Has society become too fearful?

[Jorick]

Fear has always been a primary motivator and manipulator in society. Back in the day it used to be more direct and openly commanding: do these things or god/the church/the local lord/the king/etc will punish you horribly. There has also always been a more subtle weave of fear that influences people: the fear of rejection and pariah status for going against the status quo of your social group. Then there was of course the basic primal human fear of the unknown and the foreign, where anything that's not part of your familiar little world is something to fear.

The balance of the fear sources has shifted with the rise of news networks and the internet and technology in general, but it has always been around. We fear different things now, such as less fear over explained phenomenon like illnesses and natural disasters but more about chemicals in our food and religious extremists, but I doubt it's significantly stronger or weaker overall fear levels than people had in the past. Just a quick look back at US history comes up with plenty of examples of fear seeming to take hold of society. There's the post-9/11 era fear of all things Islam, but that's just the most recent paradigm of fear. Consider, for instance, the rampant paranoia and fear of the Cold War era where anything that even hinted at communism was equated with treason and anti-American thoughts. Consider all the hateful fear that was directed toward Japanese citizens of the US during World War 2. Consider all the fear and hate of immigrants throughout the country's history, where each new wave of major immigration came with fearmongers screaming about how they were going to ruin everything. If you go outside of just US history you get a lot of other fun examples of the power of fear, such as the Inquisition and all the xenophobic fear that fueled the Crusades.

I think the main thing that has boosted the appearance of extreme fear is the internet. Instead of just having your local community to see fear from as was the case for the majority of human history, or your local community plus radio/TV, now you can see people freaking out about things all the time. Radio and TV people generally keep their heads when presenting the news, even when sensationalizing things, so only the more excitable people in your pre-internet social circles would likely get twisted up in knots about whatever was going on. Thanks to the internet, however, you've got access to millions of people, and the people most likely to actually bother putting out their opinions on random happenings in the world are the ones with strong emotional responses. Those who aren't afraid or worried about X thing won't go and make a dozen twitter posts about how X thing is no big deal, but the person who thinks X thing is going to kill us all certainly will. It's the exact same mechanism by which angry vocal minorities of various groups and ideologies have a disproportionate representation in public discourse simply because they're the ones who are more likely to bother speaking up. People aren't more fearful overall, you're just seeing a lot more of the freak outs that have always happened.

Society has not "become" more/too fearful any time recently, technology has simply changed how the intake and expression of fear works. Whether or not society in general actually is more afraid of things than it ought to be is a completely separate issue that I don't feel like getting detailed about at the moment.

 

[Space Cowboy]

Real talk. This is not ok.

While it is true that the Koran has inspired acts of terrorism, I'd like you to step back and think about what it is like for the Muslims who are not insane, hungry, and hateful. How would you like it if your religion made people associate you with terrorists despite you never having done anything of the sort? While you likely met your goal of infuriating the almost 0 radical Muslims who would never read your Facebook, think about the number of innocents you've offended. Hope you don't have any Muslim friends who saw that.

I understand you are frustrated, but that behavior is nothing short of spiteful and thoughtless. Please rethink how you wish to express your frustration. I'm hoping that you didn't actually do this, and were just trying to make a "terrorists suck" comment more interesting.

It's okay, bruh.

I wiped my ass with the American Flag when I was finished. So it totally balanced out.

 

[Kaddoc]

It's okay, bruh.

I wiped my ass with the American Flag when I was finished. So it totally balanced out.

I vehemently disapprove but it is your right.

*wishes bad things for you*

Joking aside this is one advantage for living in the country because you can spot these folks a mile away.

I'll try not to get too deep into the war against Islamic extremism but this is what these ISIS bastards want is to scare us into submission. I say we do more to piss them off in a form of "come at me bro" then we do like what happened in Texas, we draw these assholes out in the open and thin out the herd.

You fight terror with terror. That's my two cents on it. As FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

 

[Gwazi Magnum]

we draw these assholes out in the open and thin out the herd.

As much as I agree that we shouldn't allow such groups to bully us, at the same time we do become no better than ISIS if we fight terror with terror.

 

[Brovo]

You fight terror with terror. That's my two cents on it. As FDR said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. FDR was speaking of not compromising the American way of life and values out of fear, and becoming a tyrannical, psychotic, genocidal murderer would definitely qualify as violating basic American* values of freedom and liberty. Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice, but terror for terror just escalates a cold war into a nuclear war.

EDIT

*As well as general western virtues that escalated us from barbarism to civilization.

 

[Kaddoc]

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. FDR was speaking of not compromising the American way of life and values out of fear, and becoming a tyrannical, psychotic, genocidal murderer would definitely qualify as violating basic American* values of freedom and liberty. Tolerance of intolerance is cowardice, but terror for terror just escalates a cold war into a nuclear war.

EDIT

*As well as general western virtues that escalated us from barbarism to civilization.

Do not forget history.

We weren't exactly playing nice when we fought the Germans or the Japanese in WWII. We had to get as dirty as them to effectively win. If we were too much like the guys with the white hats and not used the bomb who knows how many more soldiers would have died taking the homeland of Japan? We had to use the bomb, better them than us.

That's what I meant. We need to be ready to cut loose our brave men and women to do their job effectively. If we did come down to their level Iraq and Afghanistan would be glass parking lots.

 

[Brovo]

We weren't exactly playing nice when we fought the Germans or the Japanese in WWII.

They were also organized world powers with significantly more resources and manpower than ISIL and its equivalents have at its disposal, so the level of the response had to be measurably increased to ensure national security. Equitable response against equitable force. Glassing millions of civilians definitely makes us worse than them, and then they win.

Also, part of the reason the US bombed Japan is because it was estimated that the fatalities on both sides would have been far more significant, especially and including civilian fatalities, if a mainland invasion of Japan became necessary. It wasn't just American lives that were saved, it was Japanese lives, considering over a thousand Japanese civilians killed themselves rather than face American occupation after the battle of Saipan.

I am eminently aware of history. This is why I can't condone the idea of an eye for an eye. After World War 1, the western powers created a dis-empowered, neutered, financially devastated Germany to allow a breeding ground of Nazism to rise up. In a twisted, karmic sense, we created our own enemy.

ISIL needs to get put down, but we can't do it by glassing the entire area in nuclear hellfire. All we'd be doing is telling future generations that when we were asked to water the tree of liberty, we chose to water it with the blood of millions of innocents instead of brave patriots: That we would violate our principles as a society to destroy an enemy that is generally incapable of the same. As for anything short of that? We've repeatedly beaten down middle eastern tyrants time and time again, only to spur on others to take their place. The Taliban were armed and trained by the CIA, ISIL preys off of the extremist sentiments of people in the region who view America as a tyrannical nation that bombs and obliterates all who oppose it, et cetera.

I wish I had the answer. If I did, I suspect I'd be a far more important person than I am now, but I don't have an easy answer to resolve the conflict in the middle east. All I know is that the chances of my life ending due to terrorism are so incredibly insignificant as to not warrant a response on the magnitude of fighting terrorism with terrorism. Personally I'd start by finding natural allies in the region (Kurds, Israel, even Iran is a potential ally if America could stop being angsty about it for five seconds) and creating pillars of civilization. If there were multiple west-friendly nations in the middle east who could help each other, they could create stability. Right now it's basically only Israel, and Israel does some pretty shady shit.

Hum. Complicated. Wish I had an answer for you, though I understand your feelings on the subject. If we send in soldiers we need a more concrete objective than "beat terrorism." Terrorism is brought about by thought crime. Right now, we're just wasting the lives of soldiers, because after the Taliban came ISIL, and after ISIL will come another group, and another, and another...

 

[Kaddoc]

War is hell.

That being said I can see where you stand on the moral grounds we cannot turn that part of the world into the biggest pile of human remains and rivers of blood (although this will please my patron god, Khorne). However if we were at their mercy would they be thinking of the same thing? No. They think you're another infidel that needs their heads cut off. This proportionality BS that I hear some people from the bleeding heart liberal side does not work in the real world where you have people want you dead because how you live (the western way of life).

I agree with your part on Germany, however. Although we alone were not completely responsible, it was the old European way of punishing Germany. That being said you take a different world and mindset like in the Middle East where those people have been fighting each other for thousands of years and Western democracy and liberty, the things we cherish, means little to them. So what maybe true for Germany may not be inherently true to far more barbarous people who never moved on past the Middle Ages. I am referring to the extremists. These same extremists are teaching their children at a very young age to hate, kill and have a total disregard of human decency.

I'm arguing from a point that what if we were at the mercy of these types of people? Me and you will be missing a head and be buried in some mass grave somewhere. Showing these types of people that we will go to extremes to defend our way of life is a deterrence in of its own. We may not have to be committed wholesale but enough to deter them.

You are speaking to someone who believes in enhanced interrogation techniques so I'll save you the trouble there.

 

[Temet Nosce]

Fear comes from uncertainty.

It's only natural that in times where everything seems to be changing that there is fear.