Fear - A Reality Check

From my journal March 14, 2021

I’ve seen more fear in my world in the last year than I have in my entire life.  It’s been an extreme challenge, and caused me to spend a fair amount of time thinking about what fear does to a mind. Just a few important ones to consider: 

1. Fear can block rational thinking.  Fear is the emotion triggered by the limbic fight-or-flight response.  The fact fear can shut down the reasoning frontal cortex is a simple matter of cause and effect.  But because God is so big on honoring personal will, is it possible for a person with a deeply held value system - who constantly taps into it through personal practice - to block the fight-or-flight response?

1. 2. Fear can override compassion and charity. Prophets who have been given the discouraging and often life-threatening assignment of preaching to dying societies always preach about faith, hope, and charity. I wonder - is charity particularly important in a dying society because fear is so rampant?  Is it possible that practicing charity can help override fear?

1. 3. Fear can trigger anger.  Fear is a primary emotion; anger is a secondary.  Fearful people can be easily manipulated to become angry people, and angry people can be easily manipulated to violence.  Fear can be a powerful weapon in the hands of power mongers. Is it possible that practicing controlling anger can help lessen this trigger from fear?

1. 4. Fear inhibits connection.  Fear turns every other child of God into a soulless ‘It’ - an ‘Other’ who is so different from ourselves, we can’t possibly see anything in common with them.  In the absence of fear, we can more clearly see all others as sacred like ourselves - with thoughts and feelings and fears and phobias like ours.  Is it possible that in practicing seeing others like ourselves, we can inhibit our fears?

1. 5. Fear erodes faith. It has been said that faith and fear can’t co-exist, and I believe it. Fear is walking on water towards a Savior we very often can’t see, yet keeping our eye on the waves beneath our feet; faith is walking towards a Savior, and with an eye of faith, keeping our eye on a beloved Face which we WILL see with our physical eyes one day. 

I can tell I’ve spent a good part of this last year in the stages of grief as I’ve mourned how successful the fear campaign has been with people all over the world. I’ve experienced denial that fear is driving any of the dramatic changes we’ve seen, and optimistically hoped that reason would eventually prevail. I’ve experienced anger at what has felt like a complete abandonment of common sense, common interests, and common values.  And I’ve finally come to an acceptance that none of these problems will be solved without Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the solution.  Even those who don’t want to recognize Him as the Son of God and Savior of the world would do well to consider His teachings as solutions: reason, compassion, charity, overcoming anger, connection, faith in unseen goodness. 

We’re all walking on a pretty stormy sea now. Take a chance - look up from the waves and into the dearest Face I know.  “Fear thou not; for I am with thee:  be not dismayed; for I am thy God...” (Isaiah 41:10)

Fear - a reality rant

From my journal - March 7, 2021

I started to pay closer attention to the unjust actions of corrupt government about twelve years ago. It’s been a very interesting journey.  I’ve learned a lot about the subtle ways the very desire to self-govern is being eroded in the U.S. 

Because so many have lost the historical context of what self-government is even supposed to be, which is at the heart of the American experiment, my fear that we are losing our desire and ability to do it has often been dismissed and disrespected.  It hurts to have people you love and respect treat your fear as irrational. 

With that as context, you might imagine the consternation I’ve felt in the last year.  I am told I am an uncharitable person to disrespect the very real fear of people who are afraid of dying of a virus that has proven to have a 99% survival rate.  To me, fear of a virus with that survival rate is the very definition of an irrational fear.  

Until just the last few years, the United States I have lived in my whole life has been a place where individuals could decide for themselves whether they wanted to take precautions for their own health. Those who feared getting sick - rational or not - could do something about it.  Their fear - rational or not - had nothing to do with using compulsory means to change the way anyone else lived their lives.  The fact that it’s considered selfish and even reckless or cruel to do this now, a year into “flattening the curve,” would suggest that MY fear has been the most rational. 

I work very hard to not allow myself to be offended, but I’ve got to tell you - I am now officially offended that my fear of the last twelve years has been dismissed, and even mocked and derided for being irrational, while at the same time those who may have been germaphobic to begin with are treated as if their fear has genuine merit.

I respect the precautions of more hand washing, more attention to improving my own personal immune system, and staying home when you’re not feeling well.  All other precautions?  I can’t respect any of them because of the outlandish inconsistencies in implementation. But I’m made to comply with these inconsistent policies, and from the look of it, the reason is to assuage others’ fear.

I’m PARTICULARLY offended when over a hundred illegal immigrants were released into Texas last week, who tested positive for the virus! This - at the same time I’ve just spent the last year being denied the unalienable right of AIR, all in the name of calming others’ fear. Well, what about MY fear that we are losing our freedom?  How seriously can I take this if illegal immigrants who have the virus aren’t quarantined before being allowed into the U.S. at large, while at the same time, people are policing each other about keeping a mask up over the nose, and families are being kicked off planes because a terrified little child doesn’t want to keep a mask over his face for a 4-hour flight?

What of my fear that power-hungry people have seized the opportunity of a crisis - as they always do - and have used fear to get us to comply with an important loss of individual liberty?  Naomi Wolf has written recently of her concern that “emergency” powers - once taken, are historically NEVER relinquished. And lest you think this is a partisan issue: Naomi Wolf is a Democrat. 

Self-government means that not only are we capable of making the best choices for our own lives, but that we’re capable of allowing other people to do the same - even if their choices look completely different than our choices. 

Self-government means we’ve outgrown the first-grade tendency to tattle to teacher, pointing to our neighbor at Table 1, and shouting, “He’s doing it wrong!”  My apologies to the more mature first-graders everywhere. 

Self-government means we realize that freedom means we have to give each other room to learn from our mistakes by doing it wrong, because WE need that room ourselves.  

I need to change my answer.  I’m not offended; I’m heart-broken.  I’m heart-broken and stunned at the widespread ignoring  of logic which has been necessary to bring us to this one-year anniversary of two weeks to flatten the curve. I mourn that the United States of America’s beautiful experiment in self-government seems to be lost.  All rational evidence points to the curve being flattened a long time ago. But the more contagious virus - irrational fear that a healthy neighbor can kill you - may never be flattened if we don’t turn our frontal cortexes back on. It’s the only thing that will override fear, and the only thing that will save our liberty.