Hitting the fear button: politicians and anti-Beijing media are preying on a worried Hong Kong
Politicians and anti-Beijing media are preying on a worried public
Though profit and fear have always been the two major motives underlying human behaviour, there is a critical difference between a profit-driven society and a society primarily motivated by fear. When opportunity knocks, the profit-driven society quickly rises up and answers the door. But by the time the fear-driven society unhooks the chain, releases the lock and shuts off the burglar alarm, opportunity has left without a trace.
That's why when I hear people say that Hongkongers are profit-mad, I take it as a backhanded compliment. If free-market capitalism and Hong Kong are a match made in heaven, it's because the profit motive is in our genes. One of the most diehard fans of Hong Kong's economic system, Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, said Hong Kong people were blessed with "a talent for recognising a profit opportunity when they see one".
Yet after 1997, with the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, there is every indication that the local populace has become too consumed by fear to be driven by profit. Like the faithless Israel described in the Book of Leviticus, Hong Kong people are terrified by "the sound of a flying leaf" and often "flee as fleeing from a sword".
In the bestseller , security expert Gavin de Becker suggests that when we are afraid, we are more alert and better able to pick up "survival signals" that protect us from violence. It is indeed a world in which only the paranoid survive.
Yet when fear becomes a habit of mind, as increasingly seems to be the case for many Hong Kong people, it eats away at our ability to tell the difference between real and imagined threats. Indiscriminate fear leads to indiscriminate action taken without thought about possible consequences.
And since fear is a strong emotion, it can be manipulated to steer people into making emotional rather than reasoned choices. Advertisers have long found that fear sells, and politicians were not slow in taking their cue from them.
In the famous "Daisy" attack ad from the 1964 American presidential election, a child's idyllic existence vanishes in the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. Though aired only once, it is considered a critical factor in Lyndon Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater and a turning point in political and advertising history.
In Hong Kong, politicians and the anti-Beijing news media are getting increasingly skilful at the use of fear as a persuasion technique. Every time they want to turn the public against the government, all they have to do is press the fear button. They say an idle mind is the devil's playground. So is a fearful mind.
