February 19, 2016

• Fear Factors

  February 19, 2016, Prescott- This week has been a bit rough, although work resumed for two days and I did have a nice dinner with friends, last night.  The difficult part has come from the number of attacks, two of them pointedly personal, that have come my way this week.  Last night, I received a written death threat, which I take only mildly seriously.  The person in question has neither the physical or financial wherewithal to put an end to my life.  Today, someone on another medium said that, unless I supported building a wall on the Mexican border, I was not entitled to claim citizenship.

  We have devolved into a “my way or no way” mentality.  It’s not just in the United States, that this is happening.  Europe is finding itself overwhelmed.  India and Indonesia are experiencing the resurgence of religious fundamentalism, to say nothing of what is going on in Africa and western Asia.  Mexico has been rigid, in not letting migrants come in from Central America, or from Cuba, for that matter.  Even a small nation like Nicaragua puts those seeking a better life, in detention camps.

  Otherwise good people are turning on others, mostly out of fear- that their livelihoods will be lost, that their families’ safety will be at risk and, more existentially, that all they cherish and believe will be upended.

  I have three thoughts on this whole phenomenon.

  1.  Remember the French Revolution.  In a nutshell (no pun intended), the common people rid themselves of leaders who looked upon them as less than human.  After that, there was no game plan, except to continue the carnage, until the Revolutionaries had decimated their own ranks- and Napoleon stepped in, restored a monarchy and only slight improvements had been made in the public weal.

  2.  “The Earth is but one country, and Mankind its citizens”- Baha’u’llah

  We do best to see all other people and nations as our relatives, by extension.  There need to be rules, sane and intelligent boundaries, and no one should enter another’s home, without leave of the owner.  Each family, city or town, county, state/province, and nation is entitled to having its boundaries, and its laws, respected.  Nonetheless, there cannot be the sort of racism or ethnocentrism that only perpetuates misery.  There also cannot be the economic colonialism that demands people in one country suffer, so that people in other countries can indulge themselves with habit-forming drugs that foment death and destruction, both for the people around the producers and for the consumers.

  3.  Everyone is entitled to seek the truth of spiritual, intellectual and metaphysical matters for themselves.

  Groups have arisen, from ISIS to the American Tea Party, that rely on fear and loathing to keep their agendas moving forward.  Again, I refer you to the late, unlamented Jacobins.  The Ku Klux Klan, Khmer Rouge, National Socialists, the “Know Nothings”, and various tribal armies-of-slaughter, throughout history, have followed the same path- sometimes with deadly violence, other times with the violence of the mind.  In both cases that I mentioned at the beginning of this post, my response was immediate- I will think, and speak, for myself.  I have served the United States of America, and will not give up my citizenship; nor will I ask that of my critic, who was born here, also.  I will follow my own schedule, protocol and regimen, with regard to my daily life, and not give in to threats, of any kind.

  The challenge, before us all, is to put fear in its place.

  • 4:26 pm
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