WORLD SOCIAL SUMMIT 2008
'Wss: Bauman, fear is a capital from which to gain profit'

"Where are we going" is asking Bauman during his speech on the last day of the World Social Summit organized by Fondazione Roma. "The pendulum moved from one side to the other and this generated worries in who is fearful, because they need more reassurances. To do this, society limits freedoms often in a clear way. Today we accept limits which were unthinkable before, such as at the airport". "The problem" continues the sociologist "is that fear constitutes an enormous capital from a political and commercial point of view. Many politicians win the elections like this".

Bauman recalls a recent survey in the United States: contrarily to all manipulations, 75% of Americans fear to lose their social position. Only 7% fears terrorism. "Is safety possible?" asks the professor. "I lived through the crashing of credit, societies that went bankrupt from one day to the other: what was the cause of the collapse? An upset, a sudden recession of the economy that became permanent? There is a new policy in the world of credit conceived by British societies: the denial to renew the credit card also of those clients who had paid their debts in full, keeping only clients that still have to pay them".

Bauman explains that "This policy had boundaries and these boundaries have been reached. Who did not have the means to pay off the credit nor the possibility to pay interests was being counted among debtors: a dog that bites its tail, a vicious circle that brought the credit sector to collapse. The same occurs with regards to fear. If I am right, this means that the possibilities to overcome these fears are far away. Fear is a capital as the loans emitted and it can be transformed into a profit, a permanent gain. A profit is gained from fear. Politicians are reluctant to reject fear because it generates a profit.

A kamikaze is not a wolf, we do not recognize him. The ability to recognize the kamikaze before he enters in action requires discipline. I do not think we will attain a considerable progress when the causes of fear will be established. If society has its fears, then I do not think the war against terrorism can be won once and for all. But if society has particular fears like liquid fears, which float, detach and attach from one sphere to the other, then they can be fought. We will not win the war, but we will win a battle.

"Today" says Bauman, "in order to find a solution, we can use two approaches. A diachronic approach, that depends on the point of view according to which we look at things, and a synchronic one, that depends instead on where we look".