Posted by
wazzuprof on Saturday, October 31, 2009 7:41:45 PM
TOWN CRIER III: Paranoia is never a healthy lifestyle
Terry Keller
Posted on: Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Keller
For some time, I've been dimly aware of a climate of fear in this country.
After 9/11 and government rhetoric about terror, which led to the wars on terror and on/in Iraq, fear proliferated. E-mails about Hitler's henchmen using fear to control the German people appeared. Statements, such as FDR's, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," were quoted as a counter to the fear propaganda.
I knew all this, but wasn't aware of how much fear colored my daily life until we spent a year in Denmark. Denmark's Mohammed cartoon debacle in the spring of 2006 gave us pause, but we went anyway. We'd never been to Europe and yearned to experience it, but a bigger reason for going was to give us, and our children, another perspective by living outside of the United States.
Our Copenhagen apartment had no television. Our Danish was pathetic. A scan of the daily papers delivered to our doorstep often resulted in hilarious mistranslations - such as a waterfowl massacre in the nearby moat (likely about bird flu). Our intake of news dwindled. Occasionally, we read English news via the Internet. Mostly, we were news-free.
The burden of fear that hangs over us in the United States gradually lifted. Fears of a terrorist attack or other disaster fell away. We didn't fear that someone might walk into the kids' school with a gun and open fire, or that we'd be mugged walking along the pedestrian shopping streets. Health care was provided, public transportation was plentiful, grocery stores were adequate. We relaxed and enjoyed the city. We admired the sailboats zigzagging across the strait, the rhododendrons blooming for a good six weeks in spring, Van Gogh's brilliant sunflowers. We delighted in organ concerts in neighborhood churches, lit candles in the long winter nights.
No, everything was not perfect. Our kids had their share of teenage angst and rebellion. Our apartment was across the street from Christiania, that 1960s enclave where marijuana and hashish are legal. We lived through the tear gas and smoke of the March riots and car burnings that occurred a block away and outside our front door. And yet, it wasn't until we returned to the United States that I realized how much we'd escaped the fear and paranoia of this country. Here fear of terrorist attacks, coded in fiery colors of yellow, orange and red, is a base over which lies the fear of our kids dying in countries that have ambivalent reactions to their presence.
We fear running out of oil or not being able to pay for heat and transportation. We fear too much immigration, and too little job security, pension plans, health care and Social Security. Interest groups vie for our allegiance to their particular bogeyman. This level of fear-thinking is exhausting.
I'm wondering now how we escaped it while in Denmark. Was it simply avoiding broadcast news? Or was it that we immersed ourselves in art, culture and another society and that our concerns became basic - communication and navigation in foreign languages and systems? Or did a less frightened approach to life rub off on us? Whatever it was, and I'm guessing all of the above, the issue is how to maintain that fear-less existence here. For one, I'll avoid the TV evening news and disaster shows and pronouncements from on high about terror levels.
Is that a head-in-the-sand approach? I prefer to think of it as looking above the layers of fear to the joy and creativity that make life worth living. As FDR said, in his inaugural speech of 1933, during the calamity of the Depression, " the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes " To paraphrase more of his speech, nature is still providing for us and happiness lies in achievement, creativity and helping one another.
Surely, that's a much better way to live.
Terry Keller is a writer, musician and community volunteer who lives in rural Palouse with her husband and two children. Her interests include travel, gardening cooking, international connections and theology. Town Crier III is a weekly series of columns contributed by 13 local writers. The Town Crier columns run on Wednesday.
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