facts have not dissuaded special interest groups, the media, and politicians from appealing to your internal sense of doom. It is good business. Scared people are more likely to fund your cause, tune into tomorrow’s programming, and show up to vote.
Perhaps no interest group has weaponized fear more effectively in recent years than environmentalists. Despite decades of environmental progress in America, we are constantly told that climate change is an “existential threat” that will wipe us all out, maybe within the decade (this is not true).
By making climate action the cornerstone of their political agenda, the Biden Administration is able to pivot from difficult to solve, immediate issues like COVID-19 and the related economic fallout, and instead shift the dialogue to an issue with difficult to measure metrics and goal posts decades down the road to absolve today's actors of any real accountability. It is truly a win/win for politicians.
It is a brilliant messaging and marketing strategy that forces individuals to care about an issue that was previously viewed as a tragedy of the commons. In industrialized countries, we don’t look outside our windows and see massive amounts of pollution and litter, so it is hard to mobilize us to “save the environment.” Few people will sacrifice their comfort for something they do not view as directly impacting their lives.
However, if you throw in a little fear and encourage groupthink by implying consensus (i.e. “97% of scientists agree”), you can force the issue to the forefront of the discussion. The key here is to shut down debate on the issue and make the general public feel insecure about their ability to interpret data because they aren’t scientists or so-called “experts.”
Worse yet, we are told any solutions that view the issue optimistically or involve a market approach instead of massive spending and government intervention cannot be taken seriously. Just look at how the far left is fighting to keep nuclear and carbon capture out of their climate plan. These two solutions are the most promising and realistic options to combat the unfettered release of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, but to many on the far left, they are not disruptive enough of our current status quo (which shows you what the most fervent activists are truly after.)
“Optimism, whether toward the pandemic or global warming, is viewed as a conservative, pro-Trump position. Now more than ever, political polarization makes it hard to have a rational argument about scientific issues." - John Horgan
Hegemony in science is dangerous because it assumes we have all of the information we need and that there are no better questions to ask or answers to seek. Not questioning something as far-reaching as climate change results in justification for policies that increase our cost of living, reduce the reliability of our energy grid, and impede on our freedom of choice. Not to mention it flies in the face of the scientific method which calls for constant questioning and not brow-beating people into consensus.
Forcing a catastrophist consensus on climate change also shifts attention and resources away from solving other environmental issues that really could be detrimental to mankind such as the degradation of our oceans. We could make a tremendous, measurable impact on our oceans today by cleaning up plastics and uniting in protecting biological diversity through conservation. As an added bonus, over a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions are absorbed by the oceans, meaning cleaning up our oceans would have a much larger impact on climate change than unrealistic mandates that require minerals and mining infrastructure that currently don’t exist.
If COVID-19 showed us anything, it is that the worst-case scenario rarely comes to fruition and innovators will step up to save the day (like they did with record-breaking speed on vaccines). While we will always have problems, we cannot make decisions and force massive societal shifts out of fear. Mankind is incredibly resilient and will find solutions to even our most vexing problems. We just have to trust the process and allow time for incremental progress.
