THE POLITICS OF FEAR

While there are lots of ways to think, one of the most fundamental ways is to think fearfully. And this is not all bad. Fearful thinking makes perfect sense when you are in the face of a true danger or threat. It protects you. If the danger or threat that you are considering is not a true one, but psychological or perceptual, then the fearful thinking is dysfunctional and could be positively toxic and dangerous.

Further, neurologically, we humans have a negativity bias. This bias is wired in and shows up as the fight/flight syndrome. And it makes sense that we should be primed for awareness of dangers because then we can quickly and immediately go into a defense state when we are in true danger from some external threat. Almost instantaneously we access a state that allows us to either flee or fight. Our sympathetic nervous system withdraws blood from brain and stomach and sends to the larger muscle groups so that we have sufficient energy for taking flight or engaging in a fight. All of this also makes perfect sense when we lived in the jungle and regularly faced fierce predators.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, however, and things are very different. There are hardly any fierce predatory animals roaming our streets. The best change for danger today is to put yourself in “the wrong neighborhood,” one where there are gangs, drugs, shootings, etc. Otherwise, you hardly need the activation of your neurological defense system.

Yet in spite of that, most people regularly activate their neurological defense system of fight/flight. We call it the stress response— a response pattern that is a common one and that undermines the health and well-being of millions and millions of people. Many such people live with a siege mentality. They live as if they live in a jungle where danger is all around them. And with our negativity bias— they zoom in on any and every bad news that the media serves up. They may even have a predilection for bad news.

So while fearful thinking is appropriate, useful, and even highly resourceful in the right context, it is inappropriate, unuseful, and unresourceful in other contexts. The problem today is that the media operates as a fear industry constantly seeking to mobilize your fear responses. And that is a pernicious threat to your well-being. It will play havoc with your ability to think clearly, to learn, and to create significant meaning.

Unrealistic fear makes people stupid. Living with a siege mentality, they suffer the ravages of stress and so are more emotional and less rational. They are given to reacting. This causes flaws in their perceptions. They are quick to fall back on the cognitive distortions as they exaggerate dangers, magnify fears, emotionalize risks, and catastrophe possibilities. They then pay high costs socially and economically as they are paranoid about normal risks in living. The fact is, many people are not thinking clearly because they are so afraid.

The problem with fearful thinking occurs when it becomes habitual. When you default to fearful thinking, now you are seeing (and inventing) dangers and threats where there is none or very little. The media is great at facilitating this destructive perception. A current example relates to the CDC’s message last week that the science now indicates that if you are fully vaccinated or have recovered from covid, you do not need to wear a mask outdoors or indoors and do not need to socially distance. Amazingly, when this was announced, a group of people on CNN rejected it and fearfully thought it was a dangerous message(!). They did their best to deepen the fearful thinking. Yet, why would they do that?

This brings us to the politics of fear. People who like to control others, and especially to limit their freedoms, tend to operate from and promote fearful thinking. It helps them maintain power. They like it when people depend on them to keep them safe. For them, every crisis is an opportunity to deepen the dependency.

Fearful Thinking Solutions and Cures A resource that will enable you to use your fearful thinking appropriately and positively is critical thinking. If you can think critically, you can properly assess risk in an objective and rational way. Now you can identify the statistical probability regarding any given risk. What is the probability that X will happen? Is the chance of that happening remote or is it high and very likely?

By thinking critically you realize that risk is built into living. Risk is a constant. Yet all risk is not the same. The odds of getting struck by lightning is pretty low. So with winning the lottery. In life, there’s no success, development, learning, or adventure without risk. What we need is a realistic view of risk. By using critical thinking and your own ingenuity, you can anticipate, abate, and eliminate most risks.

When you use your executive functions and engage in executive thinking, you can develop a mostly fear-free mind. And a fear-free mind is always a better working mind. Where there’s fear, there’s an interference with focus and concentration. What we want to be able to do is to take intelligent and calculated risks. Then to take out the guesswork as much as possible, you will want to get as exact numbers as possible. Executive thinking enables you to plan, develop independence of thinking, self-regulate, and solve the problems that you face.