In search of times not quite lost
"People who once didn’t need to lock their doors have gradually died off, and so even the memory of what has been lost is now almost lost."
Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead
In this culture, we value individual freedom, and even renegade thinking (at least in movie heroes, yes?), and we also value patriotism, but there is a spirit of division among us. We are learning to think of “individual freedom” and “the common good” as necessarily and completely adversarial. Indeed, there is evidence of this growing split all around us at the moment, what with the erosion of freedoms granted or implied in the Constitution in the name of safety from terrorism (i.e., the common good).
But I am not convinced that the common good is really being served at all when individual rights are so curtailed that communications are eavesdropped, confidences leaked, unfounded accusations dispersed and well-based accusations suppressed. Quite the contrary. I think that, in the name of safety and the common good, we are learning to be fearful and combative all the time. The brain is marvelously complex - different areas developed at different times in our long (and I hope, continuing) evolution. The oldest part of the brain is the amygdala, also called “the lizard brain”. It is concerned with survival. Threats are assessed in this part of the brain, and if a situation or person is perceived as threatening, the hormonal system kicks into high gear to provide the body with the various chemicals it needs to deal with the situation RIGHT NOW, by fighting or by escaping. While this is going on, there is no time to analyze, to draw moral conclusions, create metaphors, look at a bigger picture, stand in the other persons’ shoes, etc. All resources are going to the amygdala, and so the hippocampus, which is where actual learning takes place, shuts down. Plenty of time to think about what has just happened and to tell the story after the threat has been survived. But a time called “after the threat” is imperative, for if we stay in that hyper-alert stage too long, the body's systems start to break down. I would not be surprised to learn that most folks I know have some measure of impaired adrenal function from too much stress for too long.
What this suggests to me is that, because we are currently being stoked up by government, by media, to a constant level of threat apprehension just as if we had a stuck throttle mechanism, we are probably not thinking all that well. This hampered, tamped, or postponed ability to learn is serving us very badly right now, when there is so much evidence that we have to make some deep changes in concert with our neighbors, in order to have any kind of choices at all down the road. And not all that far down the road, either. In his book The End of Nature, Bill McKibben argued more than 10 years ago that we had already irrevocably altered our environment.
“Come, let us reason together” says the Lord in Isaiah 1:18., words quoted by Lyndon Johnson, Morris Udall, countless preachers of every denomination, and an idea certainly indicated by common sense. But how can we reason if we are too scared to think? How can we reason together if we are afraid of each other? “Fear not”, say the angels, in no uncertain terms, and repeatedly. Responding to that directive is becoming a full-time job. But we better get on with that job, lest we forget even the memory of cooperation across our differences.