Daniel O'Rourke: Fear - Don't Be Manipulated By It
Fear - Don’t Be Manipulated By It
Daniel O’Rourke
07/29/10
What are you afraid of? Flying in airplanes? Dogs? Aging? Guns? In some reductionist way, all fears can be reduced to a fear of death or losing someone we love. The deepest, most persistent fears, for most of us, are for those we love.
According to “Psychology Today,” “Fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger - if we couldn't feel it, we couldn't protect ourselves from legitimate threats. But often we fear situations that are in no way life-or-death …” and therefore limit and torture ourselves for no good reason. It was the Actress Faye Dunaway who graphically reminded us, “Fear is a pair of handcuffs on your soul.” To live fully both personally and politically we have to escape from those handcuffs. For fear robs us of our ability to think clearly and act rationally.
Psychologists have studied these exaggerated fears at great length. They call them phobias - and give them fancy names from the Latin and Greek: aerophobia - fear of flying, cynophobia - fear of dogs, dipsophobia - fear of drinking, and a more common variety, claustrophobia - fear of small places.
Psychologists also tell us, “Exposing ourselves to our personal demons is the best way to move past them.” Their treatment is systematic desensitization. Little by little therapists carefully expose us to bits of our irrational fears until eventually we can face and overcome them. Or as the American Poet John Berryman tells us, "We must travel in the direction of our fear." We have to face our fear in order to master it.
Irrational fear is a reality. We know it. Psychologists know it. Politicians know it and manipulate it - and us - to their own ends. Listen to what Bishop John Shelby Spong has to say on such manipulation. He begins by speaking of the Tea Party Movement, but his point is much broader.
“The Tea Party Movement is a manifestation of the great fear and anxiety that, today, accompanies Western politics everywhere. This anxiety is also present in Greece, France, Germany and Iceland, but since they did not have the Boston Tea Party in their national history they do not call it that. It was born in the economic crisis that rocked this country [and Europe] in the last year of the Bush Administration, when the politics of greed finally brought Wall Street to its knees. It was fed by the healthcare debate, when lobbyists were paid to frighten the American public with distortions, half-truths and absolute lies in an attempt to prevent the profits of healthcare companies, trial lawyers, drug manufacturers and private medical practitioners from being compromised.”
Politicians also manipulate us by our fear of foreigners - mostly Mexicans and Muslims. (Although most Muslims in this country are by citizens like us and not foreigners at all. In this case it is a fear of terror and terrorism that politicians manipulate.) Psychologists call fear of foreigners xenophobia - an abnormal fear of foreign people, foreign customs and foreign culture. The best way to overcome that, of course, is to meet the feared foreigner. We would soon realize that underneath the accidental differences they are human beings with the same needs and struggles as our own.
It is not only politicians that manipulate our fears so do advertisers - only they do it for profit not for votes. In a recent mailing an insurance company sent me an unrequested application for cancer insurance. As we grow older there is more cancer and some seniors fear the “C” word like death itself. (It isn’t of course, but I digress). The ad tried to scare me. “Don’t wait,” the mailing screamed, “Over 1.4 million new cancer cases are expected to be diagnosed in 2009 alone.” Unstated: you indeed may be one of them - buy our policy. I didn’t bite; I tossed it in the wastebasket along with the ads for Rogaine Foam trying to frighten me about going bald. I don’t fear balding either; it’s way too late for that.
Psychologists have their gradual exposure therapies to help us overcome fear - and they work. Ultimately, however, our response to fear is spiritual. The fear of death and the diminishments of aging demand a spiritual response. Scripture scholars tell us the concept most frequently preached by Jesus was not to fear. Yet even Jesus feared death in the Garden of Gethsemane. And how did he react? He prayed for the ability to face it (Mt.26: 38-40).
Perhaps President Roosevelt has the most practical advice. In his First Inaugural, with the nation in the depths of a great depression, Franklin Roosevelt told us, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Historians tell us that First Inaugural was unusually solemn even spiritual. In it FDR reminded Americans that the nation’s “common difficulties” concerned only “material things.”
Be aware of your irrational fears. Do not fear them. Face them honestly - and for God’s sake don’t be manipulated by them. Don’t let the politicians or advertisers scare you.
Retired from the Administration at State University of New York at Fredonia, Daniel O’Rourke lives in Cassadaga, NY. His newspaper column usually appears in the Observer, Dunkirk, NY on the second and fourth Thursday each month. A grandfather, Dan is a married Catholic priest. He has published a book of his previous columns, “The Spirit at Your Back.” To read about the book or send comments on this column visit his website http://www.danielcorourke.com/