The broadcast today was a discussion about the basic attitude of fear in the 1950's and how closely it corresponds to the kind of national spirit we feel today. They replayed some of the essays, and I was touched by the intelligence, the wisdom, the goodness of these people who were doing their best to fight ignorance and hatred, just as we need to today.
Edward R. Murrow was the host. Here is some of his essay which opened the series:
We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion. A lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism, or a for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the marketplace, while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply. Around us all—now high like a distant thunderhead, now close upon us with the wet choking intimacy of a London fog—there is an enveloping cloud of fear.
There is a physical fear, the kind that drives some of us to flee our homes and burrow into the ground in the bottom of a Montana valley like prairie dogs to try to escape, if only for a little while, the sound and the fury of the A-bombs or the hell bombs or whatever may be coming. There is a mental fear which provokes others of us to see the images of witches in a neighbor’s yard and stampedes us to burn down his house. And there is a creeping fear of doubt—doubt of what we have been taught, of the validity of so many things we have long since taken for granted to be durable and unchanging.
It has become more difficult than ever to distinguish black from white, good from evil, right from wrong. What truths can a human being afford to furnish the cluttered nervous room of his mind with when he has no real idea how long a lease he has on the future. It is to try to meet the challenge of such questions that we have prepared these broadcasts. It has been a difficult task and a delicate one. Except for those who think in terms of pious platitudes or dogma or narrow prejudice—and those thoughts we aren’t interested in—people don’t speak their beliefs easily or publicly.
Couldn't that have been written yesterday? Substitute "biochemical warfare" for "A-bombs", and it fits perfectly.
We just need to remind ourselves that people have battled evil and fear for eons, that we've been threatened with destruction countless times in the past. My faith teaches me that we work for good, we put our trust in God, and live with the belief that we can make it through anything we're given, even if it feels like we can't.
So there. I'm done discussing fear now.
4 comments:
Well said! Good insights to apply to other aspects of my life as well! :) Thanks for sharing!
The opposite of fear is hope (and faith). Hope for ourselves, hope for the future. I lose sight of this once in a while. Things really are very grey, not enough black and white.
Tomorrow, I will try to have a hopeful day. Who knows what blessing lay in store?
I love this! It is so refreshing to hear some common sense.
An interesting post. However, I beg to differ with the opposite of fear being hope. To me, hope is just as negative as fear. Hope is not assurance, whereas faith is. For example, "I hope my new business becomes a success" should be,"I have faith that my business will be a success." Two completely different statements.
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