Ontological security, anxiety, and the sequestration of experience

Processes of change engendered by modernity are intrinsically connected to globalising influences, and the sheer sense of being

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caught up in massive waves of global transformation is perturbing. ² More important is the fact that such change is also intensive: increasingly, it reaches through to the very grounds of individual activity and the constitution of the self. Contrary to the thrust of Lasch's analysis, however, no one can easily defend a secure `local life' set off from larger social systems and organisations. Achieving control over change, in respect of lifestyle, demands an engagement with the outer social world rather than a retreat from it.

Understanding the juggernaut-like nature of modernity goes a long way towards explaining why, in conditions of high modernity, crisis becomes normalised. Much has been written on this subject and there is little need to recapitulate it here. A `crisis' sounds like a major upheaval, or threatened upheaval, in an existing state of affairs -- the original meaning of the word, which comes from a medical context, referred to a life-threatening phase in an illness. <sup>3</sup> In modern social conditions, however, crises become more or less endemic, both on an individual and a collective level. To some extent this effect is rhetorical: in a system open to continual and profound change many circumstances arise which loosely can be thought of as `crises'. But it is not just rhetoric. Modernity is inherently prone to crisis, on many levels. A `crisis' exists whenever activities concerned with important goals in the life of an individual or a collectivity suddenly appear inadequate. Crises in this sense become a `normal' part of life, but by definition they cannot be routinised.

On some levels, a certain resigned world-weariness might be enough to cope psychologically with the ubiquity of crises -- an attitude which again is only possible under the aegis of a conception of fate. But many crisis situations, even those operating at great distance from the individual, cannot easily be approached in this way, because they have implications for the individual's life circumstances. A person may read of recurrent political crises, for example, and perhaps be scornful about the ability of political leaders to contain them. But many such crises directly affect that person's own activities and capabilities, as when they lead to economic troubles, high unemployment or difficulties in housing markets. The crisis-prone nature of late modernity thus has unsettling consequences in two respects: it fuels a general climate of uncertainty which an individual finds disturbing no matter how far he seeks to put it to the back of his mind; and it inevitably

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exposes everyone to a diversity of crisis situations of greater or lesser importance, crisis situations which may sometimes threaten the very core of self-identity.

The sequestration of experience serves to contain many forms of anxiety which might otherwise threaten ontological security -- but at considerable cost. Existential questions and doubts raise some of the most basic anxieties human beings can face. By and large, under conditions of modernity, such questions do not have to be confronted directly; they are institutionally `put aside' rather than handled within the personality of the individual. So far as the control of anxiety is concerned, this situation has paradoxical implications. On the one hand, in ordinary circumstances, the individual is relatively protected from issues which might otherwise pose themselves as disturbing questions. On the other hand, whenever fateful moments intervene or other kinds of personal crises occur, the sense of ontological security is likely to come under immediate strain.

On a psychological level, there are close connections between the sequestration of experience, trust and the search for intimacy. Abstract systems help foster day-to-day security, but trust vested in such systems, as I have stressed previously, carries little psychological reward for the individual; trust brackets out ignorance, but does not provide the moral satisfactions that trust in persons can offer.

The sequestration of experience generates a specious control over life circumstances and is likely to be associated with enduring forms of psychological tension. For existential problems concern fundamental aspects of the lives of everyone; institutional repression cannot be by any means complete. We can see here a powerful basis for emotional disquiet, particularly when considered in combination with the backdrop of high-consequence risks. The loss of anchoring reference points deriving from the development of internally referential systems creates moral disquiet that individuals can never fully overcome.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 740