COVID-19 & The Culture of Fear

Let me inject something into the void between “OMG, coronavirus will kill us all” and “it’s a serious virus but let’s be rational”. Let’s consider the state of current society — something we don’t often do. I tend to lean to the “let’s be rational” side of the equation but this is primarily an observational article. At time of writing, there are six cases of corona virus in my country, Denmark. Three more and we can bring back this stupid song from the 90's.

One of the most influential books I’ve ever read is “The Culture of Fear”, by British sociologist, Frank Furedi. In a nutshell, he explains how we transitioned from a sense of “community” that was the norm throughout human history to the current state of “individualism”. He focuses on this decline in the UK. Some countries, like the US, are far worse off. Many, like countries in Europe, are better off. But the same pattern applies, nonetheless.

In our community state, our primary concern was each other — “we’re in it together”. In our individualistic state, it is ourselves and our immediate loved ones — “it’s Us vs Them”.

Before, when a crisis struck, we only thought about our collective well-being and worked together to tackle adversity. The adversity was not the focus — helping was. Now the primary focus is accountability. Flood? Terror attack? Virus? “Who is responsible!? Someone…