On Fear
In this helluva year, I’ve been ruminating on fear—what it is, and how to relate to it.
Fear isn’t a virus novel to 2020, of course. But this year’s overlapping crises in a disquieted America has forced me, as it has many of us whose existence has been relatively secure, to confront the thing up close and personal in new ways.
A few approaches to fear have been contending in my scattered mind:
First is a spiritual view of fear. My faith tradition portrays fear as contrary to the more spiritual virtues of faith and love. “Be not afraid” is a common, if not the most common, refrain throughout the scriptures. There is John’s famous contrast: “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” And Jesus too tells his followers not to worry, and to not be afraid. And all for good reason: living out of a mode of fear does not make for our most loving, faithful, or hopeful selves—it can mess with our capacity to love our neighbors as ourselves.
This is old wisdom, come by and upheld honestly: by living through the worst of times, many times over, and withstanding the assaults of history. Christianity’s long, cool take on fear is what enables the great Marilynne Robinson to see the fearfulness of American culture and assert “fear is not a Christian habit of mind.”
Valuable as it is, I see a spiritual view of fear taken too far and distorted in U.S. culture today through over-spiritualizing (which is often a form of avoidance). During COVID-19 we’ve seen extreme expressions of “faith over fear,” with some Christians eschewing public health measures in the name of faith; as if faith works like a talisman; as if you can’t be faithful and still die (Jesus would be a relevant counter example here).
Similarly, there are those who don’t think humans can cause climate change because “God is in control”; as if God controls in the same ways we aspire to control. I wonder, sometimes, if the type of un-nuanced, negative outlook on fear sometimes trumpeted by popular American Christianity gives enough credit to our biological makeup or takes seriously enough the real threats we face.
This brings me to another, more value-neutral view on fear: a survival view. You could also call it the biological view: fear is simply a natural life-preserver, “a survival function in the face of threat”. This view sees humans not as souls but as animals that can sense danger and respond to signals in order to survive. Fear then, is a valuable part of creaturehood, a gift that keeps us alive. It need be neither sought nor avoided; it simply shows up where there might be a need.
And yet that word might is tricky. How do we know when our fears are based in reality? It is sometimes difficult to tell what poses actual danger versus potential danger. Someone can be 100% afraid of something that is 1% likely to harm them.
To choose between these two views of fear, I think, is a false choice. What could it look like to integrate them (which, I think, most of us do most of the time anyway)? Some thoughts:
Fear is an emotion. Like all emotions, it is neutral and ought not be judged or repressed; it simply is.
Fear ≠ truth. But fear can point to something true. The presence of fear alerts you to something worth attending to. It is a signal; it conveys information.
So what is that fear telling us? And how do we pay attention to that information, glean from it what is useful, and act responsively to that fear, rather than letting “fear itself” take the wheel?
Fear is often the root of other emotions. For many of us, the presence of fear is manifest as anger because we’ve been told anger is a more legitimate emotion (because it is more stereotypically male) or actually isn’t even an emotion at all. For many of us, turning towards anger is a way to avoid facing deeper feelings — including fear.
Fear can activate you and it can actually sustain you for quite a while, especially when masked over as anger—but not very well, and not without cost to your selfhood (/soul). Put another way: fear can activate you; it ought not sustain you. It can have its use as kindling, but no one builds a useful fire by just feeding it more and more kindling. You need to ignite a log. Similarly, to sustain our lives best lived we need other fuel — like hope, love, joy.
Finally, there is a difference between a) fear as emotion, b) fear as motivator, c) fear as habit of mind, and d) fear as mode of being. It’s worth reflecting on when we as individuals, or as a society, have crossed into the latter two.
These thoughts will need revisiting. I’m plunking them down just days before perhaps the most tense U.S. election ever, during a surging pandemic, amid racial injustice and widespread social unrest (and yes, an ongoing climate emergency). There is a lot of fear in the system. People are tightly wound.
This is when I need to keep fear from being a habit of mind or a mode of being. (I realize that’s easier for me to do than others whose fates are more directly under threat, whose living out of fear comes in response the threat of poverty, separation from loved ones, deportation, targeted violence, etc.)
Right now, it is easy for me (and I’m guessing for you, too?) to see others’ fears as illegitimate and irrational, and my own as unimpeachable and objective; to consider my fears as well-founded and quite reasonable given the information at hand, whereas others’ are illogical and scoffworthy. I’m not pointing this out to relativize or both-sides this, just to admit it.
I don’t think all conclusions drawn from fear are equally legitimate. I am afraid for another Trump term because I have seen what the first one yielded, and I project that a second term would yield more of the same and worse. For others, the dominant fear is of what the other guy might do.
Similarly, I am afraid of climate breakdown and how it will continue to kill people and disfigure the world as we know it; that is fact, the only question now is to what extent we will let it happen, and I am afraid of that and want to respond appropriately to that fear. On the other hand, I am not afraid of the Feds coming for my fuel-combustion vehicle or more taxes.
So, yes, I think some specific fears are more valid than others. But I recognize that underlying fears — of change, of privation, of isolation, of irrelevance (basically, of death) — are very much real on all sides, even if the conclusions we draw from them ought to be examined, even interrogated, through seeking facts and being willing to update our mental models.
Whatever the result of this election, or even the political season which follows, it will not banish fear or causes for fear (though it will reduce a lot of it for some people compared to others). We will still have before us the hard work of relating to fear as individuals and collectives. We will still need to be persons — and eventually, I can only hope, a culture — with a healthy relationship to fear.
In the hours, days, months, and years ahead, maybe the best we can all do is notice our (and others’) fears, see what they might be telling us, respond to them with consideration, and, to the extent possible for each of us, with a love that protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres.
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Well, it looks like I did not keep this one brief as intended. Thanks for reading this far anyway. I’m always interested in hearing disagreement or challenges to make my thinking/writing clearer and more useful.