fear – Nick Hilton – Reflections

Anna Shoiko’s husband is very sick and she’s gone back to Ukraine to care for him. She would come to our house early every other Friday for the past twelve years, leaving it tidy and immaculate. Anna was like family. She introduced us to her niece, who is to replace her, saying she was never coming back. “Never,” she said, several times. After we said goodbye and she drove off last Friday I felt something like grief.

I don’t like never. Can’t really grasp it. Forever either. Never and forever suggest that time disappears, before birth and after death. They are door-words behind which lies eternity, inconceivable yet an inevitable, an unsolvable mystery against which we lock our mental doors and turn on emotional alarms. We humans have invented worlds beyond these doors: reincarnation, the afterlife.

God, Atman or Universal Spirit, the omnipresent, undefinable, eternal reality, is the source and the energy of everything that exists. Like never and forever It is inconceivable. So we have given It names, placeholders, YHWH of the Hebrews, Moslem Allah, the Zulus’ Umkhuluwomkhulu. We have created mythical personalities, heavenly dramatis personae with human attributes, even defects like inexplicable favoritism and murderous vengefulness. These deities serve many purposes, solving mysteries of earth and sky, fortune and misfortune and, more important, assuring social order, legitimizing governing power. Tribal leaders like Moses to Henry VIII and since have combined religion with government, claiming a “divine right of kings,” conflating faith with obedience, enforcing it all by burning non-believers, critics and heretics alive.

The execution of tribal law was dependent on heaven and hell. Religion or spirituality was a risk/reward proposition, establishing behavioral guardrails, guaranteeing loyalty. The rules said that if I didn’t go to Mass on Sunday and if I should die on Monday that I would spend eternity in agony, being tortured and burned. Wow. Fear was supposed to be a motivator, but it didn’t really work. I skipped church anyway. The “loss of heaven and the pain of hell” did not work to conquer my desire for worldly pleasures. I was hell-bent, until I gave it some thought.

Now I am closer to death, and my afterlife consists of what I have done and yet can do, the change I have made in this world, for better or for worse. My fear of disappearing, my dread of Never is a motivating positive emotion, not of eternal bliss or torment, but of having taken more than I gave. The inevitably of my disappearance is a daily reminder that every day, every action, every relationship I have, every minute of my life is an opportunity for me to have a positive effect on Forever. That’s enough. My afterlife is whatever small goodness I can effect, benefits to be felt by those still living in a better world from now on.

Almost every social or governmental issue these days is a boxing match, fighters charging out from opposite corners punching, swinging for a knockout. Look at economic policy for example. John Maynard Keynes’s ideas, advocating intervention when demand falters, using tax and investment to correct economic conditions, are favored by one side. These are considered “liberal.” Milton Friedman’s Chicago School proposes tactics associated with “conservative” attitudes: controlling interest rates to regulate the money supply, sanctioning free trade, allowing markets at every level to self-regulate. Friedman learned to box in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged gym; Keynes took lessons from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a very different Chicago school.

Both of these approaches are functional and both are faulty. Over-regulation of the money supply may have unintended consequences and foreign governments may manipulate domestic policies to keep their exports competitive. Federal interventions, like welfare, don’t always work at the outer reaches of a good idea; good intentions don’t guarantee efficient results. Analysis of the complexities and the choice of the proper remedy should be left to wise, unbiased practitioners, not stage actors competing for votes.

Value is a consequence of desire. Desire is regulated by human emotions. An optimistic outlook promotes positive activity, purchasing, investment, confidence in the future. Economic downturn is the result of negative emotion, pessimism, fear. The “Great Depression” and economic downturns generally have been caused by a contagious fear that things are going to get worse and thus, inevitably, they do. The value of a new home or a new t-shirt increases and diminishes with my desire to own it, which varies with my confidence or insecurity. Would I rather live in a new house or have that money in the bank? These days the omnipresent media constantly presents the boxing match of policy making with no neutral voice, each side predicting doom if they lose. It is like having two plumbers under your kitchen sink cursing, arguing about which wrench to use. Which one can fix it?

Neither Friedman nor Keynes was 100% right. Not all remedies are guaranteed and orthodoxy does not guarantee success. The the principal responsibility of a leader is to inspire confidence, to combat negative emotions in words and actions. This is the problem with modern democracy: electing leaders based on their popularity instead of their background, education, demonstrated wisdom and proven ability is like hiring a plumber because you like his truck.

Tag: fear

After Life?

Nice Truck!