Right now, fear is everywhere in society.
I feel like I can't get through my day without listening or reading something on mass media which is designed to invoke mass anxiety. At the moment, here in the United States, the upcoming presidential election has turned the American electorate into a feeding frenzy of fear and loathing. I'm so tired of the memes and accusations from all sides. My party versus yours...we're the real the Americans, you're not...etc. However, it's not just politics. The fear of the other is everywhere in the news and social media...who are those people? What are they doing over there? We can't trust them! I'm very thankful that my extensive international travel has allowed me to break free of this habit.
I wish I could wave a magic wand and turn that fear into curiosity. A while back I wrote a post on the importance of curiosity as an important ingredient to personal success but now I feel it is just as important from a societal level as well. When we as a society respond from a place of curiosity rather than fear, we open up possibilities, instead of shutting down and closing ranks. Problem-solving becomes so much easier as well. By shutting down and closing ranks at a societal level, all we do is increase individual anxiety and create an anxious populous.
However, don't confuse me with being Pollyanna-ish. We do have serious issues in this society and there are people we should be wary of out there. I am a big proponent of self-defense and martial arts training. However, an important aspect of martial arts is not living your life from a paranoid mindset. Instead, allow yourself to be open to possibilities...in other words, be fluid...react to the situation as circumstances dictate. As Bruce Lee stated in the Tao of Jeet Kune Do: Be like water.
Another reason we should change our collective fear-based reactions is because of mirror neurons. When we casually observe another act in a certain way, unless we consciously choose not too, we tend to mirror their behavior. Therefore, if you observe a large group of people reacting based on fear, you too will react this way just by watching them and following along. The fear continues to feed by feeding itself.
It does not have to be this way. If we are more mindful of what we are taking in or at least actively questioning it, we can remove or at least reduce our fearfulness. It is possible to move from a fear-based outlook to one of curiosity on the individual level, so why not at the societal level? We certainly have nothing left to lose at this point.
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