THE CULTURE OF FEAR

Text topic: Forty Years of Kultura Journal

Text author: Јелена Ђорђевић

This paper shows that fears of the modern age have built up so intensively that we can now talk about the catastrophe culture. At the moment when it seems impossible to ensure means for risk reduction and the behavior of both nature and the society appears unpredictable, a universal feeling of fear of the coming catastrophe is born. We can say that catastrophism is becoming the ethos of the global world order. The feeling of powerlessness lies in the gap between our fears and our replies to fears. The exits which are offered us follow along the traced paths of development embedded in the hegemonic model of neo-liberalism and globalization, which smothers all alternatives and expects help to arrive from the directions that caused the problem in the first place. The future is a problem that needs to be solved using all means available, as it is hard to believe that history has left only a few doors open.