The largest civilizational and cultural upheavals in history have occurred as the result of slow and subtle changes in human thought. The introduction of Christianity to the Ancient Near East and the Roman Empire, for example, planted the seed of individualism that grew to choke out the long-standing culture of group identification, such as ethnicity, family, and heritage. This set our history on a trajectory toward the Enlightenment and the freedoms we currently enjoy, a historical movement documented excellently by Larry Siedenthop in his work Inventing the Individual. While we certainly can understand that culture is always changing—just as we are always changing as individuals, never the same from one moment to the next—the dominant Weltanschauung—worldview—of our culture has the power to define the next steps we take.

Just as our Weltanschauung as individuals directs the course of our thoughts and actions, so too does our broader cultural worldview set our trajectory as a society and nation. It stands to reason, then, that comprehending our current cultural conceptions of the world may be a valuable exercise, if only to have a better idea of where we may be headed.

We seem to be living in a culture whose worldview is fixed on catastrophe.

Private and public media pump our minds full of apocalyptic images that have the real potential to rob us not only of our hope of the future, but of our joy in the present. Our language has become eschatological, delineating the impending “tipping point” of climate change, the constant threats of terrorism, and the invisible biological threats that loom all around us—some of them coming from the very mouths of our families, friends, and neighbours. This is especially relevant for young people—such as current post-secondary students—who have in many ways been conditioned to think that they have no future.

Despite the very real role that the media plays in this drama, it would be too simplistic to point our fingers at the various popular discourses around these threats; we cannot blame them solely for our current end-times vision. American sociologist Frank Furedi argues that the hopeless spirit of our media reflects the culture of fear that we have, either by omission or commission, co-created as individuals. Our political leaders and our media are only speaking to us in a language that we intuitively understand and largely engage in on a regular basis. Gustave le Bon similarly suggested in his late 19th century work The Crowd that:

“Institutions and laws are the outward manifestations of our character, the expression of its needs. Being its outcome, institutions and laws cannot change this character.”

If one’s mind is dominated by anxiety—a feeling of being ill-equipped for the intimidating challenges to come—the choices one makes can serve to challenge or to fuel that anxiety, to collaborate with it. Most of the anxieties in contemporary society are free-floating and not necessarily linked to an existential threat in an evolutionary sense; most choices made in fear, then, as a modern individual are never life-giving consequently. Rather, a choice to avoid anxiety and fear instead of attending to it in a confrontational way tends to lead to withdrawal, defeat, and a loss of the great potential of one’s current and future existence.

In a democratic society, the concern is that if a large portion of the voting population makes their choices—including the casting of their vote—in a state of individual and thus collective fear (or, at least, practically in line with a fear narrative), it is reasonable to assume that the broad-stroke choices we make as a culture will not be life-giving. Concerns towards the oppressive force of the majority on the minority have been present for centuries, with many thinkers expressing their unease at the potential for abuse—and not necessarily intentional abuse—of electoral systems.

John Stuart Mill popularized the idea in 1859 when he expressed concern over such dominations, suggesting that protections against tyrannical governance need also be applied to those who become the cultural authorities. In a democracy, the ‘rule of the people’ becomes the privilege of those who form most of the population, either through literal numbers or by successfully convincing the populace to accept them as the majority—whether they are or not. The “divine right of the masses”, as Gustave le Bon warned in 1895, has replaced the divine right of kings. This body represents a sovereign, dogmatic force that rises above debate and discussion.

Connecting with Furedi’s thesis, we can surmise that if the majority is dominated by a culture of fear, then the decisions made going forward will be made in fear—or, at least, moving in the direction of safety. This is the critical mass: the majority of the population that engages in decision-making—or decision demanding of the powers-that-be—that are reactive, a collective lizard brain stripped of critical thought. As a psychologist, Jung understood the depth of impact that feelings, including fear, have on decision making:

“Rational argument can be conducted with some prospect of success only so long as the emotionality of a given situation does not exceed a certain critical degree. If the affective temperature rises above this level, the possibility of reason’s having any effect ceases and its place is taken by slogans and chimerical wish fantasies.”

When reasonable discussion fails to intercept the emotionally charged buzzwords of the day, the critical mass can press on, largely unchecked. Henry David Thoreau—before Mills’ On Liberty was published—wrote at length in his essay Civil Disobedience on the inherent moral frailties of a system that can allow the majority to rule without counterbalances in the immediate term. Thoreau was interested in encouraging the individual to see their role as being a “counter friction” to stop the runaway train of the majority. While the casting of a vote certainly has importance within an electoral system, Thoreau reminds us that voting is only a feeble expression that you desire that one party—presumably a clearer representative of truth in the eyes of the specific voter—should prevail over the others. But where is the personal responsibility? Voting for what is morally right, wrote Thoreau, is “doing nothing for it.”

One who is convicted to be a counter friction has a greater responsibility. It demands far more than simply checking a name on a ballot:

“Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.” – Henry David Thoreau