Fear is an evolutionary trait that warns us of possible danger. It is usually illusory but sometimes it is real. We rely on our mind, education, and experience to tell us when danger is real. The worst thing we can do is to take our cue from people who live out of fear or worse, those who have something to gain by us being afraid. We have that too often today. It is not new, the founders of America were clear that governments that encouraged fear and ruled by it were tyrannies. Fear is a wonderful controlling mechanism and it is the only controlling mechanism that cowards understand and use.
Thus, we have a warning for today as one by one the governments and media of today throw one fear after another at us in the hope that something sticks and we will be thereby controlled.
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Robespierre one of the authors of the bloody French revolution spoke truly when he said that education reduces fear while ignorance increases it. But what do we do when so many schools have educated our people in ignorance and dogma?
They have not prepared people to have liberty and control their own lives they have prepared them to be sheep who can be easily led by fear and emotion. This should be a crime in any nation organized upon the principles of freedom. Mayhap it is even treason.
It was Herman Melville who said that “Ignorance is the parent of fear.” So perhaps there is a pattern in that we have government schools that fail to teach and a government that spread fear about nearly everything from the climate, to the economy, fear of disease, and even teaching us to fear each other.
Another wonderful author, Rudyard Kipling (both of these were authors schools used to teach by the way,) said “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” — Rudyard Kipling
I have come to believe that this is true. Of all the liars in the world, the worst are our own fears. In my own life when I was young I was afraid of just about everything. I shudder when I consider all the opportunities in life that I missed because of fear. Fortunately, I was still young when I realized my mistake and that most of what I feared never came about and I became convinced that if I could have all of the time back that I spent needlessly worrying about things that never happened I would live well past a hundred. I resolved to not let fear keep me from acting. Tony Campolo said that many of us were taught to say a children’s prayer and one of the lines were “If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” He said that we should more properly pray “If I should wake before I die.” because we tend to go around half dead mindlessly going through the motions or cowering in fear of death, injury, (or worse) ridicule.
I have heard it said that when we are young our principles are the foundations upon which we will change the world; but too often when we get old they become the caves that we hide in.
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Yet fear is a useful tool for those in power. Sensationalizing matters into a crisis gets us to click on news and empowers them with our attention. Thus the media lies to us to get “clicks.” The government knows that if it can keep us afraid and in our homes, we are more easily controlled. In my lifetime I have watched every Communist government that has ever existed use this strategy to control and suppress its people. From the use of late-night police raids, demonstrations of force, and crushing dissenters tyrannies have acted thus since the beginning of time, and the only way to stop it is to confront it and do what is right rather than be fearful.
Bullies of all types, whether they are in government or the school yard fear someone standing up to them.
“Obstacles are like wild animals. They are cowards but they will bluff you if they can. If they see you are afraid of them… they are liable to spring upon you; but if you look them squarely in the eye, they will slink out of sight.” — Orison Swett Marden
As I said, most fears never come to fruition but tyrants also, as I have said, seem to be motivated by fear, and what they fear most is the people rising to resist. You saw this in Canada, the Netherlands, and China today, Czechoslovakia, and other communist countries in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. And we have seen it all the way back in ancient Greece.
“If you’re not willing to risk, you cannot grow. If you cannot grow, you cannot be your best. If you cannot be your best, you cannot be happy. If you cannot be happy, what else is there?” — Les Brown
and,
“The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost
Thus, we see that humanity has known for thousands of years how to deal with fear and how powerful fear can be with us, humans. So we need to bravely face these fears and not let them stop us from living in freedom and happiness. That will destroy not only our own lives but the lives of our children, grandchildren, friends, and relatives. Overcoming our fears and finding true liberty is only achieved by confronting them and finding they are not as terrible as we imagined. So many, more eloquent than I have spoken on this I feel the desire to highlight their words.
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius
In the end, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, the Bible, and innumerable other sources had it right when they said it is not what we profess to believe but the actions that define us. We used to have a word for people who acted out of fear and could not rise above their fears to live life and do what was right. We called them cowards.
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.” — Frank Herbert in the Dune series.
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