How much are we supposed to fear? And to what end? Going to the hardware store (picture above) is like walking into the stables of the Eight Horsemen of the (Silent) Apocalypse. It is also, in effect, meeting someone with a good business idea: find the fear, enhance the fear, fix the fear.
I am not a fearful person. It is an emotion I have only recently, in middle age, begun to understand or even to experience (more on this another time). My awareness of it as counterproductive has always been much more immediate for me than the sensations of fear itself, and so its grip on me has been limited. It is for this reason that I discount some of my seemingly daring moves--going to Amsterdam without money or a plan for example--for without fear there is no real daring. Such steps are easy even when they should, perhaps, be hard.
But I can be gripped by the need to solve a problem the way, I think, some people are gripped by their fears. And in this state I react much as one plagued by a fear often does: it holds my focus, it disturbs my sleep, it worries me. So when I see a display like this it does not appeal to my fears as it is intended to, but that doesn't mean I can simply walk on by. To the contrary, it grips me, for it raises a host of potential problems many of which (as readers of previous postings will have already noted) are already very much on my mind.
And for this I resent it. We none of us live without problems and a backlog of problems. And, in the current environment, one in which fear has been made a central, perhaps the central element of much of political and social discourse, additional fearmongering is very unwelcome even, or perhaps especially, at the hardware store.
And still I now want to know: what are the ambient mold levels in my home, and what role do they play in my week-long cold?
I am not a fearful person. It is an emotion I have only recently, in middle age, begun to understand or even to experience (more on this another time). My awareness of it as counterproductive has always been much more immediate for me than the sensations of fear itself, and so its grip on me has been limited. It is for this reason that I discount some of my seemingly daring moves--going to Amsterdam without money or a plan for example--for without fear there is no real daring. Such steps are easy even when they should, perhaps, be hard.
But I can be gripped by the need to solve a problem the way, I think, some people are gripped by their fears. And in this state I react much as one plagued by a fear often does: it holds my focus, it disturbs my sleep, it worries me. So when I see a display like this it does not appeal to my fears as it is intended to, but that doesn't mean I can simply walk on by. To the contrary, it grips me, for it raises a host of potential problems many of which (as readers of previous postings will have already noted) are already very much on my mind.
And for this I resent it. We none of us live without problems and a backlog of problems. And, in the current environment, one in which fear has been made a central, perhaps the central element of much of political and social discourse, additional fearmongering is very unwelcome even, or perhaps especially, at the hardware store.
And still I now want to know: what are the ambient mold levels in my home, and what role do they play in my week-long cold?
It seems that fear is what makes the world go round. Fear is what fucked up things in the middle east, fear is what creates this growing grim 'you're-not-from-around-here' atmosphere in my neighbourhood, and fear is what we are all fed. It has always been around us and it has always prevented us from living in utopic harmony together. We fear what we do not know and do not understand, and instead of reasoning we grow suspicious. I wonder who got rich off the mexican flu...
ReplyDeleteMarco claims it's worse than fear, it's hysteria: http://marcomenage.blogspot.com/2010/03/niks.html
ReplyDeleteLots to fear: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/garden/27clean.html?hpw=&pagewanted=all
ReplyDelete