For a variety of reasons, I have seen it necessary to comment often on the subject of fear recently [1]. Yesterday morning I awoke to a conversation where someone was frantically calling someone else completely freaked out that the victory of the Romney/Ryan ticket would mean that this elderly man would be tossed out on the street to starve. No doubt plenty of other people share this irrational fear (and it is irrational for a variety of reasons, some of them practical and some of them reasons of character). People with other political beliefs have other, similarly irrational fears. Having had the recent and extremely painful experience of being irrationally feared and loathed to an extremely high degree, I have pondered the origins of this fear and loathing and how we might better avoid this problem, because quite frankly it is an extremely unpleasant thing to live paralyzed and ruled by fear, and I want no part of that life for myself or those I care about.

Ideally, a belief and faith in God should reduce the level of fear in one’s life. As a practical concern, I have seen, both in my own life and the lives of others, that this is not always the case. We may have a strong belief in the existence and justice of God but may strongly doubt the goodness of His providential care for us. We may feel (especially if we have had others tell us this over and over again for many years) that perhaps God has ordained serious trials for us and that any happiness or joy we are to find will be far later, in the world to come, and not here and now. Quite frankly, after what I have seen in my life, I am not in the business of presuming to know God’s will for either bad or good. I personally believe God’s will is good, but that it will be shown indirectly. We have to be sensitive to doors opening and closing, or to see the optimistic side of what happens to us. This is not always easy to do for those of us given to more gloomy or pessimistic bents.

This is just as true when our fears are about collective judgment as when they are about personal judgment. Depending on our political philosophy, we may see conservative Republicans as ogres and monsters who delight in bringing suffering and privation to the poor and needy and who have no apparent compassion at all on the needs of those who are vulnerable. Now, such people exist (I call them libertarians), but such people are generally pretty rare. Most people (myself included) are not so ideological that we forget other people have real needs and concerns that need to be met, and that the needs of people trump concerns about being rigidly ideological. So long as the great mass of ordinary people cares more about people than about ideology, we have the chance to rebuild institutions like the family, and the community, so long as we realize that others share the same concern and care for others that we do.

And this is where matters often break down. When we believe the press of our own side, we tend to demonize large portions of our societies as being beyond the pale of humanity. We do this out of fear, often out of a misunderstanding of their beliefs (and the emotional ground from which those beliefs spring). Just as we adopt many of our own behaviors and beliefs out of fears of others (and a desire to protect ourselves and our interests), so too other people do the same about us. Some people fear governments and their oppressive power (I have a particular bent towards this fear given my own personal experience), while others fear the anarchy and chaos of unregulated markets, not trusting the goodness of capitalists. I trust neither, and so I suppose I am one of the few who is content with the muddled state we now find ourselves in. At least I would be content with it if it did not seem to threaten ever growing extremes to destroy the middle ground I would prefer to occupy by nature and temperament.

When we assume that other people are inhuman monsters, we act accordingly. We do not treat their needs and concerns as legitimate, seeing them as mere pretense. We do not try to communicate honestly and openly with them, seeing them as an enemy to be crushed and not as a human being created in the image of God to be loved and respected. The people we fear are often decent and ordinary folks like ourselves just trying to get by, not monsters involved in mass conspiracies (either of the Daily Kos or the Koch Brothers variety) to oppress and exploit the world. But we cannot appreciate the basic decency of others, and the ground from which their own fears spread if we are so busy acting according to our own fears that we cannot understand how others would think or feel differently from us. We must master our own fear before we can thoughtfully understand and deal with the fear of others. We have to see how fear can rule our own lives and behaviors before we can help others wrestle with their own demons.

For in times of great stress and crisis as our own, fear is rampant, fears that are often self-fulfilling prophecies that lead to the outcome we most hate. If we are to avoid these serious problems, what we need are ways to see others as they really are, and not as the projection of our own fear and loathing. For if we saw the basic moderation of the plans and desires of others, as well as the severe constraints that all of us felt under, we would be less harsh and demanding of others, seeing them in the same place. And then we might not have to be afraid of each other at all, even if we still found much to disagree about. What a wonderful world that would be.

[1] See especially: https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-only-thing-we-have-to-fear-is-fear-itself/ as well as https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/if-only-you-believed-like-i-believed/