By Daniel Rigney
For as long as I can remember, we Americans have been a deeply fearful people. When I was young, a Communist was lurking behind every shrub. Later the Communist was replaced by a black militant, and white people ran for their lives to the suburbs. Then it was drugs (as in “disastrous war on …”). After 2011 it was Muslim terrorists, followed by a weird assortment of religious pedophiles and bankers. The history of our nation is writ largely in the history of our fears, and in our responses to them.
Cultural forecasters are now asking, “From what unexpected direction might our next great tidal wave of fear come?”
Nominees for the Next Big Fear (NBF) include accelerating climate change (a realistic concern, in my view), some unstoppable epidemic setting off a secondary epidemic of panic, and the invasion of Earth by a mercy-killing intelligence from a hidden cosmic dimension that even string theorists don’t yet know about.
But don’t worry. At least one of these events probably won’t come to pass. As Montaigne may have observed, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”
And here's another reason not to worry. Studies show that worrying can shorten your life span by years. Worrying about that fact may shorten it even further. So don't worry.
But from a purely economic standpoint, worrying may be good for business. Market watchers are eager to know what new terrors could emerge to stimulate the growth of our fear-dependent industries, or FDI’s. If we know where our next fears are coming from, we can invest now in well-picked FDI’s and make financial killings later through the invisible fist of the marketplace.
FDIs in the Fear Sector (Sector V) of the economy include police and security services, insurance companies, medtech and pharmaceutical firms that depend on overdiagnosis and overprescription, overpriced health food stores (Still poisoning yourself?), gun merchants, sensationalist tabloid media, and entire branches of the tree of government, including its well-camouflaged Military Intelligence Complex (MIC). The future health of our economy depends on the creation and maintenance of terrifying problems to which these industries offer seeming solutions.
The vitality of our fear industries, and hence of our national economy, requires that we sustain and, if possible, increase our levels of both public and private fear, thereby stimulating aggregate demand for fear-reducing products. The more we fear, the more we need fear-reducers. It just makes good economic sense. Fear generators create perceived needs, expand markets, grow profits, create jobs, etc.
Economically, we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself.
So if you have some inside dope on where our next wave of fear is coming from, enter your prophecy in the comments section below if you're a member of OS, or send it along to drigney3@gmail.com.
I promise not to share your insights with Globatron or any other secret global corporation. After I’ve made some personal investment decisions based on the best of your ideas, I’ll bury them in a time capsule to be opened by future historians in 2050.
If anyone is still alive then to read them.
Danagram
;--] ... slouching toward the future since 2011
For as long as I can remember, we Americans have been a deeply fearful people. When I was young, a Communist was lurking behind every shrub. Later the Communist was replaced by a black militant, and white people ran for their lives to the suburbs. Then it was drugs (as in “disastrous war on …”). After 2011 it was Muslim terrorists, followed by a weird assortment of religious pedophiles and bankers. The history of our nation is writ largely in the history of our fears, and in our responses to them.
Cultural forecasters are now asking, “From what unexpected direction might our next great tidal wave of fear come?”
Nominees for the Next Big Fear (NBF) include accelerating climate change (a realistic concern, in my view), some unstoppable epidemic setting off a secondary epidemic of panic, and the invasion of Earth by a mercy-killing intelligence from a hidden cosmic dimension that even string theorists don’t yet know about.
But don’t worry. At least one of these events probably won’t come to pass. As Montaigne may have observed, “My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.”
And here's another reason not to worry. Studies show that worrying can shorten your life span by years. Worrying about that fact may shorten it even further. So don't worry.
But from a purely economic standpoint, worrying may be good for business. Market watchers are eager to know what new terrors could emerge to stimulate the growth of our fear-dependent industries, or FDI’s. If we know where our next fears are coming from, we can invest now in well-picked FDI’s and make financial killings later through the invisible fist of the marketplace.
FDIs in the Fear Sector (Sector V) of the economy include police and security services, insurance companies, medtech and pharmaceutical firms that depend on overdiagnosis and overprescription, overpriced health food stores (Still poisoning yourself?), gun merchants, sensationalist tabloid media, and entire branches of the tree of government, including its well-camouflaged Military Intelligence Complex (MIC). The future health of our economy depends on the creation and maintenance of terrifying problems to which these industries offer seeming solutions.
The vitality of our fear industries, and hence of our national economy, requires that we sustain and, if possible, increase our levels of both public and private fear, thereby stimulating aggregate demand for fear-reducing products. The more we fear, the more we need fear-reducers. It just makes good economic sense. Fear generators create perceived needs, expand markets, grow profits, create jobs, etc.
Economically, we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself.
So if you have some inside dope on where our next wave of fear is coming from, enter your prophecy in the comments section below if you're a member of OS, or send it along to drigney3@gmail.com.
I promise not to share your insights with Globatron or any other secret global corporation. After I’ve made some personal investment decisions based on the best of your ideas, I’ll bury them in a time capsule to be opened by future historians in 2050.
If anyone is still alive then to read them.
Danagram
;--] ... slouching toward the future since 2011
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