— Can you really believe in all those fairy tales?
— Not in the good ones, no!
But in the bad ones, certainly!
Stalker (1979)
In the 2007 book A Philosophy of Fear, Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen explores the psychology of modern people and comes to a disheartening conclusion that the entire culture today can be defined as the “space of fear.” We simply do not notice how false threats and our own concerns, reasonable or unreasonable, are gradually changing our perception of the world and nudging our behavior.