Fear

I just can't let this one go. I was in an email discussion a long while back. We were discussing the war in Iraq, terrorism and so on. Then someone said "Be afraid is good, The bottom line up front. If we as a people are not safe and secure in our lives, then nothing else matters." I don't want to be deliberately obtuse, so I am sure the original intent the author was going for was coming from more of a survivalist attitude. And that goes more along the lines of someone is trying to kill us, so we need to defend ourselves. So you put up the fences, buy the guns, and question everyone in the neighborhood passing through. The intent is that you can use fear as a tool to inspire better protection. Protection and security is the goal, so if fear is the tool to get it, then fine.

The problem I have is just that I don't like the idea of fear being the source of anything. It's almost like a politician taking bribe money to spend it on helping the homeless. Sure it's a good cause, but you took a bribe. It's tainted money, and now your honor is forever tainted. That's the real basics of why you can never do evil so that good may result from it. It's why the fellowship can't use the One Ring to fight Sauron. And because fear is most often used as a tool of manipulation, anyone that causes or benefits from fear is someone I don't trust.

Here is a random selection of quotes about fear that I found...

* Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear
* Fear is not the natural state of civilized people
* Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd
* Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live
* The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness
* Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death
* Worry gives a small thing a big shadow
* If a man harbors any sort of fear, it ... makes him landlord to a ghost
* Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise
* He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life
* Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of every fear is a freedom
* Ignorance is the mother of fear
* No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices
* Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets
* Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely
* The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear
* We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them
* There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings
* Only thing we have to fear, is fear itself
* Remember that we are not descended from fearful men
* You see what power is - holding someone else's fear in your hand and showing it to them
* Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt

After reading a lot of fear quotes, I found two things to be true about almost all of them. First fear is the enemy and is to be Conquered. Two, fear comes from ignorance. I don't find quotes, proverbs, or bits of wisdom that say fear is good, fear is used to do good, or that fear is anything other than something that needs to be overcome.

I don't understand the fear of the borders. None of the hijackers snuck in through a hole in the fence from Mexico. None of them came from Iraq, or Afghanistan. But because of fear, we got the Patriot act. From fear we have a near insane TSA checkpoint at the airports. We have military units acting as border patrol. We have immigration checkpoints inside our borders (remember probable cause?) The TV tells me all the time that terrorist want to spread terror. If that's the case, then hasn't the goal been achived? Has anyone asked how we got along just fine without a Department of Homeland Security? Why do we need one now? "The threat is real" I'm told. "You haven't seen the things I've seen", or "I have a friend in the super secret government agency and it's a real threat". Wheather deserved or not, the Isralies live under constant threat of attack (from people with a legitimate grievance against them), yet people still get married, go to the store, go clubbing, and just live life.

If no other point is taken or understood, then just take this. Fear is the enemy of liberty. You can't be both free and fearful, but you can be free from fear.