Tag Archives: fear

Defining Our Terms

On Mondays, I receive an emailed essay called Sightings from Martin Marty, the eminent University of Chicago religion scholar who distributes his observations and those of others studying or teaching at the University’s Divinity School. This morning, he wrote about a recent article from the Economist on Jews and Israel.

The general discussion was interesting, but the following paragraph struck me:

The editors see reactionary Orthdoxies still winning over moderate movements. No surprise here. In the six-year five-fat-volume study of militant fundamentalisms I co-directed (with R. Scott Appleby) for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,we found everywhere, in all religions, that it was not conservatism that was growing but extremism based less in history-based traditions but in fear, reaction, and aggression. As I read the Economist and other such literature I think of an observation by Harold Isaacs which we paraphrased as we looked at Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Christian and other militancies: “Around the world there is a massive convulsive ingathering of peoples into their separatenesses and over-againstnesses to protect their pride and power and place from the real or presumed threat of others who are doing the same.

I think that’s a perceptive observation, and it applies to more than religious identity.

In America, in our zeal to label rather than understand, we have seen contemporary radicalism confused with genuine conservatism. We have failed to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism. And we have seen “We the People” redefined to exclude “others”–immigrants, GLBT folks, Muslims, “elitists,” even Southerners.  We seem to be growing a variety of fundamentalisms.

Fear, reaction and aggression, leading to extremism and an “us versus them” worldview. Sort of sums up contemporary politics, doesn’t it?

This impulse to label and reject those who do not share our identity may be understandable, but it is deeply corrosive, and it distracts us from the discussions we need to conduct. Distinguishing between mainstream conservatism and liberalism and their extremist manifestations–accurately defining our terms–might be a first step back toward sanity.

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Fear Factor?

In Julius Caesar, Shakespeare has Cassius deliver the immortal line  “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars..”

But what if our faults are “in our stars”? What if the age-old debate about how much of who we are is determined by nature, and how much by nurture, is gradually being decided, and the answer is nature? I, for one, don’t find it particularly appealing to think that the person I am was genetically determined, but there seems to be more and more evidence suggesting that who we are is less a matter of human will and reason than we may be comfortable with.

Sometimes, of course, recognition of the role of biology can be liberating. The discovery that genetics–not bad parenting or “perverse choices”–largely determines sexual orientation falls in that category. But what if it isn’t only being gay that is biologically determined? What if being a Rick Santorum is equally the result of a genetic roll of the dice?

A recent article in Psychology Today reports on a study from University College London that found self-described conservatives have larger amygdala than self-described liberals, and that the liberals had more gray matter in the anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that helps people deal with complexity. (The results are consistent with some other recent studies; just a year ago, researchers at Harvard and UCLU reported finding a “liberal gene,” although its reported effects were limited.) The amygdala is a small, almond-shaped structure deep in the brain that is active when a person is anxious or fearful.

In other words, people who are more likely to be anxious and fearful, and less able to deal with complexity, are most likely to be politically conservative–assuming we define “conservative” as a person opposed to social and political change. Social conservatives would fit this definition; fiscal conservatives probably wouldn’t.

In one sense, such a conclusion would be consistent with what we see around us. The hysteria that Obama’s election evoked in a significant number of people is often attributed to racism (and that certainly explains a lot of it), but it is equally likely that it wasn’t the President’s race per se, but the fact that the election of a black man was unavoidable evidence of dreaded social change. As I have noted before, many of the people who seem most irrational–who think the President is a Muslim Socialist, that gays and lesbians have a diabolical “agenda,” that all Muslims are terrorists–are clearly terrified of a world they don’t understand. In the words of social historian Stephanie Coontz, they’re nostalgic for “the way we never were.”

Of course, one study doesn’t settle the nature-nurture battle, and even if these results are replicated, they don’t answer the causation question: are some people born with a larger amygdala, or did it grow larger as a result of frightening childhood experiences or authoritarian parenting? (We Moms are never wholly in the clear…)

But it does suggest that we should have some compassion for folks like Santorum. Maybe he was born that way.

Of course, if he were to become President, my amygdala would grow.

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Comedy, Tragedy and 9/11

This morning’s comics were virtually all devoted to the subject of 9/11. One of my favorite strips is Crankshaft (my husband and I tend to relate to old and cranky); this morning’s had Crankshaft sitting in front of his television, listening to a blond announcer give a really lovely tribute that ended with the following sentiment:

“Our nation will survive and grow, secure in knowing that knowledge always overcomes ignorance, and an open, inquisitive mind always overcomes fear.”

I am sad today, not only for the people who died in the towers that day, not only for the brave firefighters and police officers who died or became terribly ill trying to save them, but for the death of my faith in that very belief.

In the wake of the attacks, there was an outpouring of human kindness, a recognition that however different we might be otherwise, we were all Americans. In the wake of a tragedy,we had a rare, precious window of opportunity to rise to the challenge and be a better, kinder nation. Instead, we were told to go shopping, and we did. We embraced a more pernicious invasion–an attack by our own government on our civil liberties. We took out our new fears on our Muslim neighbors (and our neighbors who looked like they might be Muslim). We invaded a country that had no connection to the attack and put its costs on the national credit card so that our generation wouldn’t need to pay for it. We shut our eyes to torture and rendition. Rather than using the tragedy to contemplate how we might improve our communities, we closed our minds, turned on each other, and gave in to ignorance and fear.

The attack was a test and we failed it.

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