As an innate human emotion, fear is more than just a simple
state of heightened awareness, it is a biological necessity. As humans, not
only are we compelled by fear, we are compelled to fear, due to our desire to survive. In order to fully be aware
of our surroundings, we must also be aware of nearby dangers –which commonly we
define through fear. As such, fear has been invariably useful to mankind’s
survival throughout the ages; however, in the current era, where postmodernism
has allowed our perception to “transcend” the need for survival (predominantly
in Western culture), fear has changed its definition from “dreading to catch
the Bubonic Plague” to “the induced panic of having outdated goods,” which
makes fear a terrible misnomer.
When I saw the topic regarding chapter 2 of Brandwashed, I immediately assumed that
the “fear” which was to be discussed was a significant, biological fear. It did
not take me long to retract my assumption. The fear of disease causes us to buy
hand sanitizer. The fear of storms causes us to stock up on supplies. The fear
of our future selves causes us to buy for our current selves. The fear of being
a bad parent causes us to buy the “best” (or perhaps most expensive) products
for our children. I could go on. Upon reflection, it would seem that all of
these fears appeal to reason via a coherent and logical strain of thoughts
which marketers hope to entice out of consumers. “I do not wish to get sick,
therefore I will buy hand sanitizer;” “I do not wish to be a bad parent,
therefore I will buy the most organic baby food for my child;” etc. However,
this rationalization comes from an irrational source –the marketers. As opposed
to discerning the danger for ourselves, instead we decide to trust a
man/company that is trying to make money off of us however it is able to. To further
elaborate:
1. We are taking the seller at his word
(which is extraordinarily dangerous, considering his primary goal of making
money).
2. We are only basing our discrimination
on that current impulse of fear –manipulated from us by marketers – instead of
on things like past events or probability of the feared scenario actually
coming true.
In regards to the first point, while I recognize that not all
advertising of products is false, we do have to keep in mind that the entire
goal of marketing is to get us to buy goods. Therefore marketers will either attempt
bend the truth until it appeals to us, or they will flat out lie –which in
either case is quite embarrassing from an applied-sociology point of view that I
find myself fond of (we have one elite part of society manipulating another,
while the governing body of said society allows it to be so –that eerily
reminds me of 1780’s France, perhaps the only difference being we enjoy being
manipulated). Concerning the second point, we should never buy from fear alone.
Take the fear of death, for example. If a hypothetical pharmaceutical company
wanted us to buy some “miracle drug,” they could just bombard us with the
fact-based estimation that 150,000 people die every day (quite honestly I’m
surprised they don’t). They could “conveniently” leave out that two-thirds of
that estimate is due to senescence (in essence, indirectly dying from old age),
and all we as consumers would see is that their ambiguous drug will help keep
us alive that much longer –enough to
sate our fear. This appeal to our biological fear causes our survival desires
to scream at us and compel us to buy this drug. As noble as this miracle drug
company may be, it wants us to buy from fear –as the company has defined – not
from doing our own research.
My suggestion to all of this? Do not be so hasty to fear the
trifling things of life. Rarely do they even affect our ability to survive. Instead
we should fear the Lord our God, as scripture commands us to. Hebrews 10:26-31
tells us to fear God’s judgment, explicitly stating in verse 31 that, “It
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” It is not out of
a desire for us to buy Bibles that this section of Hebrews was written. Rather
it was written to demonstrate what fear really is. Fear is not the emotions
drawn from the marketing media, but rather it is the innate (although repressible)
desire not to offend our Creator. Fearing the Lord our God sounds like a good
motivator for action, not fearing the lack of freshness of certain marmalades.
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