‘Pandemania’ And The Psychology Of Fear
Dec 25, 2021 0:19:32 GMT -5
Post by maybetoday on Dec 25, 2021 0:19:32 GMT -5
December 24, 2021
‘Pandemania’ And The Psychology Of Fear
By Jennifer Jones
America’s bipolar approaches to COVID—with one side seeking totalitarianism, health paranoia, and division, and the other side seeking personal liberty—remind us that the lessons of history are not easily learned. If we are to return to a normal America, one that encourages people to be mentally resilient when it comes to their physical health and is predicated upon health autonomy, we have very little time to stop the modern-day American despots.
The 20th century was defined, in significant part, by despotic leaders implementing propaganda campaigns to vilify certain groups of people deemed dirty or diseased. The despots didn’t accomplish these campaigns at once but, instead, did so slowly, by conditioning one group of people to believe their ills were caused by another group of people, while conditioning that second group of people to accept increasing levels of human rights violations. Leaders and governments, often working with the healthcare community, carried out campaigns to divide nations and eradicate those deemed “unclean” for the country’s “welfare” and the “future good.”
Today, the same divisive, unrelenting propaganda tactics that past fascists and tyrants used are producing a divided world and prompting actions by some that border on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). What was once considered hypochondriac behavior—masking, social distancing, and repeated hand washing—has become normalized. It identifies the good citizen, even in the face of a waning, weakened virus, heavily mutated from its original strain and far less deadly.
Many people have not only accepted the new hypochondria protocols, but they have also embraced them as talismanic actions that ward off death. Society, the government, the medical community, and the media have cultivated these actions in the general population. The result? Normalizing the fear of being close to another person because the latter carry germs and disease.
These OCD thought processes have been driving the response to the COVID pandemic since the first few months of 2020 and have controlled our lives for nearly two years now. Fear, emanating from a faulty risk meter, has created a bondage characterized by compulsive behaviors and irrational thought processes, all propelled and maintained by an endless cycle of variants. Many, in exchange for a false sense of safety garnered from following every edict and guideline, have willingly abandoned their freedoms for this promised “salvation” from COVID.
In his recently released book, Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics, Giorgio Agamben observes that
With the so-called pandemic, things went further: what American political analysts called the ‘Security State’ — which was established in response to terrorism — has now given way to a health-based paradigm of governance that we term ‘biosecurity’. It is important to understand that biosecurity, both in its efficacy and in its pervasiveness, outdoes every form of governance that we have hitherto known. As we have been able to see in Italy — but not only here — as soon as a threat to health is declared, people unresistingly consent to limitations on their freedom that they would never have accepted in the past. We are facing a paradox: the end of all social relations and political activity is presented as the exemplary form of civic participation.
You are the ideal citizen if you avoid others, wear a cloth on your face, and take as many jabs as the government deems necessary. Every citizen’s freedom to make healthy choices has been replaced with a legal obligation to be healthy—an obligation that must be fulfilled at all costs, without considering the individual, and without liability for those pushing these “healthy measures” when they cause harm.
Continued at link
‘Pandemania’ And The Psychology Of Fear
By Jennifer Jones
America’s bipolar approaches to COVID—with one side seeking totalitarianism, health paranoia, and division, and the other side seeking personal liberty—remind us that the lessons of history are not easily learned. If we are to return to a normal America, one that encourages people to be mentally resilient when it comes to their physical health and is predicated upon health autonomy, we have very little time to stop the modern-day American despots.
The 20th century was defined, in significant part, by despotic leaders implementing propaganda campaigns to vilify certain groups of people deemed dirty or diseased. The despots didn’t accomplish these campaigns at once but, instead, did so slowly, by conditioning one group of people to believe their ills were caused by another group of people, while conditioning that second group of people to accept increasing levels of human rights violations. Leaders and governments, often working with the healthcare community, carried out campaigns to divide nations and eradicate those deemed “unclean” for the country’s “welfare” and the “future good.”
Today, the same divisive, unrelenting propaganda tactics that past fascists and tyrants used are producing a divided world and prompting actions by some that border on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). What was once considered hypochondriac behavior—masking, social distancing, and repeated hand washing—has become normalized. It identifies the good citizen, even in the face of a waning, weakened virus, heavily mutated from its original strain and far less deadly.
Many people have not only accepted the new hypochondria protocols, but they have also embraced them as talismanic actions that ward off death. Society, the government, the medical community, and the media have cultivated these actions in the general population. The result? Normalizing the fear of being close to another person because the latter carry germs and disease.
These OCD thought processes have been driving the response to the COVID pandemic since the first few months of 2020 and have controlled our lives for nearly two years now. Fear, emanating from a faulty risk meter, has created a bondage characterized by compulsive behaviors and irrational thought processes, all propelled and maintained by an endless cycle of variants. Many, in exchange for a false sense of safety garnered from following every edict and guideline, have willingly abandoned their freedoms for this promised “salvation” from COVID.
In his recently released book, Where Are We Now? The Epidemic as Politics, Giorgio Agamben observes that
With the so-called pandemic, things went further: what American political analysts called the ‘Security State’ — which was established in response to terrorism — has now given way to a health-based paradigm of governance that we term ‘biosecurity’. It is important to understand that biosecurity, both in its efficacy and in its pervasiveness, outdoes every form of governance that we have hitherto known. As we have been able to see in Italy — but not only here — as soon as a threat to health is declared, people unresistingly consent to limitations on their freedom that they would never have accepted in the past. We are facing a paradox: the end of all social relations and political activity is presented as the exemplary form of civic participation.
You are the ideal citizen if you avoid others, wear a cloth on your face, and take as many jabs as the government deems necessary. Every citizen’s freedom to make healthy choices has been replaced with a legal obligation to be healthy—an obligation that must be fulfilled at all costs, without considering the individual, and without liability for those pushing these “healthy measures” when they cause harm.
Continued at link