The F Bomb

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." Yoda

Following my epiphany about Fake News and the religious zealots peddling their dogma in different guises, I decided to widen my news source horizon to see what people were really thinking and doing. I try, as efficiently as possible, to read the daily news as it emanates from various viewpoints. I am not bothered by, and in fact I relish, reading a viewpoint that challenges me. News of all kinds - politics, sports, business and arts - are on my menu. I trust myself to make a decision as to the veracity of something. I don’t need CNN to decide for me in their fearful headlines.

Reflecting a Jungian collective unconscious, and resembling quantum mechanics in some ways, all of us are tied together in one emotional knot. Specifically, the rhythmic ebb and flow of our collective feelings are reflected in the financial markets, and that is a primary reason I read news. It is a daily prelude to directions in the markets. News is also a road map to an understanding of what people might be feeling, and it leads me to perceive art, politics, and even sports with more acuity. Why is it that so much news seems to be aimed at stoking fear?

What seems to be a common thread in this knot of human activity is the F Bomb. This F Bomb needn’t be dropped from a plane nor spoken out loud, yet it causes more damage, dysfunction and suffering than many physical bombs or salacious expletives.

By the F Bomb, I mean FEAR. The Fear Bomb.

To quote a little green animated figure that speaks backwards might seem somewhat blithe or even trite.

I quote Yoda because more people may have heard him utter those immortal and wise words than have heard the most erudite spiritual leaders and self-help gurus. Why then, do those hallowed words seem to have fallen on dead ears? Why, I often wonder, is fear such a pervasive and driving force in human thought and action?

I am no psychology maven. But It is obvious that, for evolutionary reasons, fear was an important survival tool that benefitted our species for hundreds of thousands of years. I liken it to the human desire for fat, salt and sugar. Those were scarce in our early development, so we were programmed to gorge ourselves when we rarely happened upon them in the savannah and forests. As we can see now however, there is no scarcity of those items which are meant to be very discreet in our diet. The testimony to the present ubiquitous nature of these three food types is a people beset with obesity, illness and anxiety in being unable to curb their enthusiasm to satiate themselves.

So what’s the deal with fear then? Similarly, it was critical for our ancestors to feel fear upon seeing a lion running at them with dripping teeth, or to avoid skinny dipping in an alligator pond. But now we have conquered all of our old predators. We are at the top of the food chain and we have removed all of those primeval threats. We are the kings! What is there left to fear? Possibly, just as we cannot resist consuming food that was so scarce and now makes us sick with its overwhelming availability, so we are faced with a new (in evolutionary terms) ubiquity of humans in our midst that have created fear, neurosis and anxiety due to the social instinct run amok. We are programmed to get along, even at the expense of our own sanity. The sheer density of people complicate things considerably. In a classic neurotic faux pas, we often will choose dishonest harmony, instead of honest conflict. We try not to be ourselves.

I see fear everywhere, especially magnified in groups, with which I have considerable experience. Fear of risk, in particular, lies at the root of humans and clearly it is also evolutionary in origin. Risk possibly leads to failure. Failure, while usually leading to something less critical than being eaten by a lion, can lead to social rejection, censure and the threat of loneliness resulting from an absence of approbation. It can lead to lost employment and relationships. This fear of risk drives people in remarkably negative ways. We are witnessing today in the news many sad examples of such fear driven human interaction. But on a more microcosmic level we see and feel it in ourselves and in our interactions in commonplace situations.

One might think that if most of the threat of consequence is taken away the fear will subside. An Orchestra is a good case in point, based as it is on the tightest job security in the workforce. Never mind Trump on 5th Avenue., Possessing tenure in an Orchestra means never having to say you’re sorry and you can take that shot on 5th Avenue and your colleagues will likely have your back. Yet Orchestra musicians are often caught in the fear trap, unwilling to take a risk in their playing that might be judged negatively, that might get the attention of the conductor, that might veer out of the middle lane. and even go off the road for a moment.

In the end, the fear to be overcome is fear of ourselves. To understand that by giving in to fear, we become more easily controlled by other people. To be at peace as we are, to relax in our own skin. To be confident that if we fail in some way it is ok, even if there is rejection from some. To look within ourselves instead of to others for support and affirmation. To realize that confidence comes not from some external plaudits, but from being secure in knowing you are true to yourself. Most important, to be willing to take risks of all kinds and revel in the consequences, knowing that some will work and some will not. The wonderful conductor Nicholas Harnoncourt summed it up on the attached link when he says ‘Beauty is to be found on the edge of failure’.

Yes!

https://youtu.be/dX4tmWLxGFM