Corona Pandemic: Lessons From War Zone Paradoxes

Normalcy can be defined as a state where we enjoy freedom from fear and hunger. With the new coronavirus pandemic spreading faster than virologists could imagine, the extent to which we fear death and disease determines the degree to which normalcy is destroyed.

- Ameen Izzadeen

The fear of uncertainty has reached a level unprecedented in living memory for many, especially for those who were heedless to the suffering of fellow human beings.

Since we began to roam this planet, we have been living with fear of something or another. Fear is a key emotion of human life. No evolution theory is adequate to describe the fear ingrained in us.

Religious philosophies teach us that righteousness will lead to a state where there are no fears and worries.

But human beings are hardly righteous in their social, economic and political conduct. Our moral turpitude, greed and self-centeredness have given rise to political and socio-economic systems where powerful nations lord it over weaker nations. Be it the multipolar, bi-polar, unipolar or post unipolar international systems, all these world orders have seen fear being used as a weapon by a dominant society against weaker societies. Forget the barbaric leaders of the yore, even the leaders of the so-called post-enlightenment era, as we sometimes refer to the times we live in, use fear as a political weapon not only to subjugate people or a minority within a country, but also to elicit public support for unpopular wars or to dominate other nations through colonial or neocolonial mechanisms.

In sociology, this is called the culture of fear -- a concept where fear is incited to achieve political or work place goals. The United States’ War on Terror is a case in point. During the George W Bush presidency, the war party comprising the militarists, the capitalists and right-wing ideologists made use of the fear generated by the 9/11 attacks to achieve sinister political goals.

Underscoring the importance of the fear factor in global politics, the US described its invasion of Iraq as “Shock and Awe”.