I've always been a big fan of Carl Sagan since I was young watching Cosmos on broadcast television with my father. I'm still a fan of the recent reboots produced by Seth McFarlane and starring Neil deGrasse Tyson, but Dr. Sagan will always have a special place in my heart for the way he clearly explained what we know and how we know it. If you have a chance to read his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark then I highly recommend it. Listening again to his slightly less-famous clip talking about the pale blue dot (the Earth as viewed in the distance from space) made me think about our current situation and what I think he might have had to say about our current circumstances.
Fear is an emotion that is in no way unique to humans. If you've ever watched a nature documentary in which a small animal or insect recognizes the danger it's in from a predator and tries to escape, you know that fear is inherently biological. It's a fight-or-flight reflex that heightens our awareness, boosts our strength and stamina and helps us prepare to do whatever needs to be done to survive the danger we face.
Not everything we fear is an immediate threat. There's fear of circumstance, social fear, metaphysical and existential fear. We fear death even when we're not directly confronted with it. We fear loss and hardship. Our fear reaction increases our awareness of these threats but running faster or hitting harder won't help us overcome them. Fear is a disadvantage to abstract threats because it focuses our resources on physical response when what we most need is to think our way out of the problem. There's no shame in being afraid, but fear isn't an emotion we can afford to overindulge.
To be clear, fear is not something we can simply turn off when we choose. That's why I mentioned that it's inherently biological: it's part of us as much as love or wonder or any other emotion. When the bombs fell on the British Isles and the British population waited in bunkers there wasn't much for them to do except be afraid. But even in those trying times they came together and helped each other. They looked out for the welfare of those in need and waited out the storm until the time came to rebuild. Had the entire nation succumbed only to fear and abandoned their resolve the world would look very different than it does today. Can you imagine a world where the Beatles sang in German? But I digress.
Fear will always be with us, but we still have choices. We can choose to surrender to fear or we can focus on what's in front of us. We can look after the welfare of our families and neighbors. We can identify those in need and do our part to help them. We've done this before and we can do it again, but we have to make an active choice. When we see the other side we'll have reason to be proud of ourselves and our community not because we weren't afraid but because we didn't allow it to make us less than who we can be. Courage is not the absence of fear but the dedication to do what's right in spite of it. Let's not allow ourselves to be manipulated by fear but use it to identify what we can do to make the world a better place for everyone.
