There is no need for a "culture of fear"

I felt this report on the paralysis brought on by fear - that feeling of helplessness we experience in the face of overwhelming disaster as heartening. I found it on the website of The Guardian newspaper from London. read the article here.

We need to remind ourselves that communities often possess remarkable capacities to rebuild their lives. The experience of history indicates that humanity can survive disasters. The good news is that life goes on.

After 9/11, New Yorkers showed tremendous resilience and community spirit. That much of this positive legacy was frittered away by short-sighted policies does not detract from the inspiring way in which New Yorkers succeeded in getting on with life. In Asia, after the tsunami, we saw many examples of communities overcoming and recovering from the devastation they had suffered.

The meaning that we derive from last week's disaster need not be that it justifies a culture of fear. Instead, this tragedy can stimulate us to clarify who we are and what we believe is the purpose of life. The absence of consensus on the meaning of a disaster represents an opportunity for a debate about the kind of society we want to build. The way to minimise the influence of the fear merchants is to focus on working out a shared way of interpreting future misfortunes.

· Frank Furedi is professor of sociology at the University of Kent. His Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right is published by Continuum Press this month