All this fear is being fostered

The woman suffers all day long, worried that someone will occupy the apartment she bought with her life savings. Not a day goes by that she doesn't turn on the television and see images of vandalized properties, terrible violations of private property rights. These scare tactics dominate the morning news. The woman, of course, doesn't see the perversion of a system that speculates on housing, dominated by large landlords and vulture funds that make access to decent housing impossible, and that uses her as a pawn to impose a general climate in which evictions are not only acceptable but absolutely necessary. It doesn't matter if the "evictions" are of families, of children. Property is more sacred than compassion for the homeless, and lumping them together with opportunists and freeloaders makes their dehumanization easier. So, the fear of the woman is, in reality, a fear of poverty, of those who have nothing. If they have nothing, they have nothing to lose and, therefore, can risk much more than someone who has something.

But there are other fears that grip the lives of millions of people in one of the safest places in the world, with the most guarantees and rights, with the most justice and public services. We have a healthcare system that has deteriorated since it was guillotined by budget cuts (thank you, Mr. Mas and Mr. Mas-Colell, I think of you every time my GP tells me I don't have an appointment for three weeks; consider me resentful, but if you care about a person, life goes on, a person's health continues, the system still works. Even with waiting lists, with the appalling conditions in which doctors and nurses work, we can still feel safe. Many cancers detected early are no longer a death sentence; many life-threatening conditions receive monitoring that reduces the consequences to the best of medical science. And it no longer depends on having money to pay for treatment. And yet, the fear of getting sick or growing old seems to be one of the most prevalent in this society: bookstores are full of self-help health books dedicated to keeping us healthy, with all sorts of dietary suggestions, books that seem to have been written by ancient healers but with many footnotes citing articles. Except that, in the copy next door, another footnote from a different study at a different university proves the exact opposite of the previous one. Whenever I see people running down the street, I feel like asking them: what are they running from? I think from illness, from death itself. Don't they see that sooner or later it's going to catch them? That the only revenge against our finitude is to seize the moment and live life to the fullest, as if it were never going to end?

I offer these two examples, which came to mind, but the catalog of fears in the West is almost endless. And it paralyzes us, makes us docile and obedient. And silent. I read a book about Iranian women witnesses who risk their lives to defend their rights, and suddenly it seems to me that our petty fears are utterly ridiculous. People who tell you things in private that they would never dare to express in public, not because they might be imprisoned or tortured or hung from a crane, but because they might be made A critical comment on Twitter or in any space where censors gather, even petty ones. Where does all this cowardice come from? Why have we become so conformist, so adapted to the hegemonic norm, and why do we all follow the herd? Perhaps because the great fear of individual sovereignty, of the emancipation of both thought and action, is fostered by small fears scattered every day with the insistence of a fine rain: in newspapers, in the news, in series and films. Everywhere.