The conquest of fear

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

Civilization’s primary struggle is against fear- the fear of hunger,disease, war and death. The fear of the unknown is now mostly conquered. We know to a great extent what causes the fear. If it is poverty and hunger we  know what causes it and make all efforts to overcome it. The victims of hunger are now much less. Famine is no more an existential threat as it was in the past. The Bengal famine of 1843 or the Na Ankha Famine (in the 9^th Regnal year of the  King) of Odisha in 1866-67 are now history. Civilization has taught us to save man from dying of hunger anywhere in the world. Our problem today is over-eating, obesity and related health issues. But malnutrition and poverty are not fully conquered. In 2010 one million people died in the world of malnutrition and poverty but about three million died of obesity.

Our fight against epidemics and infectious diseases is a continuous process but we have ensured survival despite plague, cholera, small pox, malaria and many such killers. As new life saving medicines are released into the markets, new bacteria and gases are detected in the air but we have succeeded in eliminating or controlling these enemies. Ebola, Zika and other exotic names enter our health vocabulary and the resultant panic leads us to inventing new medicines. In our bid to improve our physical conditions – our living conditions and life-styles - we give way to new diseases. For instance Aids is a lifestyle disease which threatens humanity. We might claim temporary victory but death and extinction lurk at every crossroad of civilization.

The other and more horrendous enemy of life is war. Turn the pages of history and at every  page there will be a reference to war. Civilization has also advanced in war technology-from pelting stones to dropping atomic bombs has been a long journey to shorten life and the sustained values of civilization. But after the two great World Wars of 1914-18 and 1939-45 human civilization has been chastised enough to desist from organized warfare. But everyday war clouds loom large against the horizon. Today Iraq, Syria tomorrow may be North Korea, Pakistan will go up in flames. The atomic stockpiles of the world  may destroy the world a thousand times over but our craze  for destruction is never satiated. But more than declared and organized wars terrorism is the greatest threat to the survival of civilization. If wars were fought over land, water, minerals, oil and racial issues terrorism like the off shoot of civilization is ‘fought’ without heroism or glamour, for ideology. Religious ideology or political ideology is no more a menace, it threatens to take over the world by  eliminating everyone that does not subscribe to a particular value –system. We may term it as a more violent and mindless form of Nazism. But Hitler would have been ashamed  by the masked face of unheroic and cowardly terror which now ushers in midnight doom.

What surprises me is man’s quest for immortality which began at the religious phase as a post-death possibility for soul, is now a quest for physical immortality. Human Rights Organizations declare death as an enemy to the Right to life. The scientists now think of death as a technical problem. Google in 2013 has launched a company called Calico, under the directorship of Kurzweil, to solve death: Many small and big companies as well as laboratories are now busy inventing medicines to give eternal youth and immortality to man. But man should ask himself, be he Kurzweil or any Silicon Valley Gerontologist, what will man do with eternal youth and immortality? As long as man has  not developed any armour against the bomb or the bacteria, death will certainly overpower him. At best man can prolong his life. But the challenges to life will not die. If man  lives for centuries all desires will be dead, all anxieties  would be effete. The ecstasy or anxiety of living will go. In their absence life will be dull and boring. Death is the greatest assurance to life. If the fear of death vanishes all religious, military and civilizational values will become meaningless. Man will be reduced to a rock of perpetual existence without essence.

Fear of anything- existential or spiritual- challenges life to a new awakening, without fear the effort of man to overcome fear will die down. Man then will become a thing: His being will be compromised.