The
Culture of Fear: Surviving and living in troubled times.
By Will
“Did you watch the news today?” my neighbor asked.
He had surprised me on my way to my house. I nearly jumped out of my skin as he bolted out of the side path that connects our two yards in back. No, I hadn’t, I told him. I had just got home and this scene was nothing new. Mark makes it habit of informing me about everything going on in the world, at all the wrong times. Still, this day, I was glad he did.
There was a bit of information that I began to glean from Mark’s hurried voice and dour appearance. More so, it was the way that he himself looked. He was exacerbated, beat and truly carried his worries about the world on his sleeve. His eyes were wide, and if I didn’t know he was my neighbor, I would have mistaken him for some deranged mountain man.
“Damn.” I thought, “Watching the news these days is a lot like getting addicted to crack.”
For some odd reason, a thought popped into my head and I remembered a young Frank Sinatra, as he played Captain Bennett Marco in the Manchurian Candidate. Mark didn’t need a nutty mother over his shoulder goading him on to fear and panic, he had his television and the evening news.
And that’s when it hit
me. There was very little difference
between the two of them in my mind at that moment. What in the world were they putting in the
news these days that had my friend so bothered?
For a second or two, I thought about my own high priced, unused hat rack
that rarely got turned on unless someone wanted to use the Play Station. After seeing Mark that day, it can gather
dust now for all I care.
A few years back, I started to realize that the TV had taken up a lot of my time. I made it a conscious effort to wean myself away from it the tube. A friend of mine decided that he was taking his out of his house completely and he hauled it off to the local recycling center. Had we lost our minds? Well, no, not really. A lot of us are becoming aware of how much of our day is lost to hours wasted in front of a screen. Plus, it always seems that the real stuff, the actual facts, isn’t even being presented on the evening news.
Nowadays, tales of woe, dirty bombers, nuclear threats,
violence in the
Maybe I’m lost on this one, but it seems like all that the news on TV does these days is to depress the mind and make you think everything is hopeless. It’s rare to hear a story about how things are going well. After September, people are talking less to each other and spending more time in front of the tube. This can’t be healthy for our country, or more importantly, us. The news media keeps churning out story after story, taking scripts feed to it by some government security expert somewhere, and the American people are being left in the flood of this dire information. Each night they sit at home, absorbed and attentive to almost every broadcast or government report.
This bothers me a bit, and if you really think about it, all this focus on fear can’t be good for the mind. It just can’t.
To hear the news tell it, they blame the need for sensationalism on the American public. We are accused of having an addiction for this stuff, but seriously, who makes the money of this infotainment and benefits from the ratings? Instead of being responsible about their format, they continue to contribute to this climate of fear that is rippling through our country.
Later that evening, I sat down with Mark and talked to him. I wasn’t going to let my neighbor get sucked into a cycle of constantly living in fear. If anything, I wanted to reassure him that life was worth living, and that box in his house has a bad habit of lying to him. It’s not some great evil, but it was over taking his sense of reality. Living this way, I explained to him, is like being enslaved for real and it wouldn’t ‘free’ his mind. Fear is a good thing to have when you need that extra kick in the ass to get out of dangerous situation, but it isn’t healthy for the human mind to dwell on it constantly. Plus, fear leaves you wide open to suggestions you might otherwise reject. Unscrupulous people can take advantage of your fears, and you don’t want that because you want to be in charge of your own life.
“Besides” I told him, “If the world ‘is’ going to end tomorrow, don’t you want to be out doing something you love, instead of watching TV?”
He agreed and we spent the afternoon talking about general issues and listening to Floyd. Regardless, I made him turn the TV off. After talking for a bit and downing a few, well placed drinks, Mark was finally able to smile for once. I was happy too, in a small way, I felt like I had helped free another mind from the circus of fear that some call the American media. One less soul to lie too, one less mind to scare.
Now I’m not saying to quit reading the news, or participating in discussions on terrorism. No, not at all. In fact, I propose the opposite. I think we should talk about it, but we need to do it in person and within our own communities. We should question everything and we should start to ask why all this is happening. Most of the problems today aren’t created by some natural event or detached catastrophe, they are invented by human minds and carried out with human hands.
I would like to remind you, we created the germs and nuclear material that we fear so much. It’s time we started asking ourselves why such things exist, and why a right and reasonable nation would want to use these terrors against another. In truth, it’s time we all started getting involved n the process of ending this nightmare, imagined or otherwise. But we can’t do it while we live in fear of leaving our homes or talking with our neighbors. That’s exactly the wrong thing to do.
Instead, just get out there.
We live in the most beautiful country in the world, although it’s companies, government officials and fear mongers can
make it look ugly at times. Plus, I’m
not saying ‘go buy something for
One of my friends took this to another level and quit her job recently. People thought she was crazy, but I could see her logic in leaving. From what she told me, she wanted to see the world while she was young, and not later when she was too old to go climb the mountains she loved so much. She was going travelling to see a nation that she had only seen on TV, or read about in the news. In a way, she went off to find herself, and for most of us, that’s a person few come to know. It’s hard to call someone ‘lazy’ and ‘unproductive’, when her goal is to find out who exactly she is and discover her own way in the world. That’s admirable, even for those that would criticize her exodus. If anything, she doesn’t live her life in fear or worry. Neither should you.
If you’re tired of living in fear, then quit participating in it. If your not discussing solutions (that don’t include additional fear, death and malice), then you are contributing to the problem when you only talk about how bad it is on news. It’s wise to keep people informed, but after that point, it’s time to question and wonder how we can help ourselves get out of this hole we’ve jumped into. What’s going on right now has been caused by a lot of things. Mainly, we as nation of people have been distracted too long and asleep at the wheel. We need to get back into the seat or someone else is going to drive us right off a cliff. We can’t wait for our government to solve the problem, if anything, they are contributing to the situation and helping to promote the climate of fear. We’ll have to pull ourselves out of this one. Don’t wait before it’s too late.
Life is worth living. The only other alternative is to be dead or be in a state expecting to be dead; one is just the same as the other. Keeping yourself immersed in fear will only drown your mind, and that won’t save the world either. More bombs, troops, extra security, bureaucratic red tape or some super-douper new fangled government G – Force, can’t save the world. That never works to solve anything, and usually, it only works to oppress the mind and create more fear. We need less fear in our lives, less lies and tales of peril. It’s almost like we’ve given up and we are all heading for dire end. No wonder why everyone is so frantic and upset. There’s a lot that can be said about negative thinking, but there is more benefit to being balanced in our views. Yes, I admit, the world has become a dangerous place, but taking the attitude that it’s all going to hell is not going to help either. Some say, “Why try, I’m so small in all of this.” Don’t give yourself over to this illusion. Justifiable apathy will only desert you in the end and it never changes the outcome in your favor.
I love freedom. I like getting out there myself and exploring all the possibilities that life has to offer. I like to write about what I see and share it with others that I know. In turn, my friends share their art, ideas, music and love. We help out each other during times of trouble. I’ve more than once had to help out a friend in need, as I too have been helped out in many situations. I would have never come to this point in my life if I had been afraid of trying out new things, creating new ideas and exploring new possibilities. I’m a realist, and I won’t quit talking about the issues that need to be discussed. But as far as fear goes, it’s an illusion of the mind. To dwell on it past the point of use-fullness is a waste of time and won’t solve the problems we face in life.
I know about this issue personally, I used to dwell on my fears constantly, and it nearly cost me my friends and my life. Regardless of any change or experience I wished to have come into my life back then, fear was a factor that kept me back from becoming who I am today. I had to do a lot of thinking and soul searching to come to the conclusion that I was in charge of my life. They haven’t put a microchip in me yet, and I’m not about to stand by and let that reality come into being. It was do or die situation back then, as it is now for a lot of people, and I had quit living in fear in order to move forward. A lot of people gave up money, time and energy to help get me to this point. Those same people read each column that I write and ask when I am going to publish again. I’m humbled they feel that way, and I know that I would be letting them and myself down if I stopped now. Besides, writing brings me peace and happiness. If I still lived fear, I wouldn’t be able to give this story to you.
Before I left, I shared all of this with Mark and later, a number of us started to work towards communicating more in our neck of the ‘woods’. It’s not perfect in our neighborhood, but it’s really been looking good around here.
On the way back to the house, my friend from across the
street waved at me and asked me to come over.
She was on her roof and she told me there something I just had to
see. I made my way up the side stairs to
her roof. When I made it to the top, she
gave me a hug and motioned for me to turn around. She pointed in the direction of the western
mountains, and a beautiful
Why yes, I smiled, yes it is.
”And all the fears you hold
so dear will turn to whisper in your ear, and you know what they say might hurt
you, and you know that it means so much and you don't even feel a thing.” ‘Duvet’ by Boa. Theme from “Lain”