The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Fear Itself

    By Orion on Mon, 04/22/2013 - 10:00pm |

    Another tragedy befell another community in this country, this time in Federal Way - a suburb near Seattle, Washington:

    A shooting that left five people dead at a Federal Way apartment complex Sunday started as a case of domestic violence, police said Monday. It ended with a woman the suspect was living with and three innocent bystanders dead before police shot and killed the suspect.

    Officers responded to 911 calls at 9:30 p.m. at Pinewood Village in the 33300 block of 18th Lane S.

    Police said the suspect, in his late 20’s, shot and killed a woman in her mid-20’s who he was living with in the complex.

    The suspect then went to the parking lot, where he shot two men who confronted him, police said. He then grabbed a shotgun.
     

    Most commentators at this website air on the side of gun regulation. My articles have tried to thrown in the factor of SSRI antidepressant medication and its widespread use among many of the perpetrators of these atrocities. However, there is another element - one that may be plaguing people reading this who have never held a firearm or took psychiatric medication.

    Fear.

    During the last time the United States, and the world, had economic times this hard, then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."

    That quote has been echoed for decades afterward but it seems we have all really forgotten it. The above story details Seattle. I have posted stories here about an encroaching climate of fear on the small island of Guam (where newspaper headlines were literally "Guam Stays Calm.") It is as if every facet of American society is collapsing in on itself and our uncontrollable fear has a lot to do with it.

    Fear is one of the worst human emotions. Anger can be just as bad as fear but anger is defensive. Anger shows that you are in survival mode - you are defending against what you at least perceive to be threats around you. If directed properly, anger can actually get you places - it can be seen as passion or even determination.

    Fear is something else entirely. Fear is much, much worse than anger. Fear paralyzes the spirit, the heart and the soul. Both fear and anger can lead to violence but the sort of violence that comes out of fear - that is much worse than anything anger creates. The Nazi Death Camps were fear, not anger. The ugliness and brutality of the Civil Rights Era was fear - not anger.

    This entire society right now is just overcome with an intoxicating potion of fear. You could get rid of all the products some think have to do with this violence but it's not going to get better as long as this society is breathing in fear like its oxygen.

    An economy will never get better, no matter what laws are passed, in a climate of fear like this. People will be too afraid to make the necessary investments. People will never advance socially - they will be too overcome with fear of the very people one has to cooperate with to get anything accomplished. We will all be stuck at a chaotic, violent and self destructive stand still if we remain this afraid and fearful. We will find our fears only come true and our hopes die away.

    Comments

    Orion, this is a very nice piece. We are in new times, but in many ways they are like the old times, when fear was generally the best technique for getting everybody to do everything. 

    I know you like to write about SSRIs, and I'm glad you are looking at what may be driving us to take them--uncertainty? A culture of fear? Fear of a culture with nothing to fear?

    In looking at our Chechen friends, we get a glimpse into what a culture of pervasive fear and paranoia looks like--it is dark, not very successful, and offers few opportunities for success. And most of those people don't even have access to SSRIs--they're on their own.


    by erica20 on Wed, 04/24/2013 - 8:12pm

    The SSRIs, I think, play in to alot of sudden, explosive and bizarre violence - especially in people with little history of it. That sort of thing, with folks like Adam Lanza, is a very new thing in our world. His dad even said he couldn't understand what pushed his son to do something like that.

    "Anxiety disorders" are something new to our society and probably these scary, "new" (as you said) times certainly warrant anxiety. It's very dangerous to try to drug that anxiety away. Your being fearful in fearful times is totally natural.

    It obviously has nothing to do with folks like the Boston bombers. There is something darker going on there. Bombings are very, very scary. Bombings are planned out, not someone grabbing a bomb - bombs are often created by terrorists from scratch with material like fertilizer. Someone has really become warped when they feel pressed to carry something like that out.

    When you talk about the "old times," do you mean the Cold War? The Cold War had alot of fear going on - but that fear at least had some sense to it. There were two teams and you chose one of those teams to root for. It's a very different game we're playing now.


    by Orion on Thu, 04/25/2013 - 12:40am

    I was thinking more of older times than that, when religious fear was used to manipulate people, but the Cold War shared some of these features.

    Which makes me think of one difference between the "old days" and these--I will try to write about it today.


    by erica20 on Thu, 04/25/2013 - 10:39am

    I think the biggest difference between those times and now is that, even if they were wrong, people were much more sure of themselves and the world back then. Almost everything is in question now.


    by Orion on Fri, 04/26/2013 - 3:33am