The great fear of our age

I just finished reading a book called Mans search for meaning. This book was written by a Jewish man that survived some of the worst camps the Nazis created. In it he describes his experiences and how finding meaning in life can create the spark we need to get through almost anything. Towards the end of the book, he talks about how fear and pain can derail your search for personal meaning or our reactions to these things can create a meaning in and of itself. One thing he said sparked this thread. " each age has its great fear"

This sparked me to ask what is the great fear of my age. What is the overriding collective fear that we face here and now? And it hit me during my morning meditation. We fear the what if. We used to fear Hitler, The Communists, Being jobless during the depression. This created a demon with a name and a face. But what we have now is worse. Our fears have become faceless. What if the Muslim immigration brings in extremists, What if let LGBT people marry/join the military, use the bathroom destroys marriage/creates risk for rapes, What if owning guns creates the next mass shoot, what if what if what if. The reason this fear is so insidious is that there are good people mixed up in all of the bad things we fear from the questions I just asked. There is no one face to point at but many and most of them are innocent.

So what do we do? Do we risk demonizing and taking the rights away from good people out of fear of the bad? Do we continue to scream and holler that the side that disagrees with us is evil, ignorant, disrespectful, or any other name you wish to mention? Does this help us? Does it stop anything? Will it reach the root of the issue? No not in my opinion. Ignoring to demonizing either side only creates anger and a possible new what if to fear. So what is the answer?

Start listening to each other. Be willing to admit you might be wrong. Stop demonizing the other side and try to understand them. Speak up and reach out those in need. Start looking to fix the mindsets that cause the crimes we fear instead of banning the tools, ideas, or people that might cause them. Because evil will always exist and the tools to commit it are as simple as our own hands and feet. Laws against murder and harsh punishments for theft have existed since we first codified law. Yet they continue because you cannot force or legislate morality. But if we start talking we might just find the seeds that the hate grows from and root out the plant before it blooms. But screaming and name calling are not talking. And failure to listen only creates more wounds than it ever will heal.

Hey,

Sounds like this book had an impression upon you, I love that feeling of gaining insight into other peoples experiences. I have been reading about non-violent communication, how to speak with people without making them angry. However while we can gain understanding of people. That knowledge it wont change anything about their circumstances unless it compels people to work together for a shared goal or outcome. Yet how can we place faith in those who intend to do us harm? So that if we trust them and allow them freedom they can eventually turn against us.

Diffusing tension in violent situations is great and useful, but we cannot build bridges for our enemy in a war-torn country as they shall use it to gain strength against us. We can communicate in ways that will help to prevent ourselves and others from harm. But we must not and never surrender to the enemies.

Thanks

I think fearing the "what if" has always been a thing with human beings.

If we were able to go back in time and visit early man I bet they would be sitting around a fire on a cold night talking about what they fear. I imagine they had fears very similar to ours really. "What if that rustle in the grass is a venomous snake?" "What if that bigger tribe decides they want our land and attack us?" "What if we're attacked by a pack of wild dogs or hyena?" "What if the gods don't really exist and we're all alone in this world?" Etc. etc. etc.

As humans we intrinsically fear the unknown, the "what ifs" as you put it.

I love that book, Victor Frankel saw some stuff and shared from knowledge. You are all very much correct we have a natural psychological fear of the unknown. One of the issues is, we literally listen to other people through a bombardment of speculations on the what if's. Worse yet each speculator willingly pushes it in a way that is meant to make you scared for whatever reason they have.

So what do we do? Well it starts with the person in the mirror, we stop trying to answer the unknown, do not ask what if? Ask how to? These terrible things will happen, but the best form of security is a response. Now I want to say this I believe there is a difference between reaction and response. We see our societal responses to these things as is by feeding more fear. This is why we get 24 hr coverage of the mass shooters trying to answer every why they did it. However, do you ever see coverage of the victim in the hospital who was in severe condition but is slowly improving? Do we see the personal lives of the victims to be reminded the human toll? No, we get this guy was crazy, here's why? Or (I am for reasonable gun control, that argument is not for here) but we get the full range of political solutions from common sense legislation to full bore overt police state style legislative reactions. We see people saying watch your neighbor because this dud was normal and your neighbor is too so it could be an attack waiting. Instead we need responses, meaning active thought put into action. For example, we have lock down plans at schools that are practiced. We have fire drills, procedures to keep the greatest number safe while handling the situation. In essence, we nee plans to help in these situations, solid ones that are still flexible enough to change with the evolution of these situations.

So these situations exist some and though it is important to know the why for prevention sake, it is not nearly as important as the victim/pubic to know how to respond. That will be the great crusade of our time to learn as a public that we have to re-prioritize our questions. And maybe we should shift our perspective just a bit, and stop worrying about our assumed predetermined outcomes. Some things will happen no matter our level of the whys we understand. Also, treating each other a lil bit better is a huge step, because you cannot legislate morality but you can help up hold it by acting with it. Stop being in fear and seeing it as a construct of the mind, and overcome it by acting not thinking about it.

My humble opinion.
Much Love respect and Peace,
Kobos

Another big fear of our age is authority. We live in a time of rapid change. We live in a time where information is so abundant that it's a chore to find what is truthful and relevant. We live in a time of "cover ups" and "conspiracies". We, as a society, are starting on our path of enlightenment. And it's scary as hell for some. Maybe all. We are relearning our connection to the planet and to each other. But we are crashing against establishments that lack consistency and efficiency. Because change in policy is coming slower than we are changing we demonize those in power. We forget that they are afraid too.

For me the great fear of our age is the great ignorance in the general poblation and the lack of respect for the opinions that are contrary to our own. This I have seen a lot especially lately with the ease of finding information on the internet and that in many cases is not true information, are articles or false news but people blindly believe in these and do not respect the thoughts of other people, I see a lot fights without arguments and that scares me a lot because it can reach the high spheres of power and trigger some war between countries, so for me the biggest fear is ignorance.

In the absence of a great fear I guess we manufacture fields of smaller fears!!!? LOL, well at least the non-Jedi

As, if the scope is just impact on me, as a kid it was WW3! Being Northern Hemisphere nuclear conflict between the Soviet Bloc and West and total annihilation or massive degradation to the extent annihilation might have been preferred, so..... not much these days really compares to that!!! So things are pretty chillaxd except for the penetration of meth locally which tends to inject a certain maniacal variability into normality.

If I look to the future I don't care so much since I feel I don't have enough info (or lifespan), so instead start to shift focus away from impact on self and look at potential impacts for community and globe. Because lets be honest, fear seems to be about expectation, a future tense. So in that regard I'm curious about how India and China will handle their population growth, once it starts to really bite at them, but biological warfare worries me the most as mixed with advances in genetics the mind boggles as to its potentials for evil. And speaking of b words, I'd say its unlikely the Earth's biosphere will get away from human population growth without taking a serious hit, but I can imagine a few ways that this will matter less then one might expect - like using modified Earth sourced bioforms to terraform other planets in such a way to gradually evolve them to suit humanity... we might end up seeing many Earths, and by then ours would probably grow back. A key there might be saving the genetic signature of as many species we can, while we can, in preparation for the challenges ahead rather then pretending there is anything we can do, if indeed we are doing it. And so long as we stick to dead planets we shouldn't upset the aliens too much with our expansion.... if we make it that far.

Probably comes down to how we manage our emotional energy in terms of defining our 'self' in relation to how we wish that self would exist in the present and imagined future. As when we imagine the future we'd have to be less sure of the extent of things will impact us, and so it might be instinctive to get a bit overly defensive and be too broad in thinking what will really matter - and stray from causality as the justification for exerting ones anxiety outwards - to where it need not be, in regards to fear. At that point the perspective differences between stakeholders and observers add a new dimension to confusion, as of course its not usually the most constructive way to relate, fear, as its inherently emotional and so will tend to have strong observer bias tendency I'd guess. And the one thing to put fear into a discussion on one side, is fear from the other.

JLSpinner wrote: Another big fear of our age is authority. We live in a time of rapid change. We live in a time where information is so abundant that it's a chore to find what is truthful and relevant. We live in a time of "cover ups" and "conspiracies". We, as a society, are starting on our path of enlightenment. And it's scary as hell for some. Maybe all. We are relearning our connection to the planet and to each other. But we are crashing against establishments that lack consistency and efficiency. Because change in policy is coming slower than we are changing we demonize those in power. We forget that they are afraid too.

Oh, good, I was starting to think I was the only one afraid of authority figures and pissed off at them and further pissed off that I actually am afraid of them. :laugh:

I really like this book. Like some have said "unknown" is a big fear. I think another is "not good enough"