Fears, Feelings and Reason

The Well Infidel – August 22, 2010

Stress is a reality of daily life. To live healthfully and well, we must learn to manage stresses of all kinds. Since life is not and never has been fair, stress is greater for some folks than others. Those with good genes, supportive environments, well-rounded educations and ample exposure to the modeling of psychological skills do much better controlling and artfully channeling stress impulses than those with impoverished learning experiences. Others, such as persons whose chemical compositions are not quite right, or who live in hellish environments and otherwise enjoy exposure to effective lifestyle modeling, suffer more the effects of stress. And, making things worse, the latter are less resourceful in dealing with difficulties.

Fear is a common stressor for the advantaged and the challenged. In a new book by Daniel Gardner, The Science of Fear, the nature of fears past and present are reviewed and assessed. It's an interesting book that offers key insights about the fear factor. The information offered could lower stress and fear levels while calling attention to risks deserving attention.

Gardner identifies our hit parade of major fears: terrorists, Internet stalkers, crystal meth, avian flu, genetically modified organisms, contaminated food, poisonous mushrooms, climate change, carcinogens, leaky breast implants, the obesity epidemic, pesticides, West Nile virus, SARS, avian flu, herpes, Satanic cults, mad cow disease, school shootings, crack cocaine and flesh-eating disease - and that's just a sampler. There is no shortage of things to worry about, if so inclined. Gardner did not even mention some of the fears and stresses that concern me - slower 5K times as I grow older, a drop-off in fan mail and marriage proposals as my beauty slips away, names forgotten - even my wife's now and then - things like that.

It is a secular miracle that everyone on Earth is not crazed with fears and thus overwhelmed by stress.

There are many fear promoters having an impact on the general public. Most of these fears involve contingencies that are statistically unlikely or affect very few. Most concern situations over which people can do little or nothing whether they have fear or not - there is little individuals can do about most fears. Politicians are leading fear-mongers, especially the Right-wing Republigoons. They fan fear flames to gain or increase power, to attract campaign contributions and to entertain and excite their base. Bureaucrats at all levels sometimes promote fear to attract bigger budgets, scientists as a way to gain grant monies and the media to add audience share, sell papers and so on.

Maybe you, too, are part of the problem! Who do you scare, what kind of fear mongering do you promote?  Parents are unintentionally guilty of inducing fear in well-meaning attempts to control and keep the kids in line. My own parents tried to motivate me to come home before dark, else the bogeyman might get me  I'm over the bogeyman now, but I do fear climate change and religious fascism. My fears have been upgraded. Besides those two fears and maybe an asteroid strike, things seem pretty hunky-dory to me.

Of course clergy are masters at inducing fear - think of what awaits those who do not properly believe, worship or follow the rules of the Christian God or the Islamic Prophet. Is there anything scarier than being eternally tortured. This fear is the granddaddy since it is said to be endless - a holy holocaust of hell in the hereafter. Fortunately, about twenty percent of the population in this country and larger percentages than that throughout Western Europe think such an idea is pure BS, as I do.

Brain research has led some investigators to separate thinking patterns into two systems, each affecting fear in different ways. The two systems, feeling and reason, are dramatically different. Author Gardner explains that reason works slowly.  It examines evidence. It calculates and considers. When reason makes a decision, it's easy to put into words and explain. But, we are not programmed to favor reason over feeling. Robert Green Ingersoll was a ardent advocate for reason, but he understood that it was not the strongest force shaping the way we function: In an 1887 speech, he said: I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, blown and flared by passion's storm, and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

Feeling accounts for the irrationality inherent in the things we fear. It operates below conscious awareness, and it is tied to emotions and snap judgments (i.e., hunches, intuitions). Decisions based on feelings cannot be explained logically. More often than not, feelings lead us to irrational conclusions, such as unjustified fears.

Gardner offers interesting examples of irrational fears.

There was a time when children were expected to take some knocks and chances. It was part of growing up. But no more. At schools, doors are barred and guarded against maniacs with guns, while children are taught from their first day in the classroom that every stranger is a threat. In playgrounds, climbing equipment is removed and unsupervised games of tag are forbidden lest someone sprain an ankle or bloody a nose. At home, children are forbidden from playing alone outdoors, as all generations did before, because their parents are convinced every bush hides a pervert - and no mere statistic will convince them otherwise. Childhood is starting to resemble a prison sentence, with children spending almost every moment behind locked doors and alarms, their every movement scheduled, supervised, and controlled. Are they at least safer as a result? Probably not.

So, try to engage your rational faculties as much as possible. Gardner is surely correct in noting that obesity, diabetes, and the other health problems caused by sedentary lifestyles are a lot more dangerous than the specters haunting parental imaginations. And other specters of all kinds haunting hundreds of millions of imaginations in the country and around the world. The things that ought to scare people are not dramatic or complicated. We spend too much on terrorism (security) and too little on promoting reason to overcome bad choices. Gardner believes there are consequences ... when our judgments about risk go out of whack so it's important to understand why we so often get risks wrong.

But, no surprise, Ingersoll said it best - reason is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

 
Donald B. Ardell is the Well Infidel.  He favors evidence over faith, reason over revelation and meaning and purpose over spirituality.  His enthusiasm for reason, exuberance and liberty are reflected in his books (14), newsletter (544 editions of a weekly report) and lectures across North America and a dozen other countries.