Frank Furedi, and a catastrophic crisis as sustainability plunges the world into a trilogy of terrible science fiction movies ...

(Above: here for the cultus Fortunae).

Fear is key to irresponsibility, thunders Frank Furedi, setting the tone for The Australian's weekend capers, and then proceeds in an irresponsible, fear mongering way to prove the point of his header ...

How so? Well after a bout of blather about the Roman goddess Fortuna, to establish his credentials as an historian, he wanders into the twenty first century, just escaping its first decade, to make a series of tendentious, silly statements. Here's a taster:

We live in an era where problems associated with uncertainty and risk are amplified and, through our imagination, mutate swiftly into existential threats. Consequently, it is rare that unexpected natural events are treated as just that.

Rather, they are swiftly dramatised and transformed into a threat to human survival. The clearest expression of this tendency is the dramatisation of weather forecasting.

Once upon a time the television weather forecasts were those boring moments when you got up to get a snack. But with the invention of concepts such as "extreme weather", routine events such as storms, smog or unexpected snowfalls have acquired compelling entertainment qualities.

The invention of the concept of extreme weather has only come lately?

What on earth - or water - are we then to make of Noah's fludd, a minor extreme weather event that happened to wipe out most of humanity, and a fair range of hapless creatures? The story made a fine and compelling entertainment back in medieval times when mystery plays were all the go (try Noye's Fludde, dressed up by Benjamin Britten).

As for natural events and unexpected locust plagues, about to torture Australia, who can forget Moses' offer to the Pharoah?

... if thou refuse to let my people go, behold, to morrow will I bring the locusts into thy coast:

And they shall cover the face of the earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth: and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field:

And they shall fill thy houses, and the houses of all thy servants, and the houses of all the Egyptians; which neither thy fathers, nor thy fathers' fathers have seen, since the day that they were upon the earth unto this day. And he turned himself, and went out from Pharaoh.

Yep, those were the days when a plague offered genuine entertainment, and when extreme weather was ... well, damned extreme.

This is a world where a relatively ordinary, technical, information-technology problem such as the so-called millennium bug was interpreted as a threat of apocalyptic proportions, and where a flu epidemic takes on the dramatic weight of the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie.

Or perhaps even the dramatic weight of the influenza pandemic of 1918, a minor reality disaster show that managed to kill somewhere between twenty and forty million people, more than feeble humans had managed in the first world war (The Influenza Pandemic of 1918). And the poor bloody Spanish copped the rap.

Still, if you were looking for the dramatic weight of a proper Hollywood disaster movie, you couldn't look past the bubonic plague, which did its best work in the years heading up to 1350, bumping off 75 to 100 million people (Black Death), and still hanging around for a guest appearance in the suburb in which I live in the twentieth century.

Recently, when the World Health Organisation warned that the human species was threatened by the swine flu, it became evident that it was cultural prejudice rather than sober risk assessment that influenced much of present-day official thinking.

Uh huh. As opposed to the complacent cultural prejudice of Frank Furedi that shit never happens, that the "so-called" millenium bug should have been allowed to infest computers and never no mind the consequence, that swine flu was a non-event because the steps taken made it a non-event, because sometimes extreme weather events - anyone for a flood in Pakistan or an earthquake in Haiti or a firestorm in Victoria - do happen ...

What joy to learn that bovine spongiform encephalopathy was just a cultural prejudice ...

But where's all this heading? Well, when you label people as fear-laden mamby pambies, you can throw in all kinds of things as part of one giant, vast moral panic ...

This rejection of the practice of calculating probabilities is motivated by the belief that the dangers we face are so overwhelming and catastrophic -- millennium bug, international terrorism, swine flu, climate change -- that we cannot wait until we have the information to calculate their destructive effects.

Notice the easy equation which links terrorism - which currently manages to produce few human casualties - with a technology bug where the dangers were more likely to be economic - to swine flu which has pandemic implications to climate change, which is suddenly an irrational fear of the unknown drummed up by voodoo scientists ... And all we have to do is wait, and the boogeyman will stay under the bed, perhaps because it never was ...

Here at the pond, we love alarmism of course, with hysteria and panic the chief modus operandi of all the commentariat columnists going around. The end is always nigh, and always due to evil malignant forces, most likely coloured green or involving leftists.

Furedi's own moral panic involves sustainability, which threatens civilisation as we know it:

The clearest manifestation of this is the ascendancy of the idea of sustainability. The doctrine of sustainability demands that we do not take risks with our future. From this perspective, taking decisive action to promote progress is seen as far more dangerous than staying still. That is why ideals associated with development, progress and economic growth enjoy little cultural valuation. In contrast, just to sustain a future of more of the same is represented as a worthwhile objective.

Precautionary culture answers the age-old questions of where does fate end and where does free will begin by insisting that our fate is to sustain.

Uh huh. It sounds like a crisis, and sure enough it turns out that Furedi's piece is an edited extract from The Precautionay Principle and the Crisis of Causality. That's right, another damn crisis.

Well I guess we should look to the ancients for guidance when confronted by such a monumental crisis challenging the entire foundations of civilisation:

In Roman times and during the Renaissanace it was argued that virtus could overcome the power of fortuna. The ideals of virtue upheld ideals associated with courage, prudence, intelligence, a dedication to the public good and the willingness to take risks.

Petrach's remarkable The Remedies of Both Kinds of Fortune proposed the very modern and radical idea that humanity had the potential to control its destiny.

Hmm, I wonder what the Romans might think of a world heading towards nine billion, seeing as how the entire citizen population of the Roman Empire in AD 14 has been estimated at around a momentous five million? (Roman Empire Population) Sure you can dress the total empire in the second century AD up to 65 million, and the world to 300 million, but it still doesn't cut the mustard up against current breeding patterns (World population). Never mind, as the captain of the Titanic said to the steersman, full steam ahead and don't worry about the odd iceberg ...

Yep, let's not succumb to a moral panic about sustainability when growth is all the go. On with the rampant fornication, lest we lose all conviction ...

It was in the context of the Renaissance that the conviction that people had the power to transform the physical world began to gain ground.

In the present climate, where Western culture is so apprehensive in dealing with uncertainty, the aspiration to transform, develop and progress has been overwhelmed by the ethos of caution and sustainability.

Yes, it's time to get on with the business of living, and never mind if Toyota managed to issue cars with decent brakes ...

One of the most important ways in which the sense of diminished subjectivity is experienced is the feeling that the individual is manipulated and influenced by hidden powerful forces. Not just spin doctors, subliminal advertising and the media, but also powers that have no name.

That is why we frequently attribute unexplained physical and psychological symptoms to unspecific forces caused by the food we eat, the water we drink, an extending variety of pollutants and substances transmitted by new technologies and other invisible processes.

Yes indeed that stands in stark contrast to explained physical and psychological symptoms due to specific forces caused by the plastics used for packaging, the unsafe water we sometimes drink - and not just in Adelaide - and an ever extending variety of pollutants and substances transmitted by new technologies and other visible processes.

Not to mention even more visible and direct processes as the methyl isocyanate gas offered up by Union Carbide India to the citizens of Bhopal (here).

But okay, never mind what actually goes on in the world, how about real fear mongering as delivered by a comfortable academic living a genteel life in Britain? (Frank Furedi).

The revitalisation of pre-modern anxieties about the workings of hidden forces testifies to a weakening of the humanist sensibility that emerged as part of the Enlightenment.

The crisis of causality is experienced as a world where important events are mostly shaped and determined by a hidden agenda. We seem to be living in a shadowy world akin to The Matrix trilogy, where the issue at stake is the reality that we inhabit and who is being manipulated by whom.

Eek, we seem to be living in a shadowy world akin to The Matrix trilogy, and the last two movies in the trilogy were bloody awful. We're doomed, doomed I tells ya. It's a disaster, a catastrophe, and we're all being manipulated, and full of fear, our very sense of reality undermined and polluted by invisible thoughts and invisible processes.

Naturally confronted with such a disaster, we need to be able to blame someone for causing such shocking outrageous fears:

In previous times, such attitudes mainly informed the thinking of right-wing populist movements that saw the hand of a Jewish, Masonic or communist conspiracy behind significant world events.

Yes, yes, but it would surely be wrong to blame right-wing populist movements in these troubled times. After all, with so many Americans believing in angels, and denying evolution, and some twenty per cent of the population acutely aware that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim, the Tea Party crowd are at last establishing a firm alternative reality as a way forward.

No, we have to look elsewhere for decent conspiracy theorists whom we can blame for the impending disaster and sundry crises facing civilisation:

Today, conspiracy theory has become mainstream and many of its most vociferous supporters are to be found in radical protest movements and among the cultural Left.

The bloody cultural Leftists! I should have known. It's that idle chit chat over a glass of chardonnay by the inner suburban elitists and sophisticates that will do it every time ... And most likely, if not on NPR, they can be found chattering away on the ABC or the BBC ...

Glenn Beck? Fundamentalist Christians preaching the rapture? Just sound thinkers aware of the need for a way out of the Matrix. Unlike those bloody cultural leftists:

Increasingly, important events are interpreted as the outcome of a cover-up; the search for the hidden hand manipulating an unwitting public, or the story behind the story, dominates public life.

Conspiracy theory constructs worlds where everything important is manipulated behind our backs and where we simply do not know who is responsible for our predicament. In such circumstances we have no choice but to defer to our fate.

Uh huh. Would that be similar to the process of tagging Leftists with the rap sheet for all the saucy doubts and fears out and about in the world? Including but not limited to the notion that we all live in some kind of Matrix movie? Why by that perverted logic, Frank Furedi is some kind of cultural leftist ...

Dear sweet absent lord, confronted by that hideous fear, which threatens the very heart of British academic thinking, I feel the need for some restorative visionary thinking:

It is through conspiracy theories that fortuna reappears, but it does so in a form that is far more degraded than in Roman times. To their credit, the Romans were able to counterpose virtus to fortuna. However, in a precautionary culture fortune favours the risk-averse and not the brave. The deification of fear instructs us to bow to fate. In such circumstances there is not much room left for freedom or the exercise of free will. Yet if we have to defer to fate, how can we be held to account?

Indeed, and now if I may break Godwin's Law for a moment, can we refer to Adolf Hitler and his inestimable work Mein Kampf, for his advice on how the Romans responded to fortuna in the face of defeat?

Regret and fury would have filled their hearts against an enemy into whose hands victory had been given by a chance event or the decree of Fate; and in that case the nation, following the example of the Roman Senate, would have faced the defeated legions on their return and expressed their thanks for the sacrifices that had been made and would have requested them not to lose faith in the Empire. Even the capitulation would have been signed under the sway of calm reason, while the heart would have beaten in the hope of the coming revanche.
That is the reception that would have been given to a military defeat which had to be attributed only to the adverse decree of Fortune. There would have been neither joy-making nor dancing. Cowardice would not have been boasted of, and the defeat would not have been honoured. On returning from the Front, the troops would not have been mocked at, and the colours would not have been dragged in the dust.

But back to Furedi:

In the absence of freedom to influence the future, how can there be human responsibility? That is why one of the principal accomplishment of precautionary culture is the normalisation of irresponsibility. That is a perspective that we need to reject for a mighty dose of humanist courage.

A valiant, rousing call, and once again we must revert to Mein Kampf for additional guidance ...

It is a characteristic of our materialistic epoch that our scientific education shows a growing emphasis on what is real and practical: such subjects, for instance, as applied mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc. Of course they are necessary in an age that is dominated by industrial technology and chemistry, and where everyday life shows at least the external manifestations of these. But it is a perilous thing to base the general culture of a nation on the knowledge of these subjects. On the contrary, that general culture ought always to be directed towards ideals. It ought to be founded on the humanist disciplines and should aim at giving only the ground work of further specialized instruction in the various practical sciences. Otherwise we should sacrifice those forces that are more important for the preservation of the nation than any technical knowledge.

In the historical department the study of ancient history should not be omitted. Roman history, along general lines, is and will remain the best teacher, not only for our own time but also for the future. And the ideal of Hellenic culture should be preserved for us in all its marvellous beauty. The differences between the various peoples should not prevent us from recognizing the community of race which unites them on a higher plane. The conflict of our times is one that is being waged around great objectives. A civilization is fighting for its existence. It is a civilization that is the product of thousands of years of historical development, and the Greek as well as the German forms part of it ...

Yes, yes, down with the Matrix, and on with humanist disciplines and humanist courage and a pox on those cultural Leftists who blather about sustainability when they could be taking heart from a decent knowledge of Roman history ...

Finally I can relax in the knowledge there was no second gunman on the grassy knoll, and that all the moral panic about smoking has been vastly exaggerated ...

Hmm, I'm feeling a little tired now, and the clock tells me it's too early for a glass of chardonnay, even if dealing with all these saucy doubts and fears and modern conspiracies and paranoias is completely exhausting.

Time for a cup of tea, before it's off to the right thinking world of the Tea Partiers, Glenn Beck, and the thoughts of Chairman Rupert ... because after all, the leftist are paranoid conspiracy theorists, and fear is the key to responsibility ...

(Below: and for a bookend, Virtus, deity of bravery and military strength, and cheerfully either male or female in the personification of the Roman virtue of virtus. This image from the Getty Villa, made in Turkey 200 CE, and now stationed in Malibu - oh the shame - has been tagged as Virtus, but should be holding a sword in the right hand for it to be a certain tag. If holding Victory in her outstretched right hand, she'd be the Goddess Roma. Tricky these hemorphidite gods).