By
Sara S. Nichols, RScP student at Holmes Institute
Sacramento, CA --Today marks the 9th
Anniversary of the attack by Al-Quaida on the United States. In the intervening period, it seems that the
politics and culture of fear in the United States has escalated. I am writing this statement today to
declare that nine years of fear was enough; let’s spend the next decade living in hope.
From 2001 to 2010 our government responded to and
accelerated fear through an erosion of our civil liberties: the right to free
speech, the right to assemble, the right to travel, the right to counsel, the
right to confront your accusers, and the right to privacy all have been
abridged, trampled upon and narrowed by the U.S. government in the name of
safety from “terror.” As a result it is
harder to travel, harder to protest government actions, harder to communicate
freely and above all harder to trust each other.
At the same time, a culture of parenting from a position of
fear has taken hold. “Helicopter”
parents hover over their children’s every move.
Rather than being given the increasing freedom that growing older used
to naturally bring, many of today’s children are prevented from walking or biking to school or friends’ houses. They are in constant contact with their
parents and others through electronic devices.
They often spend most of their non-school hours glued to television,
computers and video games rather than engaging in imaginative play, or being
outdoors. Those children who parents
keep them active often pursue punishing schedules with an endless array of
sports, lessons, and prescribed commitments.
A “good” parent worries about car
safety, food safety, air safety, safety, safety, safety.
And yet as author Barry Glassner shows us in his book The
Culture of Fear, we’re quite capable
of sustaining a level of fear irrespective of the actual statistics. In one recent period, as perception of crime
and
danger escalated among Americans, the same period actually brought falling
crime, increased life expectancy, and fewer “killer kids,” to our lives. Our perception and consciousness of danger as
a society is all out of proportion with the truth. In other words, we are afraid, but we have little
to be afraid of? Why is this and what
can we do about it?
One tool for living from hope instead of fear is to get
grateful for what we have, and the way things are. Most Americans’ lives are pretty good. Most of us have a roof over our head, food on
our table, a bed to sleep on and no one is shooting at us and someone loves
us. Do we take those things for granted
or do we take time to notice and appreciate them every day? What about hot water, indoor toilets, stable
government, the right to vote? Do we
count those as blessings? Or do we gripe
about how we need hotter water, a new toilet, and more ethical politicians
while we fail to exercise our hard-won right to vote?
Most of us have been given no real reason to live in fear. Millions of people are like me: no one has ever threatened me with a gun,
beaten me, raped me, or hurt my children (or me when I was a child). The newspapers and the television continue to
follow the edict, “if it bleeds, it leads” in determining what stories to
tell. I can open the newspaper every day
and see ongoing coverage of trials of serial killers, high-profile kidnappings,
macabre happenings. Yet these incidents
are just that, incidents, they don’t tell me anything about the pattern of the
world. They don’t tell me anything about
what’s actually true in my experience; or what even is the aggregate truth.
Even though the news can sometimes be depressing, I do read
and think it’s important to read, the stories about what our government or other
governments are doing about global climate change, homelessness, war, ending
hunger, etc. I also read books laying
out the real problems we face and what can be done about them.
It is my strong belief that God never gives a vision without
a provision. There is more than enough
creativity in the world to solve every one of our problems in a new way. That’s one of the reasons we call our
movement “new thought.” We live in an
abundant, creative universe. There is
enough food in the world to feed the hungry.
There is enough housing in the world to house the homeless. There are enough teachers and other resources
to provide high quality education to everyone.
There is enough to be done and enough money to do it for there to be
jobs for everyone. There is enough love
in the world to make everyone feel and know that they are whole, perfect and
complete exactly as they are.
And when people are fed, housed, taught, employed and loved,
there is no reason for war; there is no reason for killings or kidnappings; there is no reason for violence. We create our own lack of security from our
minds. When we focus on lies, on what we
don’t have, on what isn’t working, instead of on truth, on what we do have, and
on what works, it breeds a culture of fear, it breeds attacks, it breeds
terrorism.
The worst terrorism that we commit is on a daily basis in
our own minds. On this, the 9th
anniversary of 9/11, it is time to lay down our arms against our selves and our
fellow man. It is time to have the
courage to live with an undefended heart, in a spirit of love and
forgiveness. It is time to cultivate the
spirit of peace exemplified by Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. It is time to end the culture of fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment