Adrian Currie

Adrian Currie

Filósofo da Ciência, University of Exeter Philosopher of Science, University of Exeter

want to say three things. I want to start by saying a few things about fear generally, and then I want to talk about what is often called culture of fear, and I’m going to be moving into the discussion of existential risk in light of those things. So, when people think about fear, it is often thought of in a very negative way, fear is something that should be overcome. I think that’s a mistake. Say I walk close to a cliff edge, it seems that I justifiably may be afraid that I’m too close and that I might fall off. I identify a vulnerability I in fact have. And if that fear is a good fear it seems that it motivates me to mitigate that risk so I step away from the cliff edge. So we can see that fear is not just an irrational thing, it is something we can make judgments about. Good fear is fear, when I’ve in fact identified a way in which I’m vulnerable and the entire action motivates me to make myself less vulnerable. From this idea of good fear, we can think about what bad fear looks like. Negative fear is going to involve either being wrong about the ways in which one is vulnerable, or not motivating, or inhibiting a reaction or the right type of action. I might be so afraid that I don’t know what to do, or I might do the wrong actions in light of my fear.

When people think about cultures of fear we often have rather extreme ideas in our minds, things like Stalin’s Gulags, but I think it’s worth thinking hard about the ways in which

Ithe current societies have elements of those sorts of cultures about them. The culture of something is a culture that promotes or lays the groundwork for the thing that we are talking about, so when people speak about rape culture, they don’t mean that everyone in that culture is a rapist, what they mean is that there are a series of institutions, social structures and behaviors that make that negative thing more likely, they provide excuses for and so on and so forth. So, when we talk about a culture of fear, what we mean is a section of institutions, social structures and behaviors that encourage us to feel afraid. Frank Furedi who is writing about the culture of fear says: - “fear is fast becoming a caricature of itself, it is no longer simply some emotion or response to the perception of a threat, but is becoming a cultural idiom through which we signal a sense of growing and ease a better place in the world”. Furedi talks about this, he is obviously giving a negative cast to it, but I think that we might in fact sometimes be right to feel vulnerable, to feel worried about our place in the world. What would make this culture negative would be to be wrong about the vulnerabilities, or not being able to act. What kinds of social structures lead to a negative culture of fear? 1. First, if one is going to act, if one is going to be motivated to act, one has to in fact have the capacity to make a difference, or at least believe that it does. The more

that one feels powerless, the more that one is disempowered, the least one is able to use the real vulnerabilities identified to take good action. So, it is no surprise that folks that would like to control, undermine both the perception of power about the capacity to make change in the world, and also the capacity to, in fact, make changes in the world. Those who undermined democratic institutions both do it by giving the perception of the lack of power and by, in fact, removing that power, and of course this feeds into each other. The less that one feels empowered the easier it is to take that power away, and the harder it is going to be to use fear in useful ways.

2. A second aspect is about information. If one is going to have good fear it needs to identify vulnerabilities and needs to know how to be able to identify what to do about them. The more opaque, the more difficult the information environment is, the more difficult it is go-

ing to be to do that. Again, it is no surprise that we see both political institutions and democratic institutions and also institutions that are in the business of giving us information – so, media, the journalists, the journalism so forth –, under various types of attack. The whole point is to sow confusion, which means one will be wrong about the ways one is vulnerable, and wrong about what to do about it. I think a fascinating example of this kind of thing is that during the UK Brexit a sort of campaign raised serious problems, serious vulnerabilities if the UK were to leave the EU, but I think it’s really fascinating that they turned this on its head, the whole point of doing this is to sow confusion.

3. The final thing is actually being vulnerable, actual material inequalities. People are often right about the ways in which they are vulnerable. The problem is that if one thinks that it doesn’t have any power, and does not have the right information, it is almost impossible to do anything about those real vulnerabilities.

The point is if one is going to overcome a culture of fear, if it is going to take action against things that in fact is vulnerable to, like climate crisis, then one needs to have both the power and the perception of power that is required to make those changes. And, indeed, I think there is no surprise that many nations that have done significantly worse during the pandemic are precisely those countries that seem to have many of those

properties that I’ve been identifying, ones with large inequality, ones with either a lack of democratic institutions, or lack at faith in those democratic institutions and with a lot of information mess.

What about existential risks, how does this link in? Existential risks are risks to the existence of our species: super volcanoes, nuclear weapons and climate change. Often people who think about existential risks are accused of being fearmongers, they are contributing to a negative culture of fear.

We have to get against those (…) who would seek to confuse us and obscure reality.

I think it is a mistake. Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk has a nice analysis he draws between researching existential risk and insurance policies. I have a house, I have identified a vulnerability, I’m afraid that my house might burn down, so what I do is that I’m motivated to act and I take an insurance policy so that if my house burns down it would be really bad, but it won’t be as awful as it could otherwise be. Similarly we are in fact vulnerable to various times of massive disasters, but we don’t want to spend all our time thinking about them. What we want is a community of people who can think about what they are, and how to mitigate them, and so on and so forth. And so, I think that researching things like existential risks can in fact contribute to a positive culture that uses fear for good reasons rather than leaving us powerless.

I think we are vulnerable in various ways. And so far as we are vulnerable in those ways, that should motivate us to take various actions. But to do so, we have to get against those who turn that fear into something negative, namely those who tell us that our actions are meaningless, or would in fact make our actions meaningless by undermining the various ways in which we can take action, and those who would seek to confuse us and obscure reality.