A fair world?

A recent study done at Berkley purports to explain why alarmist messages about global warning fail. What the study establishes is that people who see the world in a certain way react badly to big scares. Here's how the the study's authors explain it:

"Our study indicates that the potentially devastating consequences of global warming threaten people's fundamental tendency to see the world as safe, stable and fair. As a result, people may respond by discounting evidence for global warming," said Robb Willer, UC Berkeley social psychologist and coauthor of a study to be published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.

"The scarier the message, the more people who are committed to viewing the world as fundamentally stable and fair are motivated to deny it," agreed Matthew Feinberg, a doctoral student in psychology and coauthor of the study. 

They go on to say that this can be overcome if the message is presented in "less apocalyptic ways" and that the bad news is accompanied with "solutions".

Well, I suspect the real problem is that all the proposed solutions are the apocalyptic part. Leaving that aside for now, here is the thing that strikes me: Where in tarnation does anyone get the absurd notion that the world is "safe, stable and fair"? Sometimes those of us who believe in a loving God are mocked for being irrational but a loving being can exist. The notion that the world would be fair or that nature or the earth has some intrinsic justice is just insane.

Beings can be fair or unfair, governments can be fair or unfair, civilizations can be fair or unfair but the world is just a collection of impersonal forces. It doesn't care because it can't care. The cancer that could kill Lucy may already be growing in her and the asteroid that will end all human life in a flash may already he hurtling toward the planet. Both are driven by nothing but a huge accumulation of fluke.

Only a childish, immature culture would think that  the world is safe, stable and fair. Sophocles, Saint Augustine and Shakespeare all would have laughed in the face of anyone who believed anything so stupid. And rightly so!