Assignment 2: Fair Version
For centuries, indeed throughout the entire Middle Ages, the people of the
Occident were tormented by the fear of perpetual war, but even more so by the
horror of plague, cholera and leprosy.
While warfare certainly hadn’t come to an end by the dawn of the Early Modern
period – and this despite the rise of Humanism and the Enlightenment – the
triumph of the natural sciences nevertheless meant that these epidemics had lost
their power to inspire horror. Hope for a more care-free life seemed justified. Yet
what is the situation nowadays? Are our lives as free of fear as they appear to be?
There are certain symptoms which indicate that at the deepest levels of our
conscious mind the fear factor looks very different indeed to what the surface
suggests. Take the continually falling birth rate, for example. We can’t entirely
explain it as a sign of the financial pressure that families with several children
experience. Far more significant is the discomfort many parents feel about a
future so uncertain that they do not wish to bring children into the world. In
addition there is the tendency of today’s young people the world over to distance
themselves from mainstream society. Full of deep-seated scepticism regarding
the promises of the “politician-managers” who talk of a wonderful earthly
paradise that can only get better, they take refuge in communes, subcultures,
obscure sects and ultimately, in clear despair, the drugs scene or terrorist
activities.
The invention of the atom bomb in the fifties subjected our entire existence to a
type of terrifying and lasting threat never known before. Back then the
demonstrations against nuclear death still represented breakthrough resistance
to the perverse logic of the politicians and the military. Also back then, those who
most definitely knew better than anyone else – 18 Nobel laureates no less –
urgently warned against any further handling of nuclear weapons.
Since then we have tried to forget about the bomb. We have developed a near
perfect repression mechanism. As paradoxical as the formulation “mutually
assured destruction” might well be, it has become the drug that keeps us calm.
And even if unconscious repression of the fear of nuclear threat has worked well
so far, there has been no comparable success in eradicating from the minds of
those who live nearby the additional existential threat of possible accidents in
nuclear power stations. After the close call at Harrisburg a deep uneasiness has
remained, despite all mollifying speeches.
Recently a science-fiction film was broadcast on TV profiling the situation of
humankind on a planet Earth plundered of all natural resources. Why is this
science fiction when in fact the situation will soon be reality? A short while back
a newspaper published a graph in its economics section which revealed how
quickly not only oil reserves, but for example also zinc, nickel, tin, copper or gas
reserves will become depleted through constantly rising consumption. What will
happen then? Will the two nuclear giants start a final war for the last remaining
tonnes of aluminium and manganese?