Fate returns as a psychological support in secular modern risk environments

Evidence

The large majority of people do not spend much of their time, on a conscious level at least, worrying about nuclear war or about the other major hazards for which it may or may not be a metaphor. The need to get on with the more local practicalities of day-to-day life is no doubt one reason, but much more is involved psychologically. In a secular environment, low-probability high-consequence risks tend to conjure up anew a sense of fortuna closer to the pre-modern outlook than that cultivated by minor superstitions. A sense of “fate,” whether positively or negatively tinged—a vague and generalised sense of trust in distant events over which one has no control—relieves the individual of the burden of engagement with an existential situation which might otherwise be chronically disturbing. Fate, a feeling that things will take their own course anyway, thus reappears at the core of a world which is supposedly taking rational control of its own affairs. Moreover, this surely exacts a price on the level of the unconscious, since it essentially presumes the repression of anxiety. The sense of dread which is the antithesis of basic trust is likely to infuse unconscious sentiments about the uncertainties faced by humanity as a whole. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 323

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the reader’s thesis: Stevens’s submission to role and institution functions as a ‘fate’ that relieves him of existential engagement — a faceless commitment that represses anxiety and dread. — connects to: Where risk is greatest, fatalism paradoxically returns — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 264; Knowledge of social life does not produce greater control over fate — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 111; Trust and power are generalized media converting improbable contingencies into stable meaning systems (+2 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that ‘fate’ — a pre-modern category — reappears at the core of rational modernity is a dense, quietly paradigm-shifting inversion worth sitting with.

Related

• Where risk is greatest, fatalism paradoxically returns (similarity 0.88)
• The early modern concept of risk replaced fortuna as a general feature of life (similarity 0.82)
• Even pragmatic acceptance conceals unconscious existential dread about global catastrophe. (similarity 0.80)
• Pre-modern life was itself fraught with anxiety and risk (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Knowledge of social life does not produce greater control over fate #corroborates (0.70) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 111
• Trust and power are generalized media converting improbable contingencies into stable meaning systems #expands (0.60)