Tannishblog

As a species, humans fear. A ruler knows that the mob can be a deadly force if fear overtakes it. Despots have longed understood the value in instilling fear as means of control. Organized religion, capitalizing as is does the fear of the unknown, cannot exist without stoking the fires of uncertainty.

As individuals, we spend time and energy to avoid what we fear, even to our detriment. Avoidance of what discomforts us can further our discomfort. A man I know doesn’t like computers. In a sense, he fears what he doesn’t know and what he does not want to learn. As a result, he is willing to give up his job because it increasingly involves a computer to document his actions, to communicate throughout the corporation, to keep track of the workload. Fear of the unknown, however benign the unknown may be, rules his actions and forces his decisions. This fear causes personal anxiety and organizational disarray within the workforce. One man’s fear affects everyone around him.

People can adopt a collective, social fear as well. September 11, 2001 caused a mass hysteria of societal fear we are still reconciling today. Our leaders have capitalized on this fear to create a veritable blank check for legislation over the past few years. Only now, as the fear subsides, can we begin to understand how our emotional response to a tragedy of such proportion can influence the entire world. If tempered with reason, typical human emotions in response to 9/11 – anger, bitterness, retribution – are to some degree rationalized into a coherent response. Fear, however, cannot treat with reason. Because we as a nation fear another terrorist attack, we condone actions we otherwise would be horrified to contemplate, we look away as our military overcompensates for the wrongs against our nation, and we rationalize preemptive actions that have no bearing upon the actual causes of the terrorist attack itself.

In all of our brief national history, I find no example where America has ever given into fear as we have in this new century. As a people, we are inundated with alerts aimed at this most influential emotion: terror attacks and warning; avian flu; racism; food and environmental allergies; pollution and its affects; corrupt businesses; corrupt government; mass murderers; child molesters; car thieves… the list is endless. The media gleefully panders to our fear, because this means pennies in their pockets; the government eagerly panders to our fears because this creates a passive and more malleable population.

The past century of increased information overload has come with a price. Freedoms have increased, as affluence has increased: We are now free to fear everything around us. This new entitlement, handed out surreptitiously, is in reality anti-freedom. Fear shackles our minds. We are no longer free to let our children play outdoors, to sleep with our doors unlocked, to strike a conversation with a fellow shopper in the mall. We do not dare to leave our cars unlocked; we buy mace and take self-defense lessons. Our children are shuttled from building to car to building, breathing filtered air and feeling filtered sunlight in their skins. We are in constant connection with our teenagers via cell phones which act as a dog leash and masquerade as a safety net.

We fear, and this fear tells us what to buy and how to act. It shuts us off from each other. We vote for people who can stoke this fear. Therefore, we turn our minds off with a thousand entertainments to avoid looking at our fear, investigating our lives and the diminished lifestyles we silently, fearfully accept. Our media, the corporations who profit by selling into it, and by the government whose job becomes easier because of it, repackage fear. Collectively, these forces rename fear as “freedom”.

And we believe it.