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“The only Thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  — President F.D. Roosevelt

by Vwadek Marciniak

The new millennium sits uncomfortably on our doorstep while offering expanded insights from complex philosophical perspectives to diverse cultural analysis. This a glorious beginning for students of history, philosophy, literature, art and our social condition. Welcome to the funny farm of the bizarre.

If we go back to the road that brought us here we could find many elements we might not want to own up to and yet find trapping us. Without dragging us too far back we could trace the madness that took hold with Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and now continues in various degrees in places like Serbia, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Welcome to the mad century even in the new millennium.

The issue of intelligence versus stupidity or sanity versus insanity appears to dominate the global picture. Polarization has become the norm. We could discus Korea or Vietnam to no avail as we could discuss the number of countries that have recently appeared and are now members of the U.N. And there is urban decay with collapsing school systems while universities become trade schools for training rather than institutions for higher learning.

Where is the mental and emotional stability out there? Our economic system has been consumed by greed. Michael Moore’s latest movie makes this point clearly. In this and the past millennium we have had wars upon wars we do not pay for because the rich, especially since their Reagan’s tax cuts with the abbreviation of tax rates, have no intention of paying for wars they make a profit from. For the rest, they earn less to take home - if they still have a home. What has become all too normal is the use of lies to expand people’s anxiety and thus gain further power and control.

A little background might offer context, especially when considering how often it has been in the West that political and economic bitterness has led to major disasters and transformations of historic significance based on irrational fear, noting that today as many as forty million may be born anxious, ready to be pushed over the edge. (R.M.Henig, N.Y.T Mag.10/4/09)

In the Seventeenth Century the English were the first Western civilized country to behead their legitimate king only to allow the monarchy to re-appear a decade later. The French followed at the end of the Eighteenth century only to re-establish the crown early the following century. Anxiety followed by popular bitterness often leads to a level of fear and anger that can point to disastrous results. Fear on top of anxiety is the operational psychological tool for those wheeling and dealing power. Without this sense of latent and activated feeling of fearfulness much of the worst of our historic past could not have occurred. Turn to the Boston Tea Party where colonists’ fears about taxes paid to England helped begin a revolution that contributed to the eventual demise of the British empire. Our own civil war was predicated on a fearful assumption that President Lincoln would be a disaster for the slave owners in the south.

More recently we discover the beginnings of the Second Chapter of the Great War with Germany’s attack on Poland on the pretense that Poland attacked Germany first, causing fear among Germans which was created by this successful lie that ended in an unsuccessful war. In this century we had a our own cause celebre of fear, 9/11, which was expanded to include a theory that there were threats from Iraq which supposedly had weapons of mass destruction and left us with a need for a destructive and pointless war. After Berlin we have Washington D.C. as another peace maker.

At times it would appear that instead of operational political voices being concerned with the three principles of governance - Policy, Politics and Power - those voice are slipping into a crippling two - Politics and Power. I am sure that if we could find a better way to waste money and power we could invent it by using the basic rhetoric for creating anxiety, fear and mass hysteria.

The issues of fear and the root of anxiety can appear relatively minor although still of little value especially when tied to lies. We should question what was gained by Father Caughlin’s irrational attacks on F.D. Roosevelt’s presidency, or McCarthy’s attacks on Eisenhower with the aid of the extreme right led by the John Birch Society accusing him of being a communist sympathizer? Attacks on President Clinton and Bush served no purpose other than to keep a small group excessively wired with increasing deception, anxiety, fear and even hatred for some.

Today’s economic conditions have deteriorated given the polices begun by president Reagan and carried on by those who followed, Democrats and Republicans. Incomes are now driven for and by the wealthy while credit rather than manufacturing dominate, waiting a short time to explode as a bubble. But this is not the real issue which is pointing deceptive fingers of fear at whomever one can blame and then letting it get so out of hand we begin to wonder how much we wish to follow the earlier English and French models of frustration, hatred, madness and sometimes destruction. History has much to teach: one reason this topic is so unpopular in this country is because looking at lessons learned from the past is not always pleasant.

A key component for deceptively driven fear are serious changes, especially those directed at some massive unknown, even when there is a desperation out there for a need to improve our economic and cultural circumstances. Entering the unknown breaks down a sense of control and thus a sense of secured freedom. Something unknown, other than our positively colored memory (or history), is followed by that overwhelming and comforting power of an optimistic present, one offering the promise of a predictable tomorrow and anticipation for a better future. The real problem with this abstract explanation is that it doesn’t factually fit the basic psycho drama of most people’s everyday lives given their tendencies to hold optimistic perceptions as a source for tomorrow’s certainty. Look at the number of people who still cannot accept that they might or even have lost their job!

We already have a future to fear in the form of technical changes from electronic computers, the internet, handheld devices and a plethora of explosive information, so much of it wrong for this confused society lacking critical skills to edit through this maze. Anxiety inheres both in people biologically and culturally. A recent article in USA TODAY by Theresa Howard(10/1/09)noted that “The Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate speech on the Web, says complaints are up this year more than 200% through July, to 1,152 complaints. `This whole era of cyber-hate is one of the biggest challenges we face,’ says Deborah Lauter, civil rights director of the league. `We’ve gotten to a place where we made it unacceptable for haters to hate in the public space.’” Little wonder “they turn to the Web, where they can be anonymous.” New technological is always unfamiliar and potentially dangerous.

The philosopher Hegel once suggested that it is the image of our future that dictates our perceived past in the present we now live in. We see this application in how people assume a future predicated on their understanding of past memories. But here is the problem: memories we now know are very unreliable in that they offer us wishful thinking. We often think of our past in ways that conform to what we anticipate it might bring - “I’ve been lucky, I may win the lottery”; or “people always said I had a nice smile so I know I could make it in sales”; and again, “I have always been flexible, even adaptable, and therefore should get that promotion upstairs.” We create myths by those images that we have lived by and in so doing ignore not only the variables of future possibilities but the here and now for all that it might offer. Our memory is a convenient tool of escape: “A man’s memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interests in the present” as George Santayana so clearly expressed. We do not want to threaten images of the future with any alteration of our inventive and comfortable memory of days long gone. As Caesar stated it: “Men quite gladly believe what they want to believe.” And as the philosopher Francis Bacon added: “Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true”.

We construct an assumptive past, a certain history, in order to offer a convenience of assumptions for some mythical future to alter the coloration of our present. Little wonder that Americans hate to study the past; it would undermine the lies now lived. Fear drawn from apprehension and bitterness is always potentially dangerous if not a basis for disaster. There is no room with the economic, political and military crises we now are exploring for anything but the coolest heads combined with reflective thinking. Convinced that abortion is evil a man chooses to go to a church to shoot and kill a physician who performs abortions.

Little wonder that this era demands humor on a large scale. It was George Carlin that suggested that American’s favorite passtime was bending over and grabbing their ankles, to wit, I would add that it should read grab their ankles and then say thank you. From Carlin to the “Cuckoo’s Nest” we witness the recognition of a breakdown of anything we could call an order of sanity on a massive although entertaining scale. We see a man shoot a black guard at the Holocaust museum in Washington to make some point…?

Perhaps we should look into the poor mental habits of those problematic areas of economics, drugs and political policies, not neglecting issues of education and the environment, especially the latter with forest fires and melting ice caps that expand the evidence on how we are incapable of honoring our insights or sanity. The nut house is for those in lock-ups and not for those with radio and televison shows - except in the U.S.A. Did hate, in general, and on the radio or T.V. have anything to do with Timothy McVeigh destroying lives at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma? It is too easy to move from being stupid to mentally unbalanced, even crazy at various times given the circumstance of some irrational fear pushing one to anger then hate that can open the door to an unbalanced paradigm.

When the English were beginning to face their monarchial crisis the brilliant physician, William Harvey, a contributor to the scientific revolution, noted “he had met with more disease generated from the mind than from any other cause.” Not surprising a “similar observation was to be made about the French Revolution.”[p.9H.IO] How many have crossed the line today and where are we going? Is this what is wanted for this country with wars, economic collapses and shortness of civility? Changes, past and present, requires dreamers and leaders not negativity.

Perhaps a more revealing expose of this nightmare would be to look first at the role of fear, its potential to lead to anger, then hatred and often some degree of mental instability.

Fear is the most powerful emotion according to University of California professor of Psychology, Michael Fanselow (Las Cruces Sun-News of Oct. 31 09). “When it comes to ruling the brain, fear often is king, scientists say.” From the same paper(Sept. 7 2009), in a column by Claudette Oritz, it was suggested “we do have a lot more fear. Fear is capitalized on in our country, It sells. We pay.”[p.120] How bad can it get? This same writer noted that when attending a gun show in Denver she found two books for sale entitled “Basement Nukes” and “Life After Doomsday.” To her credit she also noted that “…laughter helps chase fear back into its natural boundaries.”[p.120]

So what would an analysis of fear offer us? Of the types, two stand out. First we have the occasional and brief where a gun may be drawn or a car slides off the highway. These are usually short and to the point - sometimes only seconds long. The other is more complicated since it is an accumulated fear often based on anxiety accumulating to higher and higher states of anguish and terror driving the mind off the road into a mountain of panic. This was the kind of fear that many Europeans for good reason experienced during the Second Chapter of the Great War. These kinds of crises can push those more susceptible beyond simple fear. The Great Depression pushed some in that direction as has the Great Recession. There are no easy fears to deal with because they can lead to even deeper and more problematic emotions. For many, 9/11 still marks such a demarcation as well as an expansion of this fear’s hand maiden, ideology.

Where there is this fear and ideology there also can follow serious anger where hate sits in the back room waiting to open the door. This anger is equally a relative term and, again, in one sense can be but a brief moment, not of great concern except where accumulative. Like fear, anger held onto too long, in distorting attachments, can lead to more serious and even criminal activity. The prisons are full of those who moved beyond a small momentary feeling of anger. When hatred enters the picture any sense of rational thinking is out the window even when there are no windows.

It is short trip, hardly a sneeze, to go to war and eventual annihilation. Look at the beginning of the Thirty Years War or more recently consider some U.S. soldiers who fought natives in our western lands.

What happens if we travel from fear to anger to hatred? Mental instability is not far from a simple case of some petit negativity driven to fear and all that might follow. Being nuts comes to dominate, whether for a moment or longer, with roots often in the lands of economic and political crisis where the most unstable can become potentially dangerous, no longer part of a civil dialogue but rather a bitterly driven disagreement.

One can march on Washington, New York or even Athens as some of us did for peace and an end to atomic threats. The difference between the past and contemporary marches is that these are filled with a diet of hatred for the president expressed on a level of anger that is only heightened and vented. We should be glad we see no guns emptied at Town Hall meetings.

We are walking a line where the unknown has never been a greater mystery, especially when it comes to domestic economics in a global economic world. Stresses are huge for many if not overwhelming for some, and with good reason since this economy we inherited in the late 1940s with roots in the Nineteenth Century is now disappearing. This is especially difficult for those who have no other living models other than increasing consumption to the point of addiction and for the younger who cannot imagine another life style; this is a major cultural crisis introduced yet unexplored.

Mental instability whether calling it nuts, crazy or insanity could well be the roadway we are laying for tomorrow. We have witnessed since the Bush/Cheney bankruptcy through war on top of Reagan’s reforms for the rich and his credit dreams, a collapse of a manufacturing order that once seemed comforting. Get a job, get married, buy a house, have children, get promoted then retire on easy street - a dream expressed in movies and TV for many years now disappearing. There is no blame since this dream could never have lasted in any case. These historic changes and challenges with little imaginative leadership give no cause for optimism. The unknown may be great for a hip counterculture and a curious postmodern mind but what about the average Jane and Joe?

Looking at other causes for fears with at least theoretical responses we discover billions of dollars wasted based on a fear our society is addicted to, that of illegal drugs and its users. Not tobacco, no, not booze, caffeine or sweets, no, only those illegal today. This ironically may prove to be the easiest problem to deal with while at the same time offering a blessing for the strained economy. In the Guardian (9/3/09 p.1) the author Simon Jenkins stated that “The greatest social menace of the new century is not terrorism but drugs,… It fills jails, corrupts politicians and plagues nations. … It is utterly mad” Did he find an answer, yes, but in another land where “Last week the Argentine supreme court declared in a landmark ruling that it was ‘unconstitutional’ to prosecute citizens for having drugs for their personal use.” The court further asserted that “`adults should be free to make life style decisions without the intervention of the state.’” If we look at the logic behind this failed if not peculiar war we discover that “The underlying concept of the war on drugs, initiated by Richard Nixon in the 1970s, is that demand can be curbed by eliminating supply. … This concept marries intellectual idiocy… with practical impossibility.”[p.2] We did this in outlawing booze and now find that “Making supply illegal is worse than pointless. It oils a black market, drives trade underground, cross-subsidizes other crimes and leaves consumers at the mercy of poisons. It is the politics of stupid.” This is as generous as there is in stating the case.

But the deeper, more lengthy and challenging problem is the ending of and transferring from the old economic order to something yet unknown while allowing for a promise of economic survival. The fear implodes upon all, even the rich and powerful who normally pedal such fears. How the tables are turning. An introduction go the issues is found at what Paul Krugman noted in his NYT piece (9/6/09) in explaining “How Did Economists Get it So Wrong?” His comments are simple and direct: “…they turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts.” To clarify, “…, they will have to acknowledge the importance of irrational and often unpredictable behavior,…” The point drawn is that people do not live by the assumptions of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment which had it all wrong - people are not inherently rational as fear only makes too clear. Most newspaper and magazine articles along with cable and radio network news are not necessarily here to support this revelation but rather have a tendency to cover up the grasping wealthy in this outdated system.

Looking for exceptions we find the following: “The incomes of the young and middle-aged especially men - have fallen off a cliff since 2000, leaving many age groups poorer than they were even in the 1970s,” as a USA TODAY analysis of new census data found.[9/18-9/09] We also have “People 54 or younger losing ground financially at an unprecedented rate in this recession, widening a gap between young and old that had been expanding for years.” Older workers are not retiring which is not promising for the young. Then there is the story in USA TODAY (9/21/09) telling us that “More skilled immigrants are giving up their American dreams to pursue careers back home raising concerns that the U.S. may lose its competitive edge in science, technology and other fields.” Now “`what was a trickle has become a flood,’ says Duke University’s Vivek Wadhawa,…” One can add as the article states that “the U.S. economy will suffer without there skilled workers.” - Anyone for watching Catch 22?

Add to this the housing crisis, increasing unemployment, much of it permanent and a health care disaster where we see the slaughter of so many at a cost that continually expands while we do nothing and end with this picture, this horror movie we would just as soon miss.

What is needed, it has been suggested, is a more earth driven economy. As Berry Wendell suggested in his September(09) “Progressive” article(p.18): “I would put nature first, the economics of land use second, the manufacturing economy third, and the consumer economy fourth.” The world driven by materialistic and pointless consumption is coming to an end. As one other commentator put it, the “…last thing we need is to re-employ the flawed economic thinking that brought us to this point.”

While the data is huge on this last subject we should also note one last comment on fear and hatred which has been directed and well covered by the media where it was announced that “On Saturday the 12 of Sept. 2009″ a crowd of Tea Party followers marched on Washington to complain about Obama on a variety of items from Birthers to health care to communist. One sign read:

O pressive

B loodsucking
A rrogant

M uslim

A lien

We are still engaged in a shrinking-stinking ideological race war with hatred to match. The same can be said of the anger at Town Hall meetings - expanding divisions galore. Still if you are going to have anything resembling a democratic society you need people and groups of people in the streets marching and at meetings asking difficult questions of those in power, even if one does not always agree with their varied points of view.

We have a long way to go but first we must define the problems and let powerful negative emotional responses abate regarding these misunderstood and confusing issues now coming into the open. Coming together may be too late - but we still could explore new approaches to political and social order, and expand our collective political, economic and cultural horizons.

PAX/LOVE

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Main Category. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.