Cast a spell
Isn’t the concept of fear just an illusion? Isn’t it a curse that people in power systems cast upon us, manipulating us into following certain ideas and goals? (J. Hedva, personal communication, December 10, 2020) Isn’t fear just a societal construct we cannot explain through normative systems and therefore just an illusion? And maybe could it be that in a world full of anxiety, noise, fear, stress, darkness– hyperstimulation–people need to cling onto something. Could it be that this is a part of the reason why people turn to strong beliefs, such as religion? Is it possible that we get lost in the beliefs preached to us by our governments thus making our leaders ‘gods’?

A Landscape of Power and Fear-how systems, such as politics, the media and people in power use fear as a tool to manipulate, control and divide
Fear has a commanding moral position within the society of the 21st century. We live in this constructed world where individuals seek power by taking advantage of and manipulating others. This is the power of fear. Fear is the tool that we know can effectively be used to control various sections in society. The philosopher Seneca states: “There are more things…likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” (Letters from a Stoic, Seneca) ^{24 25} When we are threatened or faced by fear, whether this is real or imagined, there is a high possibility that our rational and higher cognitive capacities shut down. This makes it easy for anyone who promises us safety from the threat, easy for anyone to manipulate us. Relating to this form of manipulation through the landscape of power and fear, I recently read a very interesting article called: “Why fear can often lead us astray.” ²⁶ The article states that totalitarian systems and surveillance states would in principle generate more fears among citizens than democratic and constitutional systems. However, in all systems fear can be misused for political purposes. So many of us wake up in fear everyday. We are scared. We are fed by the devices/technology in our lives with messages of danger, worry and panic. What people fear mostly depends on what they are hearing about in the media and what they are talking about with friends. It creates a network of fear through scare mongering and spreading of ‘fake news’ People are addicted to fear, we like to click on links that talk about things that we are afraid of, negative headlines garner more clicks than positive ones. Relating this to my argumentation from before of the idea on how AI and technologies have immense power and abilities to track our emotions, algorithms respond to that, by saving and tracking each online movement, each like, each post, each interaction. I have a nice example from my own experience. Since I started writing on this thesis I also drew some of my inspirations regarding the topic from instagram. Instagram’s algorithm started to pick up on that. In my timeline I get more and more content related to fear and how to deal with anxiety. According to fear researchers like Kasper, the type of information plays a large role in the development of fears. “It’s about figuring out which sources end up being trustworthy and which are not,” ²⁶ he says. “Search engines like Google can practically become the breeding ground for your own fears.” ²⁶ Since we live in a post-truth-society, where individuals need the ability to understand and define correct information as opposed to ‘fake-news’, people and companies in power are provided with a growing platform to manipulate and divide people. I want to highlight two examples of the idea when systems and people in power use fear as a tool in order to control society for their benefit. First let’s talk about the most contemporary example of how the concept of fear is misused to lead society–Covid19. We all know for a fact that this virus is not a joke and needs to be treated with respect, knowledge and clarity. Moreso, fear, anxiety and irrationality is dominating society all over the world by means of this virus. Fear, panic and tyranny is leading the discourse of this pandemic–especially in Western media. People in power and especially the media misuse this situation by spreading a message of fear instead a message of hope. At the beginning of the pande-mic the chancellor of Austria clearly misused the emotion of fear in order to create a fear driven society with statements like: “Soon everyone of us will know someone who died of Corona.” ²⁷ When politicians invoke fear into society, it is not about actually saving us from the threat, but gaining votes and maintaining power. Another example is the terrorist attack in Vienna. It is the second of November 2020, 20:00. You can hear someone shooting in the streets. You can hear people screaming, people are running, people are hiding. Minutes later we all know what happened. There was a terrorist attack in the heart of Vienna. The first medium to report about the happenings is the media claiming ‘We stand together, against any form of hate, discrimi-nation or terror. We stand together as a united group fighting and believing in the power of freedom and unity.’ But the attack has left its trace. People are scared; scared to leave their house, scared to walk the streets, scared to encounter another attack. While these are all very reasonable fears, yetagain we are living through a period filled with fear, uncertainty and doubts.Yet again fear and anxiety fill us, whether the threat is real or imagined, making people numb, putting them down, drowning them. Yet again someone, in this case the terrorist, uses fear as a tool to control our society by violently imposing his beliefs. Yet again the terrorist knows about the force of fear to manipulate and divide, even if the action itself lasted just for 9 minutes. “When politicians today speak of terrorism they of course speak of an actual danger. But when they try to train us to surrender freedom in the name of safety, we should be on our guard.” ²⁸ Instead of receiving open discussions around these topics, I feel that ‘we’ are confronted with anxiety and fear, trading our freedom in the name of safety. Fear can both be a construct in our mind, as well as something visualised through violence. Either way it can be misused by the government in order to force us into submission. …But what if nobody plays the game? “Physical attacks lead to a corresponding increase of trust in political leaders and submission to them. This effect is likely the same whether the attack be a surprise, known to political leaders yet allowed to happen, or directly orchestrated by these same leaders who stand to benefit from the increased trust and submission…”^{29 30}

People will, for the most part, be coerced into believing what they are told in time of crisis, whether through a virus or an intended violent attack. And if there is the young girl scrolling through her social media account reading about the danger of terrorism. She is not able to distinguish between true and false information and she will be led by fear which is content created by others with a goal. And when the child sits in his bed and he is scrolling through his social media before going to sleep and his mind is being filled with images and words of hatred, danger and insecurity. He will feel anxious and at unease. And when the old man in his village watches the news like he does every evening and he listens to all the hatred language, he will feel threatened and in danger. Then there is no way around being manipulated and powerless anymore.