RISK TAKING AND THE
MORALITY OF LOW EXPECTATION
Preface
A day after the destruction of
the World trade Center, a commentator predicted in the Los Angeles Times that the ‘next big thing’ would not be ‘some new
technological innovation or medical breakthrough’ but ‘is like to be fear’.
No doubt the tragic events of 11 September 2001 will make millions of people,
American and others, fearful of the world around them. But unfortunately, fear
has been a big thing long before this terrible episode. Outwardly, the USA has
presented a picture of confidence and optimism about the future. The image of
massive skyscrapers, big cars, a dynamic popular culture and energetic people
has dominated the global imagination. However, under the surface, Americans –
like their British cousins – have for some time been enveloped in a culture of
fear.
As individuals, fear often helps
us to concentrate the mind when we engage with unexpected and unpredictable
circumstances. There are many experiences that we should rightly fear. My
mother’s fear of war and violent conflicts is based on her experience of living
through Second World War and having to deal with the death and suffering of
friends and family members. Our personal experience, shape the imagination and
our fears. However, today, many of our fears are often not based on personal
experience. Compared with the past, people living in Western societies have
less familiarity with pain, suffering, debilitating disease and death than ever
before. And yet, despite an unprecedented level of personal security, fear has
become an ever-expanding part of our life. Western societies are increasingly
dominated by a culture of fear. The defining future of this culture is the
belief that humanity is confronted by powerful destructive forces that threaten
our everyday existence. The line that used to delineate reality from science
fiction has become increasingly blurred. In recent times, government officials
have looked into the risk that killer asteroids pose to human survival. Some
scientist have warned that a global influenza is around the corner. We are
continually warned that, for the human race, ‘time is running out’, unless we
do something about global worming. ‘The end is high’ is no longer a warning issued
by religious fanatics. Scaremongering is increasingly represent as the act of
concerned and responsible citizen. At the time of writing this preface,
scholars at the British association of Science festival in Glasgow were discussing how a bizarre subatomic
particle created through an atom-smashing experiment could in theory fall on
the center of the Earth and star eating the planet from inside out. Experts no
longer simply dwell on risk – they are also busy evaluating theoretical risks. And, since theoretically
anything can happen, there is an infinite variety of theoretical risks.
The scary stories that we
continually transmit to one another indicate that society feels uncomfortable
with itself. Many of these stories have the character of a health warning. ‘Be
careful’ dominates our cultural imagination. This book is about the society’s
fear of taking risk. The original aim of the text was to try to explain why
society was continually in the throes of panic about some food or drug or some
technological process. In the course of trying to answer this question, it became
clear that the many panics about the environment and technology had very
similar structure to society’s fear about many mundane matters, such a risky
relations among people. Concern with safety is just as intense in the area of
personal relations as it is in that of environmental issues. This book argues
that our paranoia regarding the safety of children is driven by cultural forces
that are very similar to the ones that make us apprehensive about climate
change or about the food that we eat. Culture
of fear tries to explain what is about society today that encouraged such
obsessive preoccupation about safety.
Since the publication of the
first edition of this book in 1997, most of the trends discussed have become
more prevalent. Take the first two months of 2001. During this period, there
were warnings issued about ‘the perils of long-haul fights’, hormone-led beef
and pork, mobile phones, genetically modified crops and the measles, mumps and
rubella (MMR) vaccine. In all these cases, there were no direct causal links
established with death or an adverse outcome. Nevertheless, the mere hint that
an adverse outcome was a theoretical possibility transformed an unproven
hypothesis into a scare story. The health scare over ‘economy-class syndrome’ –
based on the claim that long hours spent in a cramped aeroplane seat resulted
in deep vein thrombosis (DVT) causing blood clots to travel to the lungs, - is
paradigmatic in this respect. It was the death from DVT of a young British
woman minutes after getting off a 20-hour flight from Sidney
to London that
let to the claim that there was a link between her condition and long-distance
flying. Despite the lack of any clinical proof that long-distance flying increases
risk of death from blood clots, economy-class syndrome was presented as a real
danger to the people’s health. Some newspapers even suggested that there could
be as many as 2000 casualties of this newly discovered syndrome. Such alarming
headlines were based on the comment of a doctor based at Ashford
Hospital in Middlesex, the closest
hospital to Heathrow
Airport Heathrow Airport
Attempts to scientifically
validate the risk of economy-class syndrome indicated the speculative character
of this threat. A major study by scientist from the University of Amsterdam UK medical journal The Lancet, it was give barely a few
column inches by the press. Despite the absence of any clinical proof, scare
stories about air travel continued to run. The British House of Lords endowed
the ill-informed speculation about long-haul flying with the legitimacy in a
report that criticized the airline for ‘woefully neglecting’ the health of
passengers. Members of the Lords took exception to the lack of space available
on cheap flights. ‘It may well be that flying too cheaply is potentially too
risky’, argued Lord Winston. Although the select committee found that there was
a ‘paucity’ of data, nevertheless it decided to press the panic button.
Scare stories about new dangers
do not simply make people more anxious or fearful. The stories reinforce
already existing apprehensions and help to shape and even alter the way the
people conduct their lives.
In the case of economy-class
syndrome, people’s lives are changed only minimally. Many travelers on long
distance flights now stretch their legs, exercise and walk up and down the
aisle. Those who are particularly risk-averse may wear support stockings and
drink only water or caffeine-free soft drinks. It can be argued “Why take a
chance?”: taking these measures is a sensible precaution that does not concern
about the effect of long-distance flying feeds into other worries about the
risks we face. It reinforces pre-existing preoccupations about our health and
our sense of vulnerability. The new ritual of exercising on a long-haul flight
reflects a new ambivalence about travelling. Instead of celebrating the
benefits of cheap air travel, we end up treating us as yet another health
problem.
In some cases, scare stories do
not simply result in harmless rituals, but led to practices with seriously
damaging consequences. Take the controversy that surrounds MMR immunization. In
1998, a paper published in The Lancet
by gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield claimed that the MMR vaccine could cause
inflammatory bowel disease and autism among children. Although Wakefield ’s study involved a tiny sample of
12 cases, his speculation was treated as a proven fact by sections of media.
Although some media commentators stated that the link between the MMR vaccine
and autism remained unproven, many parents only heard the word ‘autism’.
Fearing the worst, many parents decided not to immunize their children with the
MMR vaccine. This panic did not subside even when the world’s biggest study of
some 1,8 million children in Finland
could find no link between the vaccination and autism. The outcome of this
panic was that the use of an effective vaccine against measles, mumps and
rubella fell – only 85 % of British children are now immunized – creating the
possibility of revival of these diseases.
In January 2001, the UK
Government launched a 3.000.000 ponds campaign to reassure parents that that
MMR immunization program was safe. Unfortunately, advocates of the MMR vaccine
blame one man- Andrew Wakefiled – for reducing the rate of immunization below
the required to provide community protection against further epidemics. What
health officials fail to realize is that the MMR panic is not the work of one
individual. These days, even an unsubstantiated claim about a health risk is
liable to be taken seriously by an apprehensive public. In contrast, those who
dispute such scares – even when backed up by clinical proof – are often accused
of misleading the public and covering up the truth. Wakefiled’s paper resonates
with public suspicion about drugs and vaccination.
Contemporary culture encourages
people to confuse an association (autism appearing around the time of
immunization) with causation (MMR cause autism). For desperate parents with an
autistic child, Wakefield ’s
claims make perfect sense. The culture of suspicion that prevails makes it very
difficult for parents to believe government’s reassurance. As one mother told
the BBC, ‘after BSE, who can blame anybody for not believing the government’.
Mistrust towards government and
official-dome also extends towards other members of the public. And it is not
just food and health that invite a panic-like response. The News of the World’s ‘name and shame’
campaign against pedophiles in July 2000 showed how rapidly members of the
public could be incited to behave in a hysterical fashion. Preying on the
public’s fear of predatory pedophiles, the campaign succeeded in provoking
groups of anxious parents into organizing vigilante groups. Like the pedophile
panic of April 1998, the ‘name and shame’ campaign indicated how fear could turn
into mob rule. It showed how fear itself is a destructive factor, and one that
is eroding communities and families.
The frenzied atmosphere that
surrounded the name and shame campaign appalled most sensible people. But what
observers overlooked was that this witch-hunt was not simply creation of a
group of mendacious tabloid journalists. For many years previously, stories of
child abduction, predators and adult abusers had gripped the public
imagination. This normalization of pedophilia helped strengthen the conviction
that every child faces the imminent treat of ‘stranger-danger’. One consequence
of this atmosphere of fear is that many parents are no longer prepared to trust
other adults to look after their children.
Once the mindset of fear
prevails, it created a world where problems and difficulties are inflated and
where potential solutions are overlooked. Fear and panic are driven by a
self-fulfilling dynamics so that, for example, people who worry about their
food are likely to conclude that they are ill. That is why we are confronted
with a paradox that the healthier we are the more likely we are to define
ourselves as ill. According to the General Household Survey, as many as four in
ten people in some parts of the UK
now consider that they have a long-standing illness – reflecting a 66 % rise in
self-reported long-term illness since 1972.
Even the rise in the number of
people who consider that they have a long-term illness pales into significance
compared to the massive increase in the portion of young people who define
themselves as disabled. A recent survey showed that between 1985 and 1996, the
number of people in the UK
who consider themselves disabled increased by 40 %. The greatest increased was
among young – self-definition of disability increased by 155 % for those aged
16 to 19. The authors of the survey conclude that the differences between the
1985 and 1996 figures ‘appear too large to be explained by a real increase in
the prevalence of disability’, but they are at a loss to explain why more
people are embracing this label. Although there is no simple explanation of why
people are increasingly disposed to define themselves as ill or disabled, it is
evident that this sense of diseased self expresses profound anxieties about a
world that seems so threatening. In such circumstances, illness becomes a norm
– to be alive is to be ill. The contemporary culture of fear encourages this
depressing style of self-definition.
The world of killer asteroids and
global warming appears to be a million miles away from the sex deviant lurking
in the background. Yet, they are all the construction of a culture that
continually inflates the dangers and risk facing people. Characteristically,
exceptional events such the abduction of a child are turned into a normal risk.
The outbreak of a disease is immediately transformed into an epidemic. The
language we use reflects this trend. Terms like ‘risk’ or ‘at risk’ are used in
association with just about any routine event. The language we use reflects our
unprecedented preoccupation with risk. Take the term ‘at risk’. A search of UK newspapers
indicates that that term was used 2037 times in 1994. Six years later, in 2000,
the usage of this term had increased almost nine-fold.
THE USE OF TERM ‘AT RISK’ AT UK NEWSPAPERS
1994 – 2037 mentions
1995 – 4288
1996 – 6442
1997 – 7955
1998 – 11234
1999 – 14327
2000 – 18003
…
(“The Culture of Fear – Risk
taking an the Morality of Low Expectation”, revised edition – FRANK FUREDI;
Continuum, 2002, London & New York )
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