A lot of the posters on these boards since 11 September have expressed fear at the current situation and the potential for more attacks. Not a surprising feeling at all, of course.
I grew up near an army and air force base in the UK, during the 1980s. Terrorism was a constant fear: the local roads were all owned by the military, with armed patrols on footbridges over main roads and the occasional bomb threat closing my school. I moved to London at a time when litter bins were being removed from railway and underground stations due to them being perfectly located for IRA bombs. Scores of innocent people were killed in bomb attacks throughout Britain and Northern Ireland. Yet I don’t remember worrying about it: I always assumed it wouldn’t happen to me, or that if it did I wouldn’t know anything about it until too late.
The recent events have made me re-think my feelings about this. Seeing so many posters express deep fear about their safety – especially people who seemed less afraid of violent crime than I feel – makes me wonder if this fear is only reaching America for the first time. A recent paper I saw on the train featured the bus attack, under the headline ‘Nervous America Reacts’.
Is this the case? Is there a general feeling of fear? How are you coping with it? Do you think you could ever get used to it?
I am not fearful, and have never been. But I am concerned about the possibility of bio/chem terrorism. I’m not buying things like gas masks. I’m just more alert and seek news more than I used to. I also started checking posts on this excellent board. I think it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
No, the “fear” quotation was from FDR. Churchill is more famous for his “we will fight” speech and “Should the British Empire last for a thousand years, men will still say ‘This was her finest hour.’” (I am unsure about the exact phrasing, unfortunately).
Differentiate that which is within my control and that which is beyond my control
2a. If there is something within my control, I use the best information and evidence available to guide my actions.
2b. If something is beyond my control: “Que sera, sera. What will be, will be.”
I try to adopt a broader perspective: I usually don’t have to think to long before I can envision people who have had it far worse. One of the most heartening things is to recall instances of those who make it through tough times, it gives you faith in human perserverence. The father of a friend of mine was in the concentration camp at Dachau and is alive today to tell the tale. Permit me to be repetitive and say that hearing tales of people who are courageous in the face of despair has a way of galvanizing your courage. It gives you evidence that it is possible to survive, to overcome.
You
can
do
it.
And when you do, you will become a source of inspiration to others. In the process, you emerge on the other side better than when you entered on this side.
Pure and simple. Knowledge is one of the only tools that can defeat fear. Whether it be the knowledge of how to shoot a gun or design a better weapon. Perhaps it requires learning a new language or a better understanding of another culture. Whatever the case, learning is the most direct path to conquering fear. Few other, if any, things are capable of rationally defeating fear.
It is one of the principal reasons that I am here. At the party’s dinner table tonight, people wondered if I was a intelligence agent for my ability to rattle off facts about the current Mid-East crisis.
Living in the U.S., I could easily be killed by a drunk driver, killed by a gun or knife weilding thief, or die in a traffic accident. Terrorism is, and has always been, another possibility. Fortunately, I’m able to live with these potential threats without fear. Death will take me eventually, no matter what I do. If it comes sooner, so be it. In the end, I will be no more or less dead than I would end up being eventually.
I wasn’t born yet, but did everyone forget the fear of the Cuban Missile Crisis? That wasn’t just a walk in the park, you know! We (USA) could have been smoked like a cheap cigar!
I’m with Zenster. I get me some cold hard Data. One of the best things for me through this whole situation has been my American Way of War class.
I don’t feel safer, but I feel more prepared for things. I’m not floating alone in a sea of danger. I have a mind. I am a person. I Live as best I can with what I know. I try to know a lot.
I was a kid during the Cuban missle crisis, Jinx. We didn’t realize how close we actually were to war until years later, but it still was a pretty scary time. Back in those days there were Civil Defense stations around most cities and children in schools went through periodic air raid drills. We definitely had a sense that the world could literally come to an end.
