Fear has enormous power to destroy. The more afraid we are, the larger and more insurmountable the problem seems. This is not news – it’s the most basic of human responses. We run or we fight when we are afraid – it’s part of the instinctual systems we have that let us act when we haven’t time to think.
Fear in its proper place can be a good thing. Being scared to leap off of a perfectly good roof to see if your towel come cape lets you fly like Superman just might stop you from finding out the hard way that it doesn’t work – or at least let your Mom catch you up there before you can try. Fear is our brain’s way of saying ‘maybe we should rethink this…’.
But as we grow up we learn how to better assess risk. Jumping off the garage roof = dumb; jumping on the trampoline = fun. Running down the sidewalk when it’s icy – would be bad but not while getting away from the neighbor’s insane dog. Risk assessment is a good thing – and fear tells us now might be a good time to do that assessment. Great, huh?
It really is a good thing – until we overdo it. Afraid of jumping off the garage roof is sensible; afraid to jump over a small hurdle usually isn’t. Fear warning us to think twice is a good but letting fear dictate our actions is a really, really bad thing. If it doesn’t paralyze us entirely, it can make us the very monsters that we fear.
Afraid to say the wrong thing? Afraid to take or not take a medicine? Afraid to use the wrong pronouns? Afraid to tweet the wrong meme? Afraid to vote for the wrong candidate?
Afraid to even think?
That’s the paralyzing power of fear. Notice I gave no reasons for why we might or might not say something or use a given pronoun – I just gave examples and I strongly suspect most of you filled in the blanks. When we are afraid of something without reasoning it through, that’s when fear is completely running amok. Being afraid is natural; letting fear rule over you is just dumb.
Yeah, yeah, easy for me to say – I’m a political blogger what would I know about… Oh… Yeppers, it happens to me. A lot.
One nice thing about letting fear rule over you is that you have a lot fewer choices to make. Pretty much anything that scares you is out – and as you live under fear, more and more things scare you. Which means fewer and fewer choices to be made – and less and less of life to be lived.
Maybe jumping off the garage roof was a dumb idea – but running around the backyard imagining you were really flying was great, wasn’t it? Okay, it hurt when you met the pavement trying to learn to ride a bike – but that first time you rode without training wheels or your Dad hanging on was exhilarating, wasn’t it? Sometimes you won – sometimes you didn’t – but each time you tried, you learned something and it made it easier to try again. Life is like that – and fear can rob you of it all.
The world doesn’t come in size ‘perfectly safe’. We have to navigate between acceptable and unacceptable – even insane – risks. Some are worth taking; some not. We were given brains to figure out which is which.
And here’s the rest of the story: it’s true that sometimes bad things happen but it’s also true that Chicken Little was a twit. The world has been around for a while and will likely be around a great while longer. Despite humanities better attempts – remember Mutual Assured Destruction? – we haven’t destroyed the planet or ourselves. It’s unlikely we’ll manage to do either in any given week.
The slippery slope is a logical fallacy because a person can see the danger and stop. It’s a political reality because it does no good to stop when an entire mob is rushing up behind you – you just get swept over the edge with everyone else. BUT to think that those are our only choices is a false dichotomy. We can see the danger, get out of the way and start warning the idiots rushing forward. Some of them will hear and stop – some won’t. But that’s still good enough if we can warn everyone in time to stop the mob from being a mob. The headlong few at the front will still have a chance to stop if there aren’t a bunch of crazed people behind them.
We can’t consider rationally in a state of fear. We aren’t designed to do that. We are designed to avoid imminent danger and then decide what to do next, once we can think rationally. something that happens in a split second, this works great. Prolonging the fear months or years? That just gets an irrational mob running off the proverbial cliff.
Sort of like now, when ‘following the science’ has begun to look like a Keystone Kops movie, only not nearly as funny. The first step to improving things is one everyone can take – and it’s hard.
Stop being afraid. Don’t live in the fear – look it in the eye and tell it that you don’t need to run off a cliff, thanks. Find something to take your mind of of it for a while if you can’t make it stop – then come back and think about it once the fear is under control. Don’t hide from the fear – control it.
It’s simple to say and hard to do – but so is housebreaking a puppy. You have to get the dog to do what it needs to do on your schedule – and the dog doesn’t have a clue what you want or why. But millions of puppies are housebroken every year. Emotions are a lot like puppies – they want to help but they aren’t particularly bright. You have to train them – and you can.
You managed 12 years of sitting still listening to a teacher because you can control yourself. Fear is no different. It has its place but you must be its master.
Make the world a better place – step one is to control your fear. Don’t be afraid.
