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The Psychology of Fear (Part 1)
By harveyrobbins | July 15, 2002
About a month or so ago a friend of mine was telling me about an article he’d just read on the internet about how WorldCom was caught cooking the books and would likely declare bankruptcy as a result. As I listened to him, I imagined a dark storm cloud forming in the already gray and blustery sky. I thought, “Is this the death knell to our economy as we know it? Is DOW 5000 a real possibility?” Then I said, “Please tell me their auditor was Anderson.” He nodded his head. I breathed a sigh of relief. Why? Fear.
I thought we may just have dodged an economic bullet. Pre 9/11, the economy was already beginning to slide; coming off 10 years of economic boom. This cycling of the economy was very normal. Nothing to worry about long-term. There was the normal number of greedy executives hitting the headlines as they robbed the treasuries of their own companies while layoffs accelerated. Again, nothing out of the ordinary; a few obscene compensation packages seemed a bit odd, considering the slowing economy, but again acceptable in the boom mentality of the past 10 years. We complained but did nothing.
Then 9/11 happened and for the first time in U.S. history, people bent on destroying the American Dream succeeded in creating havoc and fear on our home shores. We thought this could never happen here. We thought we had the best intelligence and law enforcement agencies in the world. We thought we were protected by distance and oceans and deterrent weapons. We thought we knew who hated us and why. We were wrong. To some around the world, we have an arrogance which arose from our sense of security. They are wrong. Our sense of pride in America came, in part, from our system of democratic government combined with our rock solid free market capitalist economic system. It all worked. Even though our economy was going through a normal down cycle, we could ease our anger and fear of terrorism at home by looking at how well our economy held up to this fear; it kept chugging along.
Then Enron happened. It was slap in the face, but not a knockout blow. It allowed the “wink and nod” auditing practices of Anderson to bubble to the surface and wither in the daylight of public scrutiny. Why now?! People were already afraid of external forces over which they felt vulnerable. We didn’t need the extra stress of being afraid of our economic health at the hands of a few corporate thugs. Then came Global Crossing, then Quest, then Martha Stewart, then WorldCom, then… then what.
The psychology of fear is interesting. When one is afraid there is a tendency to strike out in anger; find someone or something to hurt to make ourselves feel better. Even though this doesn’t work, it’s genetic. Animals will even eat their own young when afraid. We’re doing the same thing now. We’re afraid because of terrorism, but we can’t strike out quickly enough or with sufficient victory so we turn this fear inward in anger against our institutions and organizations.
We’re all looking for someone to hang in anger so we can claim tangible retribution. Thus what has passed for acceptable accounting practices in the past (wink) and with a bit of smoke and mirrors has lifted our economy beyond fundamentals (nod), has now become the target of our rage.
We trusted our system even though at times it made little sense. How can a company report so much financial gain when they have no real product to sell? But we asked few questions. Until now. Thank goodness. It was Anderson (the bad seed) with WorldCom. Anderson is already toast and it’s hard to burn ash. But what’s next?
Now that our faith in the workings of the “system” has been disturbed we can all shake our heads say, “I knew something didn’t smell right”. Surprisingly enough, though, I believe that deep down inside, we’re all a bit optimistic; looking for some sliver of silver lining. In general, we are justice seeking, forgiving sorts. Those that did us wrong will be punished (although perhaps not as soundly as we’d like to see), and we will forgive those who were lead astray by others more greedy. Many of you will look in the mirror and feel badly that you were “duped” or perhaps now have to think of the future with a tighter belt. Well, don’t beat yourself up too much. We’re all in the same boat together. We will look for ways of putting this behind us and move towards the future. This too shall pass.
Topics: Psychology At Work |