Why Are We Scared?

I grew up with the tra­di­tional French dae­mons: fas­cism and glob­al­iza­tion. They were easy enough tar­gets, and fight­ing against them included chant­ing social­ist songs in demon­stra­tions, keep­ing an eye on the Front National — the French Nazi party — and watch­ing old French movies to thwart Hollywood’s plans to take on the world. The ene­mies were white suprema­cists, rec­og­niz­able thanks to their shaved head, mil­i­tary boots and cans of kro­nen­bourg in their (right) hand. Or fat Amer­i­can idiots who thought France was some remote coun­try­side with­out elec­tric­ity but pro­duc­ing great vines.

It was that easy. The rest of the world was a rel­a­tively peace­ful place (which we didn’t care about much any­way) and France was still great and pow­er­ful (in our dreams).

And one day, it became more com­pli­cated. Sud­denly, we were scared of hav­ing sex. What hav­ing sex? Even (French) kisses were out of a ques­tion, thanks to a new dis­ease that was going to kill us all. AIDS. Homo­sex­ual died, drug addicts died, and appar­ently we would too if we weren’t care­ful. Or so said the nurses and doc­tors who would come at school and teach us all that we needed to know about the virus. At the age of ten, we knew — in the­ory — what a three­some was, and if a blow job would put us at risk. So much for French romanticism…

Soon after, the infected blood scan­dal burst out and so did people’s trust in the gov­ern­ment and in hos­pi­tals. And then, the Creutzfeldt-Jakob dis­ease (Mad Cow Dis­ease) was dis­cov­ered and most start to ques­tion the food indus­try. Oh, and we also noticed trans­genic food was get­ting quite wide­spread, and while some would burn generic modified’s field crop, we would squint to read the labels, hop­ing to eat healthy and stay alive. No sex, no food. That was get­ting quite fun.

As if inspect­ing your lovers and your food alto­gether wasn’t enough, pol­i­tics were get­ting a bit scary too. The fas­cists. Them, again. Sud­denly, they weren’t just young skin­heads any­more, but respectable peo­ple, work­ers, immi­grants even, who feared unem­ploy­ment and oth­ers immigrant’s. Inse­cu­rity became the main world, a quick ban­dage on a vari­ety of symp­toms: sec­ond generation’s immi­grants iden­tity cri­sis (and some­times plain stu­pid­ity)? Inse­cu­rity. A bus dri­ver bul­lied? Inse­cu­rity. Unem­ploy­ment rate rais­ing? Inse­cu­rity. Peo­ple being sick after eat­ing in a local — eth­nic, that goes with­out say­ing — restau­rant? Inse­cu­rity. Oh, excuse me. Food insecurity.

Liv­ing is get­ting quite dan­ger­ous. A new dis­ease seems to be dis­cov­ered every day, and of course, pre­ven­tion meth­ods fol­low: bunch of spon­sored pills to swal­low and a healthy lifestyle (Sub­way, eat fresh?). For “home inse­cu­rity”, a new set of alarm and a big fuck­ing gun (where legal, of course — we wouldn’t want you to break the law, but think of your wife and your kids…). For “work inse­cu­rity”, there’s only one way amigo, work work and no com­plain, no union and walk straight, think straight. And while we’re at it, don’t com­mute to work (you want to get stab or what?): buy a huge SUV and drive.

And then we found a new rea­son to be scared. Ter­ror­ism and ter­ror­ists. Bombs in sub­ways and planes crash­ing into build­ings. Fear is fed 24/7 on TV, on radio, through press con­fer­ences and edi­to­ri­als. They want to kill us all, they want to destroy our civ­i­liza­tion, they are our ene­mies. Words, facts, news and data are care­fully edited and twisted to make us fear the world and the unknown. “Tomor­row, light snow, some sun­shine in the evening and severe risk of ter­ror­ist attack — please don’t wan­der out­side after dark”.

Mean­while, we vote for the guy who has a quick fix. “I’ll bomb them all! I’ll send these immi­grants back home and you will get your job back! And you won’t be poor since we won’t tol­er­ate it any­way!”.

Oh that helps. But we are so busy being scared that we don’t think any­more. Lately, we have been accept­ing almost every­thing blindly.

You know what? I’m tired. I’m tired of being scared, and I’m tired of be taught new things to be scared of. You don’t scare me.

Related arti­cles:

1. Reverse Cul­ture Shock in Isla Cozumel
2. Stuck In A Moment
3. Pur­chas­ing Power Blues In France
4. Adren­a­line Rush In Monteverde
5. G’Day, Syd­ney