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Gary Bennett
July 24, 2011
I was originally thinking of some sort of cosmic smack-down between love and fear. In one corner, we have Machiavelli, Hobbes and a few others who thought fear essential to running a society. But the Beatles assured us that all we need is love, and they are not alone; how many pop songs, religious homilies and greeting cards say the same? Simple enough. But not really. I’m into love, but I’m also full of fears, from nuclear war to phone calls at 2 am to walking in tall Texas grass in summer, even botching a sermon. At best, I try to keep the fears to things I can do something about, or at least reasonable. I can’t help worrying about government default, but can pass on worrying about whether Casey Anthony’s verdict was an outrage.
Fear is pervasive among all living beings and keeps us alive, the great-granddaddy of all emotions. Once there was no freedom in the universe but quantum uncertainty; but as organic molecules proliferated, those that best avoided danger were likeliest to replicate. And that’s still what it’s all about for one-celled creatures. But life over time became more complex. Colonies of single-celled creatures; then multi-celled. Symbiosis. Sexual reproduction and protecting mom and the kids. All kinds of social species. Ecosystems, up to and perhaps including the Earth itself. Something has been driving this ever greater complexity; call it the ancestor of love. Love is what seeks to find completeness outside, a possible definition of agape . Romantic love probably fits in there somewhere, but that involves jealousy, which brings us back to fear. From amoeba on up the chain of life, somewhere you get to the emotions of love and fear as we know them, rather than just tropisms or instincts.
Human nature was primarily shaped in the hundreds of millennia of hunter/gatherer tribal life. Fears were directed outward, particularly in the earliest days, toward predators, natural disasters and starvation; I doubt much time was spent determining alpha males. The chief survival asset these tribes had was their internal unity, their willingness to work together for the common good; and because survival is what natural selection is about, traits that made us better tribespeople flourished. We developed language for conversation, stories and ritual, and to simplify teaching the next generation; we learned to flirt, and to make art and music together. We even developed a taste for questions which, surprisingly, only tribal lore could answer. Love was the principal tribal glue, but fear was also used to build unity: we were frightened of being ignored, censured, barred from mating or worst of all, exiled. A funny thing happened because we were so successful as tribes: external threats shrank in importance, and with it our sense of “tiger reality,” the urgent need to acknowledge the existence of that tiger within striking distance, diminished; it was far more important for our minds to focus on the group’s shared version of reality. If you are impressed by the Social Darwinist view of pre-social man struggling for survival against other humans, think about this: there would be a strong survival advantage for those who saw the world most clearly; but instead we are far better at rationalizing than reasoning, because our status within the group has been more important than out thinking others.
Very late in our existence came farming and herding, and the ability to hoard wealth came with it. Nomadic desert tribes in the Middle East were patriarchal; some men ended up owning large flocks, many wives, children and slaves and of course enough hired goons to keep it all. Then came cities, and mind-boggling extremes of wealth; states with priest-kings or god-kings and despotic rule followed. For a while there were other, more balanced societies around too, but the fear-based states came to dominate in all the world’s major civilizations.
Not unopposed. The prophets of Israel from the 7th century BC on denounced inequality and injustice. “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion,” said Amos; and “Hear this, you who trample the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land.” Christianity began as a religion with a radical emphasis on love, as even a casual reading of the Gospels reveals. St. Paul’s letters to young churches focus on trying to bring back to earth starry-eyed hippies waiting for Jesus’ return; but he could get in the spirit from time to time: “Now abide these three things, faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.” St. Augustine was even more succinct: “Love God and do whatever you want.”
But the rebellions in the end failed. Within a few centuries after Jesus, Catholicism was about rigid obedience to the Church; punishment was persecution in this life and eternal torture in the next. Later the Reformation Protestants threw out much, including the authority of the Pope and some beliefs about the sacraments; but kept fear, in the idea of heresy, in demanding obedience to authority and even more anxiety about Hell. Those few who did go further, such as the Quakers – or several centuries the Universalists – were persecuted by every other religious group.
So what’s with Machiavelli? He’s talking government, not religion, and any government as last resort uses force on individuals. But there are repressive regimes and free ones, and legitimate or not. The Prince is written for the ruler who comes to power illegitimately; that ruler, if he relies primarily on charisma and popularity, will be in trouble when these fade. Better to rely on terror from the beginning, given the changing tides of public approval. You might be able to relax the reins a bit later; at least that’s what they tell beginning classroom teachers.
Though he wrote the best primer ever for dictators, Machiavelli’s true loyalty was to democracy; after all, he was a high ranking diplomat for the Republic of Florence before dictator Lorenzo di Medici came along. His masterwork was Discourses on the Histories of Livy, looking for historical patterns to help preserve republics. One lesson was that republics should rely on citizen armies; hiring mercenaries always backfires. How much was I influenced by Machiavelli? A few years later I must have been one of the few people in the United States of my age, gender and draft status who consistently opposed ending the draft. Forty years after Nixon ended it I believe more strongly than ever that is dangerous and possibly fatal for our middle class to be so detached from America’s wars and government policy. “A republic,” said Benjamin Franklin, “if you can preserve it.”
European settlers brought their fears to America with them, and added a few new ones. Forget the myths: with few exceptions, the colonists were interested in religious freedom only for themselves. Most of them came to get rich quick and go home, or to stay one step ahead of the law. The natives very quickly became enemies, as Europeans kept encroaching on their lands. Plentiful land and scarce labor led them to human slavery, and the more slaves they brought in, the greater the fear. And the march west led also to dangerous encounters with the French and Spanish Empires. Texas was the center of a maelstrom of all fears, as colonists dealt with the Mexican Army, their imported slaves and the Comanches; and in their folly, Texans took on the United States a generation later. They were tough enough to win most of these struggles; I can’t imagine America as a continental power otherwise, for what that is worth. But in winning, the core fear-based personality and culture predominated then, and by cultural inertia, it continues today.
Elsewhere in America and Europe changes were happening. In the 1600s New Englanders bred a patriarchal, tyrannical, even theocratic culture second to none. Massachusetts Puritans persecuted differences ruthlessly, driving out dissenters to create many nearby colonies; they tortured and lynched supposed witches as late as 1690 and manned stomach-turning slave ships even into the 19th century. Their clashes with the natives led to one of the worst of all such conflicts, King Philip’s War, in the 1670s. But life gradually got a bit softer after that, less dangerous and with fewer non-tribesmen to fear, and so the rough edges began to smooth over. The Middle Colonies also began to diverge from the slave revolt-fearing Lower South. Enlightenment ideas began to drift in from Europe, and without class extremes or a powerful church, took root faster than in Europe itself. The Revolutionary generation created the Declaration of Independence, followed by 200 years or so of trying to live up to it. These changes have shifted the over-all American culture more to the love end of the love/fear axis.
Transmitting the cultural values of love and fear is partly a matter of upbringing, and partly a matter of what the external world hands you. One psychologist breaks parenting styles into four types. Two of the four are the permissive and the non-involved; though quite different, each merits near-universal disapproval in the larger culture, because they tend to produce unpleasant children and dysfunctional adults. The other two, which have huge bases of approval, are the authoritarian and the authoritative.
The first and probably commonest of these, the authoritarian, emphasizes obedience without understanding, otherwise known as “because I said so.” Authoritarians believe routine harsh physical punishment is the only way to beat good behavior and good manners into kids; they will look at you blankly if you try to distinguish between discipline and whippings. Children come to take pride in the punishment they have endured; as adults, they believe it is responsible for their own highly-developed character, so as good parents they must repeat the pattern. Papa, as the strongman in the house, is naturally the unquestioned head of household, and the obvious source of punishment. Morality becomes confused with power, and their cultural heroes tend to be physically powerful, arrogant and underhanded, from John Wayne or Sylvester Stallone action movies to wars waged by the United States against weaker nations. The Founding Fathers’ documents, in particular the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they believe to be perfect and infallible in the same way they believe the Bible is; and they are equally unlikely to read any of them. God is the ultimate strongman Papa, and His infinite power must be shown by rewarding those who obey him and exacting infinite punishment on His enemies, the sinners. The only escape from Hell is obeying the Church’s teachings without question, from the particular 16 out-of-context Bible verses that make up its theology or, all too often, whom to vote for in the coming elections. Authoritarian adults tend to be hard-working and successful. But they are subject to an inordinate number of fears, which can be exploited by those who know which buttons to push. They have exaggerated fears of the likelihood of being crime victims, of foreign attack or of having their children seduced away from them by enemies within.
Authoritative parenting emphasizes democratic virtues. Unlike permissives, parents set limits on behavior and expect obedience. But within the limits of a child’s understanding, reasons are given; as the child matures, she or he is allowed more say in family matters generally and in personal behavior especially. Discipline is enforced, but with as little harsh physical punishment as possible. Because the rules make sense and the child is listened to, the world comes to be seen as fair and moderately benevolent. Culture heroes are judged as much by their sense of fair play as for their power and skill. My cousins, for example, adored the bullying John Wayne and imitated his strut; I preferred a straight shooter like Roy Rogers, who never cheated, bullied or did more harm than necessary for self-defense.
From this kind of childhood a self-confident adult can develop, capable of being economically successful, but also able to look past self-interest. These adults can certainly be frightened, for fear is intrinsic to life; but endless fear-mongering by politicians and media tends to become less and less effective. They are also more persuadable through fairness and compassion; when Martin Luther King’s marchers did not trade violence for violence, this made a much greater impact on this group than on authoritarians. When I was growing up in the 1950s and Ô60s, these were not liberal or conservative but the commonly accepted values of good citizenship.
I like to think that Unitarian Universalism can be a good home for those for whom love and compassion, not fear and unquestioning obedience, represent ultimate values. But we are not alone in holding these values; given our size, that’s a good thing. Other religious faiths, both Christian and non-Christian, also espouse them. According to a recent Pew Foundation study, most Christians in this country, even among Evangelicals and conservative Catholics, have moved away from the traditional beliefs about salvation and Hell; in overwhelming numbers they either do not believe in Hell at all, or believe that it will be reserved only for the truly wicked. Universalism, far from having withered away, has in some ways permeated Christianity. In a country where the media have been pouring fear into people’s living rooms incessantly in recent decades and where preachers and politicians successfully run political campaigns on fear alone, that is very good news.
So here we are. We need fear; we cannot survive without fear. But fear is not easily governed by reason. If the crowd around seems to be calling me to fear, I might find it stirring without ever passing through the rational critic in my head. Fear begets fear, and none are more compelling than those ingrained in us as children. All of these characteristics have been ruthlessly exploited since the beginning of civilization for the benefit of power and wealth; they have also been spontaneously generated by news events and even by the stress of living with those we consider as being “not from our tribe.”
And we have another need as well, love. It was an integral part of what made us human in the first place, even if limited to our own tribe; so we need it to remain human in the face of fear. We also need it to align ourselves with a cosmic principle that has moved to ever greater levels of complexity, cooperation and integration for billions of years, perhaps not so much shaped by a pre-existing God as shaping toward becoming God. And we need it right now most urgently for the survival of the human race, with its ever bloodier wars fought with ever more terrible weapons. Let W.H. Auden have the last word: “We must love one another or die.”
