The Fear Cycle
How we create collective fear and what this has to do with every single one of us
Every few decades, we humans like to scare ourselves. Not just a little, but a real horror movie.
No, I am not talking about wars.
I talk about things that often improve the quality of our lives. But before we finally accept and learn to live with them, many of us join the collective fear cycle and try to make it even bigger.
What I am talking about is the advent of a new technology.
I remember when, in the eighties, robots became good enough to be used in mass production. People were scared that they might lose their jobs. You couldn’t escape that topic in the media, and even if you tried, one of those dystopian movies would eventually get you.
No escape unless you lived under a rock...
People made Mr. Robot their main discussion topic. Everybody had an idea how doomed we might be in the future. Of course, there were also some optimists. But apart from a few exceptions, nobody could really see what would be coming.
At one point we forgot about the hysteria as if it never happened. Peaceful times. Until the collective fear struck us again; currently it’s all about AI, and we might soon come to a point where the fear cloud loses a bit of its steam.
What I noticed is that the underlying patterns when new technologies arrive are somewhat similar.
A few nerds play with a new technology, and things get traction
The new technology gets hyped up with its benefits in focus
As people get aware of the downside, fear starts to arise
The fear gets amplified and can reach panic levels
Depending on the impact of the technology, the Zeitgeist changes
A sobering set in once there is more clarity in what the new technology actually can do
People get used to and adapt to the new technology and forget about their fears
Life goes back to normal for maybe a decade or two
And the funny thing is that most of us don’t see this cycle only for what it is. Only when we are old enough and have gone through the seasons several dozen times do we begin to see the cycle for what it is.
In the 19th century it was “Railway Madness”, in the 1920s the advent of the radio, then the internet, the CERN Large Hadron Collider potentially creating a black hole that would swallow us all, and lately AI.
Maybe it all started with Gutenberg, the wheel, the fire, or using urea to bleach your clothes.
Who knows...
But before this article is over, I eventually want to come to the point I wanted to make.
Collective fear is easy to spot when you are not a part of the crowd. From the outside, things look wild and maybe a bit crazy, or let’s call it irrational. Sounds a bit softer and probably politically more correct.
And now imagine an outsider looking at you?
What self-created fears might they see in you?
How do you create your own suffering and even fuel it further?
And finally, what will you need to get out of that self-created cycle?
That’s it for today...
Before You Go…
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