Fear and hope are siblings

Dr. Udo Gößwald
6 min readNov 28, 2023

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Edvard Munch, Angst (Feeling of Anxiety), 1896, Courtesy of State Museums of Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett

Thesis #10

From birth, everyone is confronted with the experience of fear, which makes them vulnerable and in need of protection. In the course of their lives, they learn to protect themselves and to offer protection to others. Part of protection is actively building and maintaining trust in other people.

Fear and hope are siblings. They both react to the uncertain and unpredictable, but in different ways. While fear narrows our perspective, hope broadens our view. In a state of fear, we are in a heightened state of tension and are characterized by the “monarchical desire” to control the other person who supposedly threatens us. When we hope for something, we trust that others will act independently of us. “The spirit of hope,” according to the American philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum, “is thus secretly connected with a spirit of respect for the independence of others, with a renunciation of monarchical ambitions, with a kind of relaxation and expansion of the heart.” From this point of view, fear is a threat to the future because it stands in the way of hope for change. Former US-President Barack Obama is probably right when he says: “Democracy can collapse if we give in to fear.”

Fascist Germany’s air war against democratic Britain began on September 7, 1940. In nine months, more than 80,000 bombs fell on London. Surprisingly, reports on the behavior of the population revealed that most people remained relatively calm in the face of the threat and that a very high degree of discipline and mutual helpfulness spread. The Dutch historian Rutger Bregman quotes from the report of an American journalist who interviewed a British couple in their kitchen: “While the windows shook, they calmly drank tea. The journalist asked them if they weren’t afraid.” To which they replied: “But no. What good would that do?” Bregman shows that people in disaster situations tend not to panic, but are prepared to help strangers, even if it means risking their lives. The incredible civil courage demonstrated by Ukrainians in their fight for liberation against the Russian invasion is an outstanding example of this. The word courage, which is used synonymously in English, French and German, is based on the Latin word cor for heart. Turning wholeheartedly to another person in need is a response based on the fact that people have a better chance of survival in dangerous situations if they act collectively.

Can we trust people in a democracy to protect each other? Or is the state solely responsible for protecting its citizens in a democracy? These questions are becoming increasingly virulent in light of the climate crisis. Right-wing populists are positioning themselves against the Green New Deal in the European Parliament. The Nature Restoration Act was only able to pass through Parliament with a narrow majority. This resolution provides the basis for legislative procedures in the member states of the European Union to reforest 20% of forests, restore 20% of natural river courses and increase the amount of greenery in cities. These are all measures designed to protect the population from flooding, drought and heat. However, the apologists who are constantly talking about the crisis of democracy and the loss of trust among citizens basically only have in mind what the Hungarian author Péter Nádas formulated almost prophetically back in 2013: “While we are busy with the arms trade, legal and illegal money multiplication, the plundering of the earth, the oceans and seas, let the dictator come or the Sun King, the money aristocracy, the mafia, the gang war, whoever, let him come who with a word of power puts an end to the financial, social and ecological anomalies that we have caused in centuries of work. My arbitrariness shall be his arbitrariness. He shall enforce radical change in business life, marine biology and meteorology so that everything stays the same and our annual profit grows to the extent we have longed for. No more democratic waffle and circus. Everyone has to shut up except us.” The fact that autocratic regimes in Russia, Turkey, Iran and Hungary are winning political majorities is evidence of voters’ belief that the ruling party and its associated power elite will protect them from serious change.

However, this protection is deceptive and increases frustration with those in power, as they offer no real solutions to urgent problems. The extent to which there are other ways to actively involve citizens in solving municipal problems is shown by an example from Brazil, which appears hopeful. In 1989, the city of Porto Alegre, which has a population of over a million, entrusted the decision on a quarter of the city’s budget to its citizens. By 1999, this idea had been adopted by more than a hundred Brazilian cities. In 2016, more than 1500 cities, including New York, Seville, Hamburg and Mexico City, had introduced a “participatory budget”. The accompanying studies on these forms of democratization show that participatory budgeting has made citizens better informed about their municipality’s finances and has increased trust in politics and politicians. In Porto Alegre, citizens were even willing to pay more taxes. In the conclusion of their research report on participatory budgeting in Brazil, American political scientists Michael Touchon and Brian Wampler state that it is “strongly associated with an increase in healthcare spending, an increase in the number of neighborhood associations, and a decrease in infant mortality”. These forms of self-empowerment are valuable experiences for the citizens involved. Unfortunately their proposals are often disregarded by the ruling parties or used as an alibi to legitimize decisions that have already been made. As was recently the case in France, there is a lack of an effective hinge for integrating the concepts and ideas of citizens’ assemblies into the prevailing parliamentary system. This results in growing cynicism and an increase in alienation between citizens and politics. “If you treat responsible citizens like voting cattle, they will behave like voting cattle,” argues Dutch historian David van Reybrouck, “but if you treat them as adults, they will behave like adults.”

The crucial category we need to turn to in this context is trust. “Receiving trust from others and experiencing that other people are willing to cooperate with you in a specific situation is met with an immediate positive reaction from the human motivational system,” says German neurobiologist and psychiatrist Joachim Bauer. On this basis, the people involved are willing to behave in a trusting and cooperative manner. “In summary, numerous recent studies show that the desire to be socially accepted and integrated into a community is a central human need.” The discrepancy between the anxious persistence in the familiar and the willingness to face new challenges can best be overcome in a self-chosen community. Above all, this means building mutual trust. The Chinese poet Lao Tse describes this as follows: “Kindness in words generates trust, kindness in thought generates depth, kindness in giving generates love”. The “we-me balance” (Norbert Elias) can therefore best be established if we respect the value of “self” and the value of “we” equally. This can lead to a sense of self-worth that only blossoms in connection with others.

In their publication “Citizens”, British marketing expert and democracy activist Jon Alexander and journalist Ariane Conrad have highlighted the socio-political resources that could result from a different, more social understanding of the future. They argue that we should not continue to act as consumers in our dealings with administrations, governments and political parties. “We need to see ourselves as citizens — people who actively shape the world around us, who cultivate meaningful connections with their community and institutions, who can imagine a different and better life, who care and take responsibility, and who give others the opportunity to do the same. It is crucial that leaders in our institutions also see people as citizens and treat us as such.” This means saying goodbye to the idea that “those at the top” will sort it out, as well as abandoning the attitude that the state is a service provider responsible for everything. Rather, it is about the political authorities explaining their own open questions and uncertainties regarding the solution to an existing problem and involving citizens in the process of finding a solution. The Taiwanese government chose this approach during the Covid pandemic. It created entertaining platforms and apps that involved citizens in solving problems — such as the procurement of masks — in the form of a competition. It allowed citizens to limit their radius of movement on the basis of voluntary self-monitoring and enabled them to contribute their own ideas and suggestions for dealing with the pandemic via a hotline. A modern democracy creates forms of participation that actively promote trust in its citizens and thus maintain it in the long term.

This essay is written complementary to Thesis #10 of our paper 48 Theses — How we can live together better, that you can find at https://48thesen.de/en/. This series will be continued. Further information about the author on my LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-udo-g%C3%B6%C3%9Fwald-077a711a7/.

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Dr. Udo Gößwald

Former museum director, now freelance writer and blogger