| …the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
A recent article in The Nation discussed the epidemic of fear that’s spread across the US in the four years since September 11, 2001 (www.thenation.com/doc/20051003/msiegel). "The collateral damage of these fears," writes Marc Siegel, "appears to be many Americans’ health…. The process wears us down and interferes with our ability to function." What’s more, it seems, once a new fear has embedded itself, there’s no shaking it. Instead, "it is stored deep in the emotional memory, ready to emerge whenever the so-called danger recurs."
I can’t speak to the medical accuracy of Dr. Siegel’s diagnosis, but I do know this: If we are indeed the sum of our fears, as he seems to suggest, then by now I should be the size of André the Giant. For most of my life I’ve been accumulating fears of varying magnitudes, from small worries through medium anxieties all the way to panic-stoked phobias.
In no particular order, these include: heights; spiders; cancer; going blind (and/or deaf); abandonment; slugs; arrest and/or imprisonment (justified or otherwise); our daughter’s health and well-being; drowning; flying (mostly the crashing part, though); nuclear war; heart attack; losing a limb; unemployment; wild dogs in the streets (when I was very young – not so much these days, thanks); motorbikes; dentist drills; clowns; enclosed spaces; guns; sushi; having to join the army; jellyfish; rabies; tapeworms; failure… well, that’ll do for now.
Looking over this list, it occurs to me that it’s nowhere near complete and, given time, I could come up with many more fears I’ve either overlooked or perhaps not even realized I have.
However, I’m less sure that I could ever compile a complete list of what scares me. Once you’ve worked past the obvious and even not-so-obvious candidates, it’s surprisingly difficult to summon up a reserve battalion of fears. Are there some dark monsters that my mind simply won’t let me identify?
That said, I really have no idea whether or not my own list is typical in (a) its contents or (b) its length and scope. Am I unusually fear-stricken, or am I pretty much par for the course?
Above all, I’m aware that this inventory probably hides more than it reveals. As mentioned, not all my fears are equal in size and the random order here gives no hint as to their relative severity. But more than that, neither is there any proportional relationship between my subjective experience of each fear and the objective threat that it represents.
For example, while my fear of nuclear war – at least a possible threat to global existence back in the 1980s – was very real for awhile, it never reduced me to physical immobility or psychological distress. However, to this day my fear of heights continues to make it all but impossible for me to walk across even the safest of footbridges without my hands breaking into a sweat. In short, what’s clearly the lesser of two threats to my survival actually produces a far greater physical reaction.
Recently I saw one of the Simpson sisters on TV – it must have been Jessica, I think – swimming with dolphins. Afterwards, she said it had been a great experience as it had helped her overcome one of her greatest fears. I’m not sure that dolphins have ever been close to making it on to my list, but I understand the principle. To conquer your fears, you must first confront them.
But surely this is wrong. After all, surely it makes as much (if not more) sense to simply avoid the fear-provoking object in the first place. Afraid of dolphins? Then stay out of the ocean.
More seriously, if fear is part of our evolutionary makeup – steering us clear of real or imagined dangers – then it’s been instrumental in helping us to survive as a species. A fear of snakes and spiders is common and cross-cultural in nature, suggesting that at some point along our development, we stored in our "emotional memory" a collective warning to avoid poisonous and potentially fatal foes. Those who confronted and overcame that fear probably ended up getting bitten, and so removed themselves from the Darwinian thread of survival.
This brings me back to Siegel’s piece in The Nation. "We are scaring ourselves about the wrong things," he concludes. "Fear must be reserved for real danger." Barry Glassner makes much the same point in The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things (1999), in which he argues that while the U.S. has scared itself into a frenzy about all manner of possible threats – and he was writing before 9-11 – those "real dangers" are things like "hunger, dilapidated schools, gun proliferation, and efficient health care."
Roosevelt was wrong. There’s plenty to fear besides fear itself. I know, because I have my own list. But I also know that some fears – like those elusive weapons of mass destruction – are probably just figments of someone else’s fevered imagination. |
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