Fear in America
Victoria Hardy
February 25, 2007
The world we live in is full of miracles, mysteries and illusions and more often than not, the truth that we know is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. Fear reigns supreme on Planet Earth, a virus that has infected millions and we struggle under its weight. Here in America we fear terrorists, disease, war, weather, strangers, molesters, drug dealers, gang members, each other and our news programs perpetuate that it is not just normal, but sane to live in fear. For those of us with faith, we have been instructed not to fear and for those of us with science, we understand the statistics of such things occurring to our families or us and yet, still, we are afraid.
Depending on your viewpoint, the world has been around for millions or thousands of years and in all that time, the one thing that has remained unchanged is that we are a fearful bunch and when afraid, we hurt others and ourselves. We feel terror when we understand and when we don’t. The feeling of fear and the accompanying anxiety was included with our birth, it guides us to safety, and it is our survival mechanism, our friend. We were not designed to live in that state continuously, there are many names for the flight or fight awakenings these days and hundreds of disorders and pills are available to quiet our inner voices.
We are obsessed with death in this country, the fear of our own demise and the fascination of other people’s suffering. The television shows dedicated to murder and violence crawl through our nightly listings, autopsies, sex offenses and nuclear bombs. The cable news programs show us again and again the only solution is anger as the programs end and the participants are just as divided as when they began. And many of the movies hitting the big screen are about serial killers, real or imagined and grisly scenes of torture are the entertainment we seek.
It is believed by many that thoughts are things, that our thoughts create our reality, if we focus on disease and fear of disease, we are creating disease, if we focus on arguing, we create more arguing, and if we focus war and crime, we create more war and crime. Of course it works in both directions, if we focus on peace, we create peace, if we focus on compassion and love, we create more compassion and love and if we focus on health and healing, we bring health into reality. (
Depending on your viewpoint, the world has been around for millions or thousands of years and in all that time, the one thing that has remained unchanged is that we are a fearful bunch and when afraid, we hurt others and ourselves. We feel terror when we understand and when we don’t. The feeling of fear and the accompanying anxiety was included with our birth, it guides us to safety, and it is our survival mechanism, our friend. We were not designed to live in that state continuously, there are many names for the flight or fight awakenings these days and hundreds of disorders and pills are available to quiet our inner voices.
We are obsessed with death in this country, the fear of our own demise and the fascination of other people’s suffering. The television shows dedicated to murder and violence crawl through our nightly listings, autopsies, sex offenses and nuclear bombs. The cable news programs show us again and again the only solution is anger as the programs end and the participants are just as divided as when they began. And many of the movies hitting the big screen are about serial killers, real or imagined and grisly scenes of torture are the entertainment we seek.
It is believed by many that thoughts are things, that our thoughts create our reality, if we focus on disease and fear of disease, we are creating disease, if we focus on arguing, we create more arguing, and if we focus war and crime, we create more war and crime. Of course it works in both directions, if we focus on peace, we create peace, if we focus on compassion and love, we create more compassion and love and if we focus on health and healing, we bring health into reality. (
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