Panic, fear, and uncertainty seem to rule today. People stockpiled food, guns, toilet paper, and all sorts of products thereby creating the shortages that they had feared. There is unrest in the streets. Everyone is angry at someone else. The masses are uneasy, antsy, and searching for answers and solutions to the threats that they perceive around them. For a brief moment, I feel into that same trap. I started watching more network news and I questioned it less. I bought more food than I needed and jealously guarded my toilet paper; doing my part to exacerbate its scarcity. I live in the "red" part U.S. so I had a gun or two lying around and I didn't need to buy any new ones but I cherished those that I had more dearly. "It's okay Charlene, I didn't need to tickle you today," I imagined myself saying as I sat naked, and shaking, and creepily stroking my rifle. I'm kidding about that last part, mostly. Fortunately, I realized what was happening to me. I was succumbing to panic and that is never a good course of action to take. We make stupid decisions when we panic. We are easily mislead when we seek comfort and place trust in whatever leader comes along and offers to show us the way out of our blinding fear. We become sheep who facilitate our own slaughter by allowing our desperation for safety and an illusion of security to overcome our senses and good judgment. It is for that reason we must stop running from our fears, face them, and learn to embrace them because if we do not, we start ourselves down a path that can only end in the destruction of our freedom and the implementation of our increased exploitation and oppression.
I am reminded from a line from Dune: "Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me" (Herbert). I credit psychedelics for teaching me fear management strategies and it seems appropriate that a psychedelically influenced author would sum them up so well in his novel (there is an upcoming remake of the earlier films which I am somewhat enthusiastic about, by the way). When I tripped, I learned that it is often futile to fight the self and its reaction to extreme and intense stimuli about which one can do nothing. That is to say, you ate the mushrooms and the trip is going to happen whether you like it or not. The experience may turn on you and become unpleasant or frightening. Trying to actively fight such feelings, brings them to the center of one's consciousness. They cease to be part of the scenery of the trip and become its overwhelming focus. Panic rules the mind of the psychonaut like a tyrant when he or she is foolish enough to attempt to slay it like some mythical beast. Instead, it is better to embrace the fear. We must permit it to pass over us (to badly paraphrase Herbert) because when we learn to allow ourselves to experience our fears without fighting them, they are transient. We remain calm and the calm mind is poison to seemingly unassailable Tyrant kings of consciousness like Panic.
The Herbert quote carries an accurate warning that is relevant to us today. Many people have focused on nothing but their fear for most of this year. That puts us all in danger because those who would exploit our fears for their own gains are circling our collectives consciousness like psychic buzzards around our dying mental fortitude. We see this harmful exploitation on all levels of our lives now. Scam preachers and other hucksters are selling fake Corona cures to people who are desperate to feel safe from the virus. The media shows the world burning and tells us that is the only tap through which vital and lifesaving information flows and we will receive it if we just watch these "important" messages from their sponsors. The politicians and their propagandists behave like they are some kind of mutant Jesus-like creatures who have been called to come and lead us to safety when they really seek our consent to start new wars and oppress new populations for their own profit and, of course, the profit of their sponsors. Maybe Herbert overstates it a bit when he writes "[f]ear is the little-death that brings total obliteration" but if we panic and place in power a political regime that decides to push and propel us into the next world war, it could quite literally be true.
What is the point here? Should I recommended that we all run off and take psychedelics again? Perhaps, I should but I didn't want to rewrite my last post. We don't need them this time, anyway (they might help, though). Maybe I am being too dramatic in my presentation here but fear is a part of life. That is something that we all should have learned but the relative security of society has hidden that truth from many of us. When fear seems new, we have a tendency to fight it and focus on it to an unhealthy degree which induces panic. When we panic, we make poor and unproductive decisions and some people see that as an opportunity for exploitation which, in the wrong context, can be quite destructive. If we wish to guard ourselves from that potential "total obliteration," maybe we should do as Herbert suggests and "permit the fear to pass over [us]."
Peace.
All the images in this post are sourced from the free image website unsplash.com.
The quote is from the Frank Herbert novel, Dune.