Meditation on Fear and reorientation
“I must not fear, fear is the mind killer. Fear is the little-death that brings obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain”
-Benet Gesserit mantra, “Dune”
In the Dune books written by Frank Herbert, the “Litany against Fear” is recited by characters to calm the mind and center one’s thoughts when presented with a frightening situation. Personally, I’ve always found a Hail Mary works better, but I enjoy the symbolism within the mantra. To say that fear is primal is the definition of being derivative. One moment, you’re falling asleep and the next you’re wide awake because you heard a strange sound in your home.
It is basic, elemental, and therefore can be used as a tool for control.
In the newsroom editors understand that while a heartwarming story is good, a violent one is better. If you’re not careful, your social media algorithm can easily become your fear personified. Social media companies and traditional newsrooms aren’t in the business of truth; they have always been in the business of engagement. Much like the Litany against Fear’s use found in Herbert’s Dune books, we must be vigilant and guard ourselves against irrational fear, especially the kind being fed to us by outside sources.
Just this week, I saw someone at the gym wearing a face mask while on the treadmill. As i passed by I watched them take the mask down for a moment to help them catch their breath. Here was someone objectively trying to improve their life, yet beholden to a fear that was manufactured in every sense of the word. Once I would feel scorn, now I feel pity.
Fear is there for us to conquer, but in modernity we can “face our fears” everyday behind the safety of a screen, and never be prompted by that primal need for decision and action. We turn into voyeurs and masochists, torturing our psyches in an addictive cycle.
We don’t get to choose the times we live in, only what we do in response to them. The political future of the United States and The West broadly speaking is in a state of flux, old ways are fading, and new paths must be forged. This terrifies the rulers and the ruled alike, but instead of allowing the fear to pass through us, we wallow in dialectic traps. How then should we approach this civilizational level fear? Through reorientation.
The most fundamental reorientation one can make in regards to political questions is by abandoning the materialist 20th century’s preoccupation with economic models. When one answers the question of what makes a certain policy left or right wing it often maps along a model that was already sublimated. The international communists died, the national socialists were defeated, laissez faire capitalism never stood a chance, and corporate social technocracy won. Instead, you should begin asking what brings order and what brings chaos.
This is the fundamental distinction between conservatives and the new right. Conservatives are trapped within a liberal paradigm that fundamentally prefers chaos. The conservative’s only answer has been to “stand athwart history yelling stop” while the liberal progressives triumphed. Countering the revolutionary sprit seems like an impossible task. It forces us to ask fundamental questions, turns us into pariahs, and threatens our livelihood. But when the fear passes, all that’s left is the answer which always was.