Anxiety has had quite a career. So far, the culminating point was the “German Angst”. Initially, it started as fear and meant the life-threatening feeling our forefathers experienced when they stood eye to eye with a sabre-toothed tiger.
For a long time, anxiety was coupled with an actual, directly threatening object.
And today?
The workers on the drilling platform on the Gulf of Mexico, too, experience this actual threat. For the inhabitants of the nearest oceanic bordering countries, it is already less threatening. They are not directly in danger of dying. If at all, then they might fear it in the long run. But why are, for instance, the inhabitants of Munich – Neuperlach scared? Will the oil spill over their garden ponds?
The inhabitants of Neuperlach imagine all deep-sea drilling platforms could explode, all oceans could be polluted, all fish poisoned, there could be a shortage of food and they might starve.
In other words, something that happened triggers a concept. It is promoted and heightened by a huge number of media. For instance through the IF blog. Additionally, there are other media, such as scientists, NGOs, politically and economically interested parties. They all work towards the great concept of what consequences a basically small accident can have. In doing so, they are most successful when adhering to an old rule: only bad news is good news. It is one of the best examples for the dialectic approach, which at all times – both with good and bad news – was synonymous for promoting concepts.
The better part of anxiety is the feeling of fear heightened by the media.
Let us return to our forefather. It must be feared that entire packs of humans disappeared soundlessly under layers of ice a few thousand kilometres away from him. There was no news program or IF blog to report about it. No scientist ever built his career on it. No politician wanted to increase his budget on it.
Anxiety is a strange feeling. It is nurtured by the inscrutable complexity of the world and heightened by a constantly improving technology.
Since, however, there are still regions in this world where dying is a rather realistic fear, we should – with all due respect to the possibility that some future scenario might become reality – always also see our anxieties as the result of boredom
Or, as Arthur Schopenhauer said in beautiful (and simplified) words.
There are only two times.
The time of misery and the time of boredom.
Isn’t it nice that we are permitted to live in a time of boredom?
SIX
(Translated by EG)
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