“It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.” – Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K Rowling
There are different types of fear: biological fears based on threats to life, social fears based on threat to status and self-worth, and also existential fears incited by the uncertainty of consequences choosing between possibilities.
As the wise Albus Dumbledore pointed out in the quote above, the universal reason for fear is perhaps the fear of the unknown. When we meet with a situation we have never encountered before, we are unsure what to do about it, and hence the natural tendency to tread with caution or to run from it.
Watch this video that explains the theory behind the universal fear of the unknown:
The power of fear in politics
A social function of fear is control. By playing on the emotions of fear, leaders of organisations or nations can manipulate the behaviors of the masses. Politicians can exploit the existing anxieties of people to shape public opinion and denigrate opponents. The subject of fear can also serve to unify a group of people against the targeted ‘other’.
President Trump has also been actively using the fear tactic by making speeches about the problems and hypothetical horrors of Democratic rule whenever he campaigns for Republicans. His favourite topic is on immigration. The narrative he argues is that the Democrats would open the borders to allow undocumented immigrants and criminals flood into the country.
Fear-mongering has been Trump’s strategy to gain votes since his presidential elections in 2016. It has been reported that his supporters are disproportionately fearful of crime, foreign influence and social change. Fear makes people want to seek refuge and comfort, and the politician’s promises of protection often entice voters to support him.
Emotions play a role in our lives by motivating us to take action partially based on how we feel about it. We tend to repeat actions that bring positive rewards emotionally or otherwise, and avoid behaviors that make us feel bad. Furthermore, it is easier for the human mind to focus on negative events. Thus, capitalising on people’s fear of the unknown and anticipation of negative events to motivate a change in action is common because it works.
Questions for further personal evaluation:
- What can a voter do to ensure he is voting based on the merits of a politician, instead of getting swayed by purely emotions?
- In what other contexts can fear be used to effect change in behavior?
Useful vocabulary:
- ‘vilify’: speak or write about in an abusively disparaging manner
- ‘entrenched’: firmly established and difficult or unlikely to change; ingrained
- ‘promulgated’: promoted or made widely known (an idea or cause)
- ‘zeitgeist’: the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.
Here are more related articles for further reading:
- Psychology Today: There are causal relations among emotions such as fear, anger, disgust and envy.
“The observation that fear causes anger raises neglected issues about emotions. How common is it for emotions to cause other emotions? What are the mental mechanisms by which one emotion can lead to another?
Martha Nussbaum’s fascinating 2018 book, ‘The Monarchy of Fear’, proposes that the fundamental political emotion is fear, which contributes to other emotions such as anger, disgust, and envy. Emotions are causally interconnected, with one emotion tending to lead to another. If you fear someone, you may become angry that they have made you fearful.”
- Time: It is argued here that Americans have always been fearful, but they have focused on the wrong threats.
““Part of what I find interesting about this is that overall most Americans live in what is arguably the safest time and place in human history ,” Glassner says, “and yet fear levels are high and there are many, many fears and scares out there.”
In the introduction to his book, Glassner declares that “Roosevelt was wrong” that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Fear, he contends, is not the problem. In fact, there are many things we should be afraid of. (Drunk drivers, he says, are his own bogeymen.) Parents who fear kidnappings but let their children bike without a helmet are acting irrationally, for example. Shark attacks, violent crime and even terrorism are over-feared too, he believes, but that situation can have real consequences, distracting us from the real threats and preventing rational response to the smaller threats.”
- Variety: Companies such as Netflix also use the ‘culture of fear’ to govern their organisation.
“The question is how much of a liability Netflix’s corporate culture of regularly purging workers is as the company continues to grow.
Netflix’s employee base has ballooned in the last five years, more than doubling from 2,022 full-timers at the end of 2013 to 5,400 at the end of 2017. Ultimately, people looking to join the company know (or should know) the deal with the place and go in with their eyes open. A move-fast-and-break-things culture is not a fit for everyone.
Arguably, Netflix’s open practice of dismissing employees who aren’t working out should make it stronger. It may even be essential as it continues to chase the goal of becoming the world’s biggest entertainment company.”
Picture credits: https://unsplash.com/photos/xsGApcVbojU