Are you afraid of being afraid?
The year was 2008. An election year. The month was November when voters cast their ballots for candidates along with state and federal initiatives. The most controversial and emotional proposition on California’s voting ballot was Proposition 8. This initiative would amend California’s state constitution by declaring marriage to be between a man and a woman. Many of our Latter-day Saint Church leaders encouraged us members to engage in the political process by posting “Support Prop. 8” signs in our yards, bumper stickers on our cars, setting up phone trees, walking precincts, and standing on street corners waving signs. Many local church leaders also encouraged us to donate money to help pass Prop. 8. Consequently, many Church members—especially those of us living in the deeply progressive Bay Area—felt conflicted. A lot of us felt conflicted on two levels: 1) The sensitive nature regarding the issue of same-sex marriage 2) The Church’s involvement in this particular political process. (As we know, many Latter-day Saints are still divided over same-sex marriage and other LGBTQIA* issues.)
Meanwhile, my place of employment was pressing employees to fight against Prop. 8. After 15 years of teaching at my local state university, I had been well-versed in the policies and politics of DEI or “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” within universities and other American institutions and culture. (Since the 1980s, North American colleges and universities have become a growing and formidable enterprise of social and political advocacy. An anti “isms” ethos serves as DEI’s moral framework. Thus, employees—especially administrators and faculty—work under increasingly tight and ever-changing written and unwritten restrictive codes of speech and behaviors—along with incorporating strongly encouraged inclusive forms of speech. Rightly or wrongly, academia’s working, teaching, and learning environments have become increasingly controlled requiring a constant, close monitoring of self (and others around us) for words and actions that might be interpreted as racist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, sexist, classist, or any other form of “phobic” or “ism.” Whether or not professors, students, and administrators speak openly about academia’s controlled learning and working environment, the pressure to ideologically conform can be overwhelming.)
As a form of protest against Prop. 8, my department designed t-shirts with the slogan, “No on Prop Hate,” for staff and faculty to buy/wear as “representatives against hate and inequality.” My department also encouraged us to stand together in protest at the San Jose Marriott Hotel because the owner of the hotel chain, Willard Marriott, was a Latter-day Saint. Additionally, my department head emailed us with an offer to donate money to the “No On Prop Hate” campaign while faculty office doors (including the office I shared with six other professors) displayed “No on Prop Hate” signs.
The meme below was broadly circulated online among California LDS church members.
A popular meme taken from Arnold Friberg’s painting of Samuel the Lamanite
On top of that, the public fall-out from the Church’s support of Prop. 8 grew increasingly contentious. “Anti-Mormon” protesters chanted and taunted Prop. 8 supporters in the streets, on the grounds of some LDS church buildings, and in front of the Los Angeles and Oakland temples. Other protestors scrawled hateful messages a few LDS church buildings and on some of the outside walls of at least one California temple. Protestors threatened to storm Sacrament meetings. Some burned Prop. 8 signs on LDS church grounds. Local newspapers criticized the Church and its members for helping fund Prop. 8. Finally, Latter-day Saints who donated money to Prop. 8 were doxxed online for the purpose of public shaming—thus using the internet to expose Church members’ personal addresses, their workplaces, and how much money they had donated. Businesses who donated were also exposed and shamed.
As a blogger, I have tried to avoid political advocacy or controversy, and I have never criticized the Latter-day Saint Church in any way. I don’t intend to criticize now. But, I will be honest: Rightly or wrongly, I felt a growing resentment during this painful time. I grew tired of the pressure from my place of employment and my place of worship to publicly “pick a side.” Many of my university colleagues knew I was LDS, and several of my colleagues were gay and personal friends. I also knew that as an adjunct college instructor, I could jeopardize my teaching “credibility” and my relationships with colleagues and students if I helped fund and promote a public policy they considered to be based on “hate and inequality.” So, for the first time in my life, I felt real fear and anxiety due to my membership in the Church. (To this day, the Church and Prop. 8 are negatively connected here in the Bay Area.) Regardless, I will always publicly and privately stand with the Church. This idea sounds simple enough. However, in 21st century America, opposing some of DEI’s ever expanding edicts and admonitions within our society can cause personal anxiety and difficulty due to many complex and emotional factors. (Update: Presently, in 2023, “Critical Social Justice” theory and advocacy have become mainstream in institutions and public policy making in North America, Canada, and Western Europe.)
Driving home from work that November evening, I felt conflicted and anxious. I began to pray. Again. I pleaded for strength, for courage, for guidance, for utterance. I prayed for wisdom to know when to open my mouth—and when to shut it. As always, God spoke peace to my heart. The familiar verses from D&C 121 came to mind:
Peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment. And then if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands….thy friends do not contend against thee…
God also reminded me that overall, I was living in peace. No one was threatening my life or my family, or burning down my home, or forcing me to leave town. I didn’t have to deal with the violent and relentless persecution that the early Latter-day Saints endured.
As I look back, my fear and anxiety were often rooted in a sort of pseudo fear that can be mistaken for genuine fear. Yes, I was afraid. But, I was also afraid of being afraid. Too often (regardless of who we are or what group we associate with), we forget that our perception can become distorted pertaining to those who use (or we think are using) threats and intimidation against us, or those who have power over us. In our fear, we tend to give our perceived “powerful” people in our lives more power than they actually have. We can easily perceive them as larger and more ominous than they really are. Adding to our fear, our opponents can (and will) emanate a false bravado or facade for purposes of intimidation and gaining compliance. However, we might be served well in adopting this concept: What looks like an opposition’s advantage over us could actually be to our own advantage. Malcolm Gladwell writes about this distorted and disproportional fear In his book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. He claims that our distorted perceptions about our disadvantages compared to our enemies’ advantages undermines our ability to fight. He writes:
We are often misled about the nature of advantages. Now, it is time to turn our attention to the other side of the ledger. What do we mean when we call something a disadvantage? Conventional wisdom holds that a disadvantage is something that ought to be avoided—that it is a setback or a difficulty that leaves you worse off than you would be otherwise. But that is not always the case. I want to explore the idea that there are such things as ‘desirable difficulties.’ [Thus] when people see themselves at a disadvantage, they’ll use more resources…and they’ll process more deeply or think more carefully about what’s going on. If they have to overcome a hurdle, they’ll overcome it better when you force them to think a little harder. Difficulty turned out to be desirable. There are times and places where struggles have the opposite effect—where what seems like the kind of obstacle that ought to cripple an underdog’s chances is actually [a variable for a better outcome]“
(p. 100, 105).
Furthermore, using our compensating mechanisms “requires that [we] confront our limitations and overcome [our] insecurity and humiliation” (p. 112). In other words, we can confront fear, experience fear, and redefine fear in order to overcome fear. Jesus Christ repeatedly taught this same principle. The wealthy young man who wanted to be Christ’s disciple, exemplifies the “disadvantage of advantage” coupled with distorted or false notions of power. Christ told the young man, “If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me. When the young man heard that saying, and he went away sorrowful for he had great possessions” (Matthew 19: 21-22). We can see how this young man’s fear of losing his advantages/security caused him to forfeit or “lose” the ultimate pertaining to advantage/freedom: Companionship with the Savior in this life and in the next. Thus, the youth’s obvious economic advantage became a disadvantage. Christ’s “poverty” compared to the young man’s wealth looked disadvantageous, but in reality was advantageous.
“Christ and the Rich Young Man” by Heinrich Hofmann
Gladwell uses the courage of British citizens during WWII to further illustrate this point. Anticipating the German blitzkrieg against British civilians, England’s government officials built psychiatric hospitals around London to help victims traumatized by German bombs. Surprisingly, most Londoners were able to overcome their “fear of disadvantage” compared to the power of the Nazis (using Nazi bomber planes) intent on bombing London and its inhabitants into oblivion. Gladwell explains:
In the fall of 1940, the long-anticipated attack began. Over a period of eight months—beginning with 57 consecutive nights of devastating bombardment—German bombers thundered across the skies above London, dropping tens of thousands of high-explosive bombs and more than a million incendiary devices. Forty thousand people were killed, and another forty-six thousand were injured. A million buildings were damaged or destroyed. In the city’s East End, entire neighborhoods were laid waste. It was everything the British government officials had feared—except that everyone of their predictions about how Londoners would react turned out to be wrong. The panic never came. The psychiatric hospitals built on the outskirts of London were switched over to military use because [none of the citizens] showed up [in need of psychiatric care]. As the Blitz continued, as the German assaults grew heavier and heavier the British authorities began to observe—to their astonishment—not just courage in the face of the bombing but something closer to indifference. [Another] thing that soon became clear was that it wasn’t just the British who behaved this way. Civilians from other countries also turned out to be unexpectedly resilient in the face of bombing. Bombing, it became clear, didn’t have the effect that everyone had thought it would have (p. 128).
Gladwell further explains this mentality by quoting psychiatrist J.T. MacCurdy:
We are prone to be afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration… When we have been afraid that we may panic in an air-raid, and, when it has happened, we have exhibited to others nothing but a calm exterior and we are now safe, the contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage“
(p. 133).
We see this phenomenon time and again in the scriptures: Joseph in the Old Testament thrived as a disadvantaged slave. David, as a disadvantaged shepherd boy, thrived in his battle with advantaged Goliath. The Prophet Joseph Smith (much like the the original apostles) grew so accustomed to disadvantage and persecution that he became unencumbered by it. In other words, like a vaccine, the hardships and persecutions inoculated Joseph Smith against the disease (or disadvantage) of the “fear of persecution.” He persevered and completed his work. He thrived rather than having allowed himself to be paralyzed by fear. Indeed, knowing he would be martyred as “a lamb to the slaughter,” the Prophet Joseph willingly turned himself over to his enemies at Carthage Jail. And while doing so, “felt as calm as a summer’s day.”
“Against the Christian Door” by Andre Knaupp
Gladwell further admonishes:
We underestimate how much freedom there can be in what looks like a disadvantage [for us] (p. 91). The idea of desirable difficulty suggests that not all difficulties are negative. Being a poor reader (dyslexia) is a real obstacle, unless….that obstacle turns you into an extraordinary listener, or unless….that obstacle gives you the courage to take chances you would never otherwise have taken. Too often, we make the same mistake as the British [governmental officials] did and jump to the conclusion that there is only one kind of response to something terrible and traumatic. There isn’t. There are two“
(p. 133).
Martin Luther King, Jr. said he welcomed time spent in jail. Turning a disadvantage into an advantage he remarked, “Jail helps you to rise above the miasma of everyday life. I catch up on my reading every time I go to jail” (p. 186). He encouraged civil rights leaders to have the same mindset; to be unafraid of arrest and incarceration and to embrace it as a strategical opportunity. King told them, “The only way we are going to save the people is we who are the leadership have to give ourselves up to the mob” (p. 174). We, too, can thrive under extreme disadvantage. Franklin D. Roosevelt strengthened American resolve during WWII by saying, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” I’m beginning to understand this concept.
Artist: David Lee Solderlind
Gladwell again defers to MacCurdy’s teachings:
We are all of us not merely liable to fear, we are also prone to be afraid of being afraid. Because no one in England had been bombed before, Londoners assumed the experience would be terrifying. What frightened them was their prediction about how they would feel once the bombing started. Then German bombs dropped like hail for months and months, and millions of remote misses (people who lived in close proximity to bombed neighborhoods) who had predicted that they would be terrified of bombing came to understand that their fears were overblown. They were fine. And what happened then? Again, the conquering of fear produces exhilaration. Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all. Do you see the catastrophic error that the Germans made? They bombed London because they thought that the trauma associated with the Blitz would destroy the courage of the British people. In fact, they did the opposite. It created a city of remote misses, who were more courageous than they had ever been before. The Germans would have been better off not bombing London at all“
(p. 147).
Gladwell closes his book with this thought:
There are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses. If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, out of that despair rises an indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah and your eye is drawn to the man with the sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine“
(p. 274).
The prophets have warned us of increasingly difficult times ahead. The Apostles Paul and Peter learned to “rejoice” in oppositional opportunities and persecution. Modern-day prophets are telling us to prepare and to brace ourselves—while assuring us that we can live unencumbered and unafraid as Christ’s Second Coming draws nearer.
Fresh courage take,
Julie