Political Advantage in Nervous Exhaustion
An Angst Ridden Populace is Far Easier to Control
Humans, being humans, tend not to make the best decisions in moments of panic.
The usual processes of weighing options and costs and benefits, taking time to recall what has worked in the past in similar situations, and ethical considerations can fall by the wayside when trying to decide – in a split second – which way to run.
Everyone has faced these terrifying, but hopefully, transitory instances in their life. Sometimes the decision works out, sometimes not.
But what happens when that dreaded decision whether to jump right or left in the face of an on-coming car is not a once or twice in a lifetime decision, but a daily question? That constant state of trepidation eviscerates people, putting humans into a state of making most if not all decisions from a place of panic instead of reason.
And it is during that constant state of nervous exhaustion – a state often manufactured out of whole cloth by its potential beneficiaries - when those who wish to wield power in society strike.
This is far from a new phenomena or a fact that can only be ascribed to certain political outlooks. A population on edge is more susceptible to practically any claim made to end the panic. Add in the real or imagined or claimed threat of a common outside enemy – no matter what that may be – and the sense of panic becomes nearly overwhelming and the urge to be “saved” becomes impossible to ignore.
Real problems and threats exist, but creating a problem – or a fear – almost out of whole cloth allows those in (or desire to gain) power to claim they know how to solve that problem, to assuage that fear, because they created it in the first place.
The neat psychological trick in this process is that problem does not need to be real and those touting the problem can have actually created the “solution” they offer to the public even before they created the problem because the solution almost always involves ceding power to those who claim to have discovered the problem and, nearly simultaneously, can offer the solution.
Clearly, there arises in the course of time legitimate concerns that should truly worry a society as a whole – the prospect of war, for example, usually stems from an organic process (at least in free societies).
But creating – and maintaining – a fear offers potential benefits that go well beyond such natural, for lack of a better term, situations.
There exist true things occurring right now that the populace should rightly be afraid of – the socialite socialist statism that has spread through all sections and avenues of global governance at every level, the progressive perversity of rampant antisemitism, and the hollowing out of the educational system that now only produces followers, not leaders, are just a few of the horribly real and continuing threats to the very idea of an enlightened societal culture.
But there is, even more perniciously, the false fears that, since they are false, are difficult to disprove. From covid to climate change (not global warming – that was changed for PR purposes because by definition the climate is always changing so it cannot be readily challenged) to the idea of embedded, virulent, and perpetual systemic racism to whatever happens to be latest thing the paid professional Twitterati are claiming, the never-ending sense of dread created is extremely useful when it comes to societal control.
And because of the human tendency to seek out confirmation of a belief, during these times people will flock to those information outlets that will reinforce their pre-conceived notions. On occasion, this impulse actually continues the spiral by emphasizing the fear. But even – oppositionally - when armed with the facts, the disquiet never quite goes away because the fear can often be replaced by utterly exhausting exasperation with and disbelief that others – no matter what, no matter the reason – will continue to believe, continue to be afraid.
And being armed with facts to swat down those faux fears is itself becoming more difficult every day. The international grip of censorship – from the “Twitter Files” to government agencies crushing opinion it does not like across social media platforms to major media figures and organizations questioning even the premise of free speech and expression – is not only tightening it is even trying to portray itself as the right and proper choice - the high ground as it were – to ensure a safe and proper society.
This is happening even though the public knows that few things are lower than censorship as it implies cowardice, of not having enough facts to support a viewpoint, of knowing one is incapable of winning a fair argument.
Censorship builds fear in two ways: first, the very act of censorship itself breeds an uncanny mistrust of nearly every public utterance. While the censor’s “side” of the story also falls victim to this it does not matter – it wasn’t true in the first place and the breeding of mistrust is an important part of the effort anyway. Just the fact that one could run afoul of the censors is enough to continue to keep wary, tired people censoring themselves.
Second, and more obviously, censorship blocks rational discussion of varying viewpoints and ideas, limiting what can be said and heard to what government agencies, civil society quasi-autonomous non-government agencies – QUANGOs – and others with the power to make their will manifest allow to be said and heard.
By controlling the discussion, the censors can ensure that only information – true or false – that is designed to invoke fear is said and heard. The censors intentionally feed the panic and exhaustion for their own benefit.
By living in a constant state of “pure twitch,” people are made more malleable to accepting (or at least not complaining too loudly about) any idea that will make the twitching stop.
But the proffered solutions never quite completely work, in part because they are solutions to problems that either never really existed or have since faded. Therefore, a slightly different solution can be offered again and again while keeping the fear level heightened.
And always lurking in the background is the unnerving sense that another “problem” will emerge in the near future which means the circle of fear – and the faux solutions proffered by the same people in the same, simply re-titled, jobs as during the first problem – is nigh eternal.
Fear is big business and only by shopping somewhere else – or burning down the store - can we end the cycle.