THE CULTURE OF INSECURITY

Whatever it is you want, its what you haven’t got. Whatever it is you need, you haven’t got it. You need more. Always more. A room. A house. A mansion. It’s human nature to want to be safe, to be secure, to be warm and be rich.

Besides which being cold, being hungry, being poor, that ain’t no good. For some, their security comes only from ensuring that others do not have what they have. Because the more they have, the less others can have, the safer they are. That’s the kind of thinking, the kind of battered, broken psyche that builds obscene tributes to oneself, the kind of fear that causes multimillionaires to want to become billionaires. Zillionaires. Googlaires.

Whatever those are.

But from birth – and possibly sooner – we’re taught only a few select things. We need to have tummies that are thinner, muscles that are fatter, hair that is thicker, and breasts that are bigger. But ultimately, what we really need are brains that are sharper, hearts that are warmer, lives that are richer. That’s what we need.

Look around you. Look around us. What do we have? We have a lot. I mean, not just a little, a lot. And I’m still just Jenny from the block. We’ve got our own rooms, our own flats. Somewhere to call our own. Something to eat. Water that is clean. These are our things. We are lucky. The priviledged. The few.

But if we are taught that we already have all we need, then there is nothing that we need. Nothing that we want. People will no longer buy things in order to gain acceptance, happiness, love, whatever from other people.

Capitalism needs fear. It needs fear of the cold ; fear of hunger ; fear of loneliness to sell it’s product, hawk its wares on out high streets like Nick-O-Teen himself. Without this culture of insecurity, we would be happy. And if we were happy we would buy less. And the rich would not be getting richer, and the poor would not be getting poorer. But all things would instead, be equal for a change.

The only happiness we are allowed to buy is the transient, the brief, and easily replacable in high streets. Happiness comes in the bottom of a glass, a silver disc wrapped in cellophane, or the four shining wheels of a new car or a sofa from DFS. That’s the happiness we can have : materials. Security.

We need to feed the beast – without this, it will surely starve. We are all raised on a culture that demands rampant consumption of things ; like a parasite that endlessly consumes the host, we will consume our way through all things, until there is nothing left.

Get that rare record. That designer label. Those hard-to-come-by Robbie Williams tickets. These are the things you need in order to gain acceptance, love, the respect of others. You need not these things. But without that demon, the desire to be thinner, taller, smarter, hairer, cooler and better than others, the world would grind to a halt. All we need are clothes, food, and friends. Armed with a spear you can find all of those in the world without spending a penny : admittedly, your clothes may be the coat that your dinner was wearing, and your friends aren’t going to be that friendly because you won’t let them go, but that’s not the point.

We all sleepwalk through life. We all try to fool ourselves that we need what we buy, and that at some point, without buying those things, we’re going to be found out, exposed, revealed for the talentless, shameful fraudsters we are. It’s bullshit. You are not what you own, or what you owe. You are what you do. So be brilliant, be funny, be loving. But don’t ever be the fool who thinks you need what you buy – you only ever need what you eat and wear. The Culture of insecurity is driven by fear. And even fear has nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear is fair. But fear paralyses us all.

Take a risk. Take a chance on me. And life can, will, be worth living.

Gawd. This all sounds a bit self-motivational like that guy in Donnie Darko. Tell me, why do you wear that human suit? I’m not afraid of the dark for what it hides. Or the light for what it shows. I’m afraid only of fear. And it will be defeated.