Normalised uncertainty converts fear of objects into diffuse chronic anxiety.

Evidence

It isn’t only work that has become more tenuous. The neoliberal attacks on public services, welfare programmes and trade unions mean that we are increasingly living in a world deprived of security or solidarity. The consequence of the normalisation of uncertainty is a permanent state of low-level panic. Fear, which attaches to particular objects, is replaced by a more generalised anxiety, a constant twitching, an inability to settle. The uncertainty of work is intensified by digital communication technology. As soon as there is email, there are no longer working hours nor a workplace. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1626

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on ch85’s claims about capitalist realism and the privatisation of stress into mental illness, and extends ch103’s discussion of how neoliberal policy privatised stress into individual pathology — here the same mechanism is pushed upstream to its workplace and technological triggers. — connects to: Vague, ever-reviewable assessment criteria generate functional anxiety in workers. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1660; Arbitrary interference inflicts extra harm through uncertainty and anxiety beyond mere restriction. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 419; Normalized uncertainty produces permanent low-level panic replacing object-directed fear — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1626