Fear: What Is It Good For?

Absolutely nothing.

Author's note: I'm publishing this piece today rather than tomorrow because tomorrow is a holiday for my US readers.

As we prepare to gather around our Thanksgiving tables tomorrow, it's worth remembering that a lot of people are scared right now.

For years, this fear was a bipartisan phenomenon. In 2021, a survey by the Center for Politics found that 75 percent of Biden supporters, and 78 percent of Trump supporters, considered people who strongly support the other team to be a "clear and present danger" to our great nation.

But since Trump's electoral victory, progressives in particular seem to be gripped by fear. The day after the election, Fortune reports, "nationwide mental health bookings on Zocdoc, a virtual platform, jumped by 22% between the hours of 6 and 8 am alone." Many folks on the left have filmed themselves screaming, crying, or raging inchoately at the election results. Collin Rugg reports that leftists held a "Primal Scream" event at Lake Michigan in order to release some of their pain and anger at Trump's reelection.

And for all that progressives are flooding to therapists' offices, many therapists aren't in any better shape than their patients. As one therapist said the day after the election, "This morning, I was more or less crying while my client was crying."

If you're one of the millions of Americans who are scared for the future of our great nation, I won't try to talk you out of your fear or tell you that you have nothing to be afraid of. The future is uncertain, and some of your fears may well come true.

Instead, I will offer a perspective shift that I hope will help. Here it is:

Fear isn't necessary to fight injustice.

Being afraid of Trump (or any other elected leader) is not necessary for us to protect our great country or to fight for the most marginalized among us.

How can this be true?

Imagine that a homeless child shows up at your door and asks for you to take her in. Does opening your heart and your home to her require that you be scared of whatever made her homeless in the first place? Of course not. Love, not fear, is what drives us to stand up for our brother and sister and to fight injustice.

Indeed, being gripped by fear can even hurt our ability to fight for the causes that we believe in. Fear sucks away our energy. I spent decades trapped by fear, and one thing that I remember about those years is that I was always tired. I wasn't tired because of what I was doing externally. I was tired because my fear was tormenting me with an endless parade of possible nightmare scenarios that I could not cope with (because they were not actually happening), keeping my adrenals on such high alert that I barely had the energy to move some days…let alone to stand up and fight effectively for XYZ cause.

Indeed, the more danger we are in, the more important I think it is to let go of our fear. If the country truly is headed for a collapse, than that makes it more important than ever that we let go of our fear so that we can keep our wits sharp.

No-one embodies this lesson better than my friend Jamie Winship. When Jamie was teaching in the Middle East, three armed men (part of an extremist militant group that Jamie was in charge of pacifying) drove up in a car and said that they wanted to give him a ride home. Of course, Jamie knew that they didn't want to give him a ride home; if he got in their car, they were going to drive him out into the middle of the desert and shoot him.

At that point, Jamie's fear kicked in and started offering (very unhelpful) suggestions. His fear said to run away. But that wouldn't work, because these men clearly knew where he worked. Once he was in the car, his fear told him to try to fight his way out. But of course that wouldn't work either; even if he succeeded, these men knew where his wife and children were. None of his fear's suggestions were helpful.

Instead of listening to his fear, Jamie chose to listen to the still small voice that came from outside of him. This voice spoke in very different tones from the hurried and frantic voice of his fear. This voice told him that if he got in the car, it "will be the greatest thing you've ever done in your career." So he got in the car.

Once in the car, the men drove him out into the desert, dumped him into the sand, and said that they wanted to kill him. Again, Jamie didn't listen to his (I'm sure very loud) fear. Instead, he listened to the still small voice. And that voice gave him certain words to say to the man in charge of the would-be assassination: "I am not afraid, and I want to be your friend."

Jamie's answer floored his assailant. The man in charge invited Jamie and his wife to dinner. In the course of that dinner, the men let go of their anger and found peace. At the end of that dinner, Jamie says, the entire militant group that the three men were associated with "decided to withdraw from all hostilities in the region."

If at any point during the interaction Jamie had given into his fear, he wouldn't be here today to tell his story. Perhaps even worse, the militants would never have let go of their anger, found peace, and withdrawn from the region; and the entire region would still be suffering under them.

As Jamie puts it, if you choose to "react in fear and anger," in those kinds of situations, "it'll get you killed." By contrast, if you "stay in the present tense" and avoid giving into your fear, "you're able to stay open and flexible and shift paradigms pretty quick." You can see more clearly what needs to be done and do it.

As Frank Herbert writes in Dune, "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration."

When we give into our fear, we're liable to make cognitive mistakes and to misdiagnose complex problems. As a result, we're liable to waste our (already reduced) energy on solutions that don't work as well as they could. By contrast, when we let go of our fear, we can see the bigger picture, make intuitive leaps and insightful connections, and craft solutions better calculated to help the ones who are truly in need.

If you are scared of what the next four years might bring, I will not tell you that your worries are misplaced or that the scenarios that you imagine will not happen. I will, however, suggest that your ability to weather those storms—and, just as important, to care for the people you love through those storms—will be better if you make the conscious decision to let go of your fear.

P.S. In this article I am speaking directly to progressives who are scared of Trump's reelection and what it means for our great country. Some conservatives may interpret this as me agreeing that Trump will herald doom for this nation and that his supporters are awful human beings. In fact, I agree with neither of these premises. I am simply trying to speak to the present moment, when a lot of folks are frightened; and without adjudicating one way or another the question of whether those fears are justified, to suggest that said fears may not be helpful. If Harris had won and I saw a wave of Trump supporters terrified of what the next four years would mean, I would have written the exact same article but geared towards folks on the right rather than folks on the left.

P.P.S. If you like the idea of pushing back against your fear of the other side but you aren’t sure where to start, I highly recommend Braver Angels, a national nonprofit that offers (among other things) to set up warm, civil, and informative 1:1 conversations between Reds and Blues.

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