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I used to have a set of the Durant's multi-volume
history of mainstream western civilization that
an old girl friend gave me for my twentieth birthday.
They neatly divided over two thousand years of history
into periods from the Age of Faith to the Age of
Napoleon. Thinking of those books, which I since
gave away as part of one of my periodic cleansings
of my library, I started to wonder how we should
describe our little piece of the flow of time. After
having a few days to think about this, being free
from radio, television and newspapers at an ashram
I'm staying at in Virginia, I think the best way
to describe our current era is as the Age of Fear.
Fear of war, fear of terrorism, fear of the government
and the media that seem to be going out of their
way to fire up that fear.
I would imagine that fear has been with us since
the beginning of time, and there is certainly nothing
new about the relationship between fear and politics
- it has a long and tortured history. For millennia,
demagogues have been exploiting people's fears to
grasp and hold on to power. It is a source of great
pain to look at what fear has driven many people
to do. This is just as true to contemporary American
society as it was in ancient Greece and Rome and
in the totalitarian societies of twentieth century
Europe and Asia. The difference might be a matter
of degree, but fear has played a role in each and
every corner of the world in each and every century.
With the advent of instant communication, it seems
we now have the ability to spread fear faster and
to more and more people over greater areas.
While many people would agree with the statement
that politicians and the media use our fears to
serve their interests, we need to take things a
step further and begin to explore how fear plays
a role in shaping our individual political beliefs.
In what better place to begin than to start to explore
one of my own doubts and fears.
As I mentioned above, I am writing from a room
in a home a few minutes walk from an ashram in Virginia.
The ashram is approximately a nine-hour drive from
where I live and left from early this past Friday
morning. We wanted to avoid heavy traffic and to
take in some scenery so our journey ended up taking
a total of twelve hours instead, including breaks
to use the bathroom, get some food and put gas in
the car. Twelve hours of burning fossil fuels taken
from unstable Middle Eastern countries. While there
are alternate ways of getting here, somewhere along
the line you have to ride in a car to get to my
final destination. Though you can take an airplane
or train ride to the largest nearby city, that largest
nearby city is approximately a 50 minute drive away.
So no matter how you cut it, some of our planet's
vital resources were going to be used up.
I've never really been comfortable with cars or
driving. I first got my drivers license when I was
in my early 30s. When asked why I waited so long,
especially given that there are so many places in
the United States that are only accessible by car,
I would strongly tell all who wanted to know that
I was taking a principled stand. I was a dedicated
city dweller who proudly rode buses and subways
instead of using that symbol of the worst of American
industrial civilization, the automobile. But what
I expressed as an act of political defiance was
in fact, at least in part, a refusal to act that
stemmed from fear, uncertainty and doubt. While
an opposition to using automobiles fit in well with
my overall political views (including a defense
of the welfare state, support for public transportation
and a fairly green approach to environmental issues),
there was no getting around that if I was able to
deal with that fear earlier in my life, my contribution
to despoiling our natural environment would have
been of longer standing. The fact was that I have,
and continue to have a fear of cars. I'm not actually
sure what it is about cars that bring out the fear.
Was it the size, the speed, the fact that my father
was a really bad driver and I grew up worrying that
we would get into an accident? Whatever the reason,
the fear is real and is something I have had to
confront in order to be able to do certain things
that are important to me, including spending the
last few days in Virginia.
As I confronted my fear, started driving and using
a car more frequently, what does this say about
my long-standing principled stand against America's
automotive culture? Were my beliefs shallow, a cover
so as to not to have tell the people in my life
what was really going on with me? After a great
deal of self-exploration on this issue, I can honestly
say that while there was more to my stand than the
fear, the fear played a role in how adamant I had
become. As a result of this line of inquiry I started
to wonder to what extent so many of our political
beliefs, the stands we take on certain issues, grow
out of fear. Especially those issues we become so
strongly opinionated on.
According to a friend who is a phobia counselor,
the best way to learn to live with a fear and to
prevent you from being stuck in it is to confront
it. To confront it you have got to see it and feel
it in its full flowering. It is at that point that
it becomes possible to assess it and put it into
perspective. Maybe that is what we need to do with
our political beliefs - to explore them, to question
them and to understand what lies beneath them. A
full engagement with the world first requires that
we become fully engaged with ourselves - not to
become stuck in our own issues, but to see them
for what they are, accept them, and move on. And
if we can move on individually, where does that
leave us as a species? Can the Age of Fear be transformed
to an Age of Being, of Acceptance, of Understanding?
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