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Transcending Our Culture of Fear
© 2004 John-Michael Dumais
Letter to the Editor of the Keene Sentinel, Keene, NH
June, 2004
On May 19, Christine Nordstrom wrote a letter to the Keene Sentinel stating that Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! show
(airing on WKNH 91.3 FM 7a.m.-8a.m. weekdays), is “far left, hiding behind the word democracy.” She ends by claiming that Pacifica Radio is seeking to “remove democracy from the face of the Earth.”
Nordstrom’s note expresses the increasingly fear-based perspective that has settled into the minds of many Americans. On
one level, such fears are understandable, given the daily reports of horrific violence, and “color-coded alerts” warning us of vague and nameless dangers.
The underlying fears – fear of loss of security, fear over what we cannot control, fear of the unknown – seek protection from real and imagined dangers by reverting to the primal power of the fight-flight response, where persons are either foes or friends, but nothing in between. Fear-based thinking gives rise to extreme judgments of good and bad, right and wrong, and to such sweeping statements as, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Just when we should be taking deep breaths and calling on the wisdom of our loved ones and allies, fear crunches us up tight, overwhelms us, causes us to lash out, and seems to justify the use of violence as a means to peace.
The mind-lock of fear is most visible in our tendency to judge and label others. Labeling others – whether it’s “leftist”
or “reactionary,” “Arab” or “French,” “gay” or “straight” – is ultimately a dehumanizing act. Why? Because when we paint a living being with a broad-brush label, they become a “thing,” and therefore less than fully
human. By so doing we create an “us” and a “them,” and justify closing our minds and hearts to “them.” Nowhere is this thinking more deftly inculcated as in the military, where soldiers practice seeing the enemy as
inhuman, and so easier to kill.
As real as some dangers are, the more insidious dangers may be of our own making. In a kind of mental rigor mortis, our
feared images of death stick to us, making us rigid and coloring our view of the world. Seeing death and threats everywhere, we react violently and become the purveyors of threats and death ourselves. That’s how the
torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib prison came to pass. But this dehumanization is not limited to the military. In so-called civic life today we have regular reports of
police brutality, racism, gay-bashing, FBI harassment, wrongful imprisonments… the list goes on and on.
Fear-based thinking also adamantly resists alternative points of view. I think of Limbaugh and O’Reilly and Savage,
yelling at and in some cases physically threatening guests with whom they disagree. The problem is not that we have such feelings of discord, but that we react by trying to control the expression of others, often
through force and threats of violence. Instead of admitting, “I’m angry when I hear some of the things that this radio program says, and I need to talk about it,” we project our worst fears outward, which quickly
escalate to a conclusion such as “they want to remove democracy from the face of the Earth.” This leaves little room for reflection or discussion. It’s suddenly us against them, and “they” want to kill us (or our
way of life), so we will strike first, with judgments, fists, laws, or bombs. This attitude of pre-emptive force, sadly, has become the modus operandi of our current administration. Yet the administration could only
have such power because many of us react in the same way.
Democracy can only thrive if “we the people” make our voices heard. Not just some of us, but all of us, from across the
sociopolitical spectrum. We need to grow beyond this adolescent stage where those with different backgrounds, beliefs, values or interests provoke us into extreme or violent reactions. Imagine the difference it
would make if we could genuinely show an interest in what makes a “pacifist” or a “neoconservative” tick – if we ventured beyond the pigeonholing into the underlying humanity of each person. Far from being
threatened, we may find that our very salvation lies in our ability to keep opening our hearts beyond the preconceptions that have separated “us” from “them,” and so develop a new habit tolerance and compassion that
prizes and even protects differences. Only through a free and open media, and a deep commitment to equality, will we be able to benefit from our collective wisdom and create a world that works for everyone.
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