Be Afraid; Be Very Afraid

 
I was going to write about courage but it’s so much easier (and more fun) to write about fear.  As Yogi Berra would say, “Fear does make cowards of us all.” And fear is one of the major engines that drive modern life.  We live in fear of dying, fear of wearing the wrong deodorant (or none at all), fear of losing our spouse, fear of poverty, fear of old age, fear of cancer, fear of losing our livelihood, and fear of yellowing teeth.  We fear the economy, fear for our children’s future and, of course, some of us fear losing our 90 round clip and automatic assault rifle.

Fear (and its companion, shame) is the greatest promotional tool ever invented.  Fear sells toothpaste (if you’re not whitening, you’re yellowing), cosmetics, hair colouring (wash away the grey), shampoo (split ends) and alarm systems.  After all dandruff, wrinkles, body odour and home invasion are what would define the negative, fragile, repugnant us.  So we run to the store and buy whatever product we have been assured will chase away the clouds of fear that cast a shadow on our world, only to be presented with a new deficiency that threatens the assurance with which we hope to go through life.

All fear is the fear of death.  Even the fear of injury and pain is merely death invited but delayed.  Does God feel fear?  Why would he?  He is immortal and invulnerable.  We, on the other hand, are not.  If death is taken out of the equation, what is there that’s left to fear?  Perhaps the fear of not dying?  It’s still all about death.

All fears, it seems to me, reduce to a fear of death.  Fear of flying?  That one’s obvious.  Fear of spiders?  They are a million times smaller than you but tied up in them by way of connotation is venom, predation, immobilization, life-juice sucking and a host of creepy-crawly images.  Fear of growing old?  That one is obvious too but includes the fear of loss of virility and relevance - the loss of 'power' leading to the eventual 'dead battery'.  Fear of loss?  A loss is the death of a relationship between oneself and another, be it human, animate, or inanimate.  Death is the ultimate loss, and the departure of things and people from our lives is merely a foreshadowing of our own eventual “departure” or that departure in microcosm.

But fear becomes a useful tool in the arsenal of forces that seek to control the herd of humanity.  For me, the paradigm of herd control has, as its linchpin, the effect of fear on the herd.  Consider for a moment, the solitary cow.  In its becalmed state it munches on grass and is largely oblivious to whatever else is happening.  An attempt to move it from its gradient of available food will be met with resistance – in most cases, passive.  Introduce a threat into this bucolic ideal and things change dramatically.

At the explosion of a gunshot or the aggressive action of a dog, the cows stir from their reverie and move away from the threat, grudgingly at first but – if the threat persists or intensifies – with increasing panic.  Eventually, the herd flows like a river, in full panic, and can be directed in whatever direction is needed by the application of further threat along its course.  That’s why buffalo jumps worked.  All the natives of North America had to do was get the tide of fear rolling and the waves, cleverly channeled, would cascade over the nearest cliff.

People, unfortunately, are much like cattle in this way.  Lacking firm direction, they take their cues from those around them and can be stampeded into any course of action by those who seek to control them.  Think of religions.  The fear of death is a sine qua non of their existence and proliferation.  “Pssstt, ya wanna live forever?”  Religions use the fear of death and the fear of never dying (eternal damnation) to fill their coffers and lead their mindless minions over the cliff of superstition.

Think of modern politics, especially of the right (which is closely bound to religion).  Groups such as the Tea Party and Libertarians in the US and Reformative Harperites in Canada are predicated on striving for power through the dissemination of fear.  Economic fears, fear of terrorists, fear of losing your freedom, fear of losing your child-murdering assault rifle, and fear of losing your material advantage turn social ‘grazers’ into a frothing avalanche of eager cliff divers.

So stop.  Think.  Evaluate.  Reason!!  This is the way to sanity.  Be afraid of things that will kill you – that’s why we have fear in the first place.  But don’t allow others, including me, to send you hell-bent-for-leather to the abattoir.