Day 61 Take It From the Top or Bottom; or, Fear in Cyber-Disguises
It’s time to talk about the fear again. In fact, it was fear, unaddressed fear, that prompted this series of essays, now in its third month. Humans have as many different reactions to fear as there are humans.
Having spent most of my life counseling people about what boils down to their fears of all stripes, I think it is safe to say that there are two major approaches to fear, under which all variations on a theme fall. They are: from the bottom or from the top.
Consider approaching a mountain. You only have to go one way. Up or down. Do you start at the bottom and go up? Or do you start at the top and go down? It won’t surprise you that it really depends upon what you believe about gain; well, the cost of gain.
If you believe in no pain, no gain, then you’ll start at the bottom and earn your way to the top.
If you believe in gain, who needs pain, then you’ll happily start at the top and skip down to the bottom.
I know these two strands of fear are simplistic, but that’s how conceptual models work.
Kevin Hasset, a top economic adviser to the president said on Sunday on the CBS program “Face the Nation,” “It is scary to go to work.” He works in The White House where two cases of Covid-19 were identified this week. But, he’s going to work in The West Wing, despite his fear.
The Coronavirus Outbreak news aggregator had this little tidbit this morning, “Late Sunday, responding to scattered news reports that the vice president was isolating himself, the White House issued a statement saying that Mr. Pence would not alter his routine or self-quarantine. The vice president ‘has tested negative every single day and plans to be at the White House tomorrow,’ said Devin O’Malley, a spokesman for Mr. Pence.”
An anonymous source this morning noted that Mr. Trump is getting annoyed when people get too close to him. But, he’s still not wearing a mask. Neither did any of the Joint Chiefs in a meeting with him Saturday morning.
Fear, pure fear, is a limbic brain response. Sometimes called the instinctual brain or the animal brain, it’s the part of the brain that makes adrenaline shoot through our systems when we meet a Bengal tiger on a city sidewalk. That kind of fear accelerates and wanes almost immediately when the threat is gone, leaving us shaky and weak.
But that’s not the kind of fear this is because that’s not the kind of threat this is.
Consider these synonyms: terror, fright, fearfulness, horror, alarm, panic, agitation, trepidation, dread, consternation, dismay, distress, anxiety, worry, angst, unease, uneasiness, apprehension, apprehensiveness, nervousness, nerves, timidity, disquiet, disquietude, discomposure, unrest, perturbation, foreboding, misgiving, doubt, suspicion, the creeps, the willies, the heebie-jeebies, the shakes, the collywobbles, jitteriness, twitchiness, butterflies (in the stomach), funk, blue funk, the (screaming) abdabs, the Joe Blakes, worriment, inquietude, phobia, aversion, antipathy, bugbear, bogey, nightmare, neurosis, complex, mania, abnormal fear, irrational fear, obsessive fear, bête noire, or, as a friend from college called them, the screaming gleeps.
Look at all these variations. Now add as many reactions to all these variations as there are humans. Billions of fear reactions, all over the planet, and no real, concrete way to address them.
The Bravados-in-Chief are not wearing masks, but at least one of them is getting anxious, snapping at people who get too close. He’s making staff members wear masks now, too. He’s suggesting more teleworking to the staff. He’s half-heartedly putting into place the things the rest of us have been doing for months. And, still, in probably one of the most secure buildings in the world, he’s afraid.
Between us, he’d be even stupider if he weren’t afraid.
We’re all afraid. And if you’re not, you’re kidding yourself.
“According to historians, pandemics typically have two types of endings: the medical, which occurs when the incidence and death rates plummet, and the social, when the epidemic of fear about the disease wanes.
“‘When people ask, “When will this end?,” they are asking about the social ending,’ said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins. In other words, an end can occur not because a disease has been vanquished but because people grow tired of panic mode and learn to live with a disease.”
If you read only the headlines that appear on your Facebook feed, you know that we’re nowhere near a medical end of this pandemic. We don’t have the testing, the contact tracing, or the quarantining infrastructure needed to do that. We don’t have a vaccine, and although one may be on the horizon, it’s a far horizon at the moment.
As for the steps that would create just such a medical end, they are decadently and increasingly mired in political machination and distraction-technique accusation.
Australia was the first country to ask for more information from China about what happened. As Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday, “We just want to know what happened so it doesn’t happen again.”
“The F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security are preparing to issue a warning that China’s most skilled hackers and spies are working to steal American research in the crash effort to develop vaccines and treatments for the coronavirus. The efforts are part of a surge in cyber-theft and attacks by nations seeking advantage in the pandemic.”
The U.S. in not alone in these accusations. They’re flying around the globe.
There are pundits who maintain that this is merely obfuscation work, designed to draw attention away from the abysmal responses to the pandemic that have been coming from, are still coming from, and will likely continue to be coming from The White House.
“The forthcoming warning is also the latest iteration of a series of efforts by the Trump administration to blame China for being the source of the pandemic and exploiting its aftermath.”
“The president wants a new cold war to deflect attention from his failures. ... Going abroad in search of monsters to destroy won’t save Americans from pandemics, but it does risk entangling the United States in a cold war with the world’s No. 2 power.”
And SO NOT THE POINT. This is fear-mongering at its worst.
“An epidemic of fear can occur even without an epidemic of illness. Dr. Susan Murray, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin, saw that firsthand in 2014 when she was a fellow at a rural hospital in Ireland” during the Ebola crisis in Africa.
“Dr. Murray wrote: ‘If we are not prepared to fight fear and ignorance as actively and as thoughtfully as we fight any other virus, it is possible that fear can do terrible harm to vulnerable people, even in places that never see a single case of infection during an outbreak. And a fear epidemic can have far worse consequences when complicated by issues of race, privilege, and language.’”
And that, in real time, is what we’re confronting now: a fear epidemic.
“Confronting a once-in-a-generation crisis, the world’s middle powers are urgently trying to revive the old norms of can-do multilateralism.” Australia is leading the way. No one knows what these mid-level powerbrokers will do, but I, for one, am relieved they’re doing something about international cooperation, based on the understanding that any border you can imagine is an entirely and inexorably false one.
And so we come to the mountain of fear that is only growing the longer we don’t know what will be.
What to do?
Well, Beloved, here is a chance, once again, for contemplation and self-knowledge. What kind of action suits you in the face of fear?
Imagine Fear Mountain. Now imagine yourself there, in your right and perfect place, dealing with your fear. You don’t know how yet, but you will. Be patient.
Build the image in your mind. Now open your inner eyes. Are you at the bottom, ready to climb? Or are you at the top, ready to descend? Neither position is a right one or a wrong one, but either position may be your one. Whichever way you’re positioned, take one step, up or down. Then take another. Repeat.
Be forewarned, along the way you will meet others who face fear the way you do. They’ll be going up or down.
There are roots and shoots and rocks to navigate. You could trip, and so could others.
When you can, help your fellow travelers. An encouraging word. A bright smile. A pat on the back. Even, if you’ve got the right protective gear, a hand up.
Don’t worry. When you need it, someone will help you.
We’re all going in the same direction. We have to. We’re all starting in the same place.
As I wrote this essay, snippets of a song lyric kept floating through my mind. It took me a little while to catch them. Here’s the lyric that finally came through:
I'd like to see the world for once
All standing hand in hand
And hear them echo through the hills
For peace throughout the land
The original was recorded by The Seekers in 1972, but I wanted to hear more voices singing it. Here’s the version that made me cry.
When we face our fears, Beloved, and we must, there is one thing guaranteed to make it a little easier the more we do it. Helping others with their fears. As we do so, we will, hopefully sooner rather than later, live ourselves into a future free of Covid-19 and full of people giving one another a helping hand.
Dr. Susan Corso is a metaphysician and medical intuitive with a private counseling practice for more than 35 years. She has written too many books to list here. Her website is www.susancorso.com
© Dr. Susan Corso 2020 All rights reserved
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