Are We At Risk of Emotional Hyperinflation?
Being vs. Feeling "Safe"
Increasingly, the claim that one feels unsafe and the claim that one is unsafe are indistinguishable.
Does the presence of a controversial speaker at a university or the publishing of a controversial writer in a major newspaper constitute an actual threat to “safety”? It depends on what we mean by “safe.” Perhaps there is a question of time-horizon. Is the threat immanent or far away? Is it probable or unlikely?
Yet if lived experience is the crowned authority, and there is no objective measure, then whoever makes the most noise will be validated. Feeling unsafe and being unsafe will be conflated.
Basic game theory predicts that the more claims to unsafety (caused by the expression of some ideological view) are honored, the more the market will be saturated with claims to unsafety. But as claims increase, their value declines, leading to “safety inflation.” Hyperinflation (or stagflation) would be a situation in which everyone across the ideological spectrum is shouting that they feel unsafe, and yet nobody believes anyone else.
If you think about emotional inflation as a problem (a la the parable of the boy who cried wolf), then you might think of possible solutions in terms of monetary policy. Is a reluctance to respond to most claims to unsafety a kind of “austerity” policy? What is the analogue to decreasing the money supply and/or government spending?
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