Fear and Monsters

I’ve been on a sabbatical of sorts for a while.  It’s been eye-opening.  As part of that, I spent 5 weeks solo in Polynesia in 1Q11.  Amazing.  Primitive.  Quiet.  Really quiet.  Like that old Indigo Girls song says, “the lightness has a calm that’s hard to hear.”  I agree. It takes some quiet before you can hear it.  And, when I came back, all I could see and hear was FEAR, FEAR, FEAR.  

Fear is everywhere...politics, advertising, news, family, bosses, employees, customers....everywhere.  The entirety of western civilization seems powered by the fuel of fear.  Fear of failure, of attack, of abandonment, of crowds, of loneliness, of homeliness, of not having enough, of having too much to manage, of too few customers, of too many customers, of not having the right clothes, of getting some dirt on your clothes, of being too fat or to thin or to old or too inexperienced or too liberal or too conservative or too cynical or too naive or too militant or too passive or....you get the picture.  

And, it’s just so damn loud I can barely hear my soul whispering...”it’s ok. you’re good.  you don’t need what they are selling.”

The whole FUD thing (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) is a contrivance designed with one purpose: make you scared so that you will buy (from the person who made you scared!) the thing that promises to keep you safe. What a racket.  Don’t buy it.  Just stop.  So, I’m on a media diet.  No newspapers. No magazines.  No TV.  None.  I’ve been on a media diet since January, and ... nothing.  It’s made no difference.  I’ve not become irrelevant.  I’ve not lost friends.  I’ve not become boring at dinner parties.  (It’s not really all too shocking that people would rather talk about the exotic marine life in Rangiroa than the silly antics of some senator.)  

The bottom line is that we over-consume media because we’ve bought someone’s lie: that we are valuable in virtue of how up-to-date our information is.  BS.  Your value is not transitory like that...fresh one moment, stale the next.  This is not a human being.  The consequence of buying this lie is that we then consume vast amounts of irrelevant drivel, simply so that we can perform regurgitations for other people as a means of validating our value...that we knew XYZ that they had not yet heard, probably didn’t need to know, and would have found out 3.2 minutes later from some other source besides you.  Please tell me there is more to a meaningful life than this!  But, we’ve bought the media's lie that created a fear of irrelevance, which in turn twisted our lives into a contortion, distortion, fun-house image that barely resembles what could be. 

Compared to the peaceful, self-sufficient, proud, grounded existence of which we are capable, our lives sometimes look ghastly.  We make decisions we would never make, attributing it to “but I can’t” or “if I don’t” etc.  But, the reality is...we don’t know what if, and we can do alot more than we think.  We surrender and shrink and outsource our provision/defense/satisfaction to someone who promises they are better at life than we are.  Ug.  Now we are slaves to the monster.  It reminds me of a book we all had to read when we were in middle school: Lord of the Flies.  To me, the moral of the story is that our fears create monsters, not the other way around.  We think that monsters make us scared, but really our fears make us into monstrous contortions of our true selves.  Fear morphs our lives in ways that make us slaves, that cause us to sacrifice our selves and our dreams in exchange for a bowl of crappy stew.  And, the really awful reality is this: the promise is always a lie.  No one can insulate you from risk.  It’s a total bait-and-switch.  Trade the risky world of true life for ... the risky world of slavery.  IQ test.

So, is this just a rant?  No, I think it bears upon many facets of our lives...even if we’re not living in a hut in the South Pacific.  For example, how many times has your boss (or you as the boss) used fear to try to get someone to work harder, faster, longer, etc....”if you don’t X, we’re not going to make payroll!” or similar?  If we don’t get this feature in the release by tomorrow...If you don’t close that deal by the end of the quarter...If you don’t find a way to reduce expenses by 20%....etc, etc, etc.  I’m certainly not saying to be a slacker, but if your passion for the team’s mission is not sufficient to get you to do the job, then maybe (1) you need to get out and/or (2) the company needs to disappear.  Seriously, the use of fear is pervasive.  It’s just such a cheap trick.

Just say no.  Don’t use it.  Don’t let it be used on you.

Fear sucks.  It IS the monster.  Live fearlessly, and you will be able to be true to your self.  And, in the end, that’s the only strategy that’s durable anyway.

thanks to mspuzzles.blogspot.com for the image!

 

Comments

[Ingrid Hoffman]

I have found my swans! I made a conscious decision 10 years ago to step aside from the torrent of fear that gushes from the media. Scott, you are a visionary, a Neo Renaissance Man. Your writing is extraordinary. I think Dickens says it all, ( this is reflected in the cosmos with the current Neptune/Chiron conjunction - 2009-2011 ) “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...”
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

http://blog.trueheartwork.com/2011/08/round-like-a-circle-in-a-spiral-like-a-wheel-within-a-wheel/

[Shawn Rogers]

Great post Scott,
Interesting how clarity is delivered through quiet time and reflection. Glad to see you are living fearlessly.

SR

[Carlos]

Scott,

I've been following you on Twitter and also Lyzasoft for a couple of years - great stuff there.

Personally I have never owned a TV and I stopped reading newspapers about 15 years ago (with the exception of very specific trade publications).

You are so right about the fear thing. Especially since 9-11 but even before that. Our society thrives on its ability to scare people into doing the "right" thing.

Absurd really when you realize it and scary that so many fall for it.

Great article!