ZYGMUNT BAUMAN ON "LIQUID FEAR" AND "DERIVATIVE FEAR"

Zygmunt Beaumont, Liquid Fear (New York: Polity Press, 2006) ("'Derivative fear' is a steady frame of mind that is best described as the sentiment of being susceptible to danger; a feeling of insecurity (the world is full of dangers that may strike at any time with little or no warning) and vulnerability (in the event of the danger striking, there will be little if any chance of escape or successful defence; the assumption of vulnerability to dangers depends more on a lack of trust in the defense available than on the volume or nature of actual threats). A person who has interiorized such a vision of the world that includes insanity and vulnerability will routinely, even in the absence of a genuine threat, resort to the responses proper to a point-blank meeting with danger; 'derivative feat' acquires a self-propelling capacity." "It has been, for instance, widely noted that the opinion that the 'world out there' is dangerous and better to be avoided is more common among people who seldom, if ever, go out in the evenings, when the dangers seem to them most terrifying; and there is no way of knowing whether such people avoid leaving their homes because of their sense of danger, or whether they are afraid of the unspoken dangers lurking in dark streets because, in the absence of practice, they have lost the confidence-giving ability to cope with the presence of threat, they are prone to let their imaginations, already afflicted by fear, run loose." Id. at 3. From the back cover: "Modernity was supposed to be the period in human history when the fears that pervaded social life in the past could be left behind and human beings could at last take control of their lives and tame the uncontrolled forces of the social and natural worlds. And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live again in a time of fear. Whether it's fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of indiscriminate terrorist attacks, we live today in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. 'Fear' is the name we give to our uncertainty in the face of the dangers that characterize our liquid modern age, to our ignorance of what the threat is and our incapacity to determine what can and can't be done to counter it.").