We live in a time of state intervention aimed at eliminating harm—no violence, no risk—while socially taboo topics like body shaming, racism, and sexual shaming are culturally policed. Despite this pursuit of safety, anxiety and depression are at record highs, even as crime and violence are at historic lows.
The paradox is to live in the least violent times, when beliefs have only emotional and social repercussions and seldom physical or property consequences, yet the fragility of people and failure to maintain peace is escalating.
Part of this results in de-escalating objective, reality-based threats accomplishing an increase in symbolic, ideological concerns, which feel subjectively overwhelming and due to their shifting signifiers cannot be easily mitigated by individual effort. As we shift from physical to ideological harm, we -oddly- inhabit a space where safety is elusive and control pervasive.
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