Economic meltdown, impending climate catastrophe, global terrorism, flu pandemics… I could go on, but why bother? The world is going to the dogs. It’s official. The media tells us so every day so it must be true. Has there ever been a time more miserable and dangerous as the present?
Actually there has been. In fact, if we could visit any point in history we would probably find a world far more miserable and dangerous than the world we inhabit now. We in the West have never had it so good. As a whole we are richer, healthier, more informed, more tolerant and more long-lived than we’ve ever been. But we’re also less satisfied and less content than many of those who came before us. This is something of an irony.
Yet are the causes of irrational anxieties about the world such a mystery? We all now have more to lose than our ancestors, and our sense of individual significance has strengthened because of it. A century ago most of our forebears were content with any sort of roof over their heads and any sort of income to feed their children. Anything extra was a bonus and certainly not anticipated. Nowadays such requirements are just the foundations on which we pile a whole heap of extras we have come to see as fundamental to our happiness and security: cars, huge TVs, computers, space-age kitchens, credit cards, vacations abroad, significant disposable income… the list goes on.
And it’s not just material possessions we hold dear. Our very mortality has become something to be clung on to like a much-cherished rag doll. Eternal youth has become a marketable commodity. We crave the latest ‘anti-ageing’ products that through clever advertising imply an impossibility, and anyone who looks younger than ‘normal’ is envied and feted. Fifty is the new forty, apparently. Deep down we know our world of material comforts is a shallow one but we’ve gotten used to it and when we see it threatened or the fantasy of its eternal nature called into doubt we begin to worry, even though the threats we see are more imagined than real.
Guilt is at the heart of it. When we watch TV and see people suffer in the Third World we feel bad about it, and in the past our instinct might have been to contribute to a charity or a relief fund to temper that guilt. But nowadays there are those who have focused their guilt into a social force that has been turned on the rest of us. And because those who shout the loudest get the most attention, the media is now informed by those most motivated by irrational anxieties – the scare bullies – and therefore what we see on our TV screens is less about reporting what is, but more about fearing what might be. They scare and we panic.
We don’t ‘improve the environment’ any more; we ‘save the planet’. The suggestion being that unless we mend our selfish ways this planet that has been spinning for a few billion years will spin its way to oblivion in the next decade. And what if the Islamic terrorists that lurk under our beds get hold of the materials to construct a nuclear bomb? That would certainly be a problem. But do we worry about what would happen if any other crackpot group intent on Armageddon constructed such a device (just as possible)? No, because the bogie men in the spotlight are exclusively Muslim so it’s only them we worry about.
Our world is not in peril. We’ve just become unsure of our place in it. We will only lessen our anxieties about global events when we learn to stop gazing obsessively at the magnified picture on our TV screens of a dangerous and threatening world and concentrate more on the small picture of our own individual worlds that we see through our windows and that is no less real and much more relevant to our personal happiness and peace of mind.
This world is full of a billion stories of personal misery – children starve and terrorists commit outrages – and if we are in any way human we must empathize with those less fortunate and do what we can to alleviate their suffering. But misery will always be a factor in the human condition and there is only so much we can do to help others without becoming miserable ourselves or giving ourselves up to the aggressive self-loathing that motivates so many of the ‘activists’ in our midst. The anxieties that such people try to provoke in us to ease their own consciences are certainly real, but the apocalypse they claim to be fighting to prevent is a fantasy of their own making. It all sounds quite Biblical, doesn’t it? Evidence perhaps that the human condition is more of a merry-go-round than a slide chute.
Outside my window the birds are singing and the trees are beginning to bud. There are rain clouds on the horizon but my garden will welcome a soaking because that is what springtime is all about. Nature is happily going about its business, content with its ageless cycle and unconcerned with the temporary dramas of its most bothersome component… we humans.
At the risk of sounding eccentric, I could say that my garden is actually an invaluable teacher because every day it reminds me not to get above myself and let my ego rule my head. I’m just not very important in the great scheme of things and because of that realization any anxieties I might have about the world and its threats crumble to dust. The world’s threats are as ephemeral and insignificant as my individual physical existence.
So look around you and focus your attention on all the things that are good and healthy and make you happy. Anxiety comes when we feel we have no control over our lives and that we are at the mercy of events. We are not. We all have what we need to make the most of what is given to us. The world will always delight us and disgust us in equal measure and if we can do something to make it a better place then we should do it. But what we shouldn’t do is whip ourselves into a lather over events we have no control over. Life can be tough, unpredictable and occasionally awful, but it is there to be lived and not to be worried about.
