Nothing To Worry About

This is the age of paranoia. The world is infected with a disease worse than any pandemic, a disease intentionally spread and promoted by the political-academic axis to keep the population of the entire world in perpetual fear of everything.

Terrorism

We picture a terrorist as someone with multiple guns or an explosive vest shouting, “death to capitalists!” or, “Allahu Akbar!” spraying a crowd with bullets or blowing himself up in the middle of a crowd. There are certainly those kinds of terrorists because terrorism works. Nothing motivates most people like fear.

There a much more common and effective method of terrorism, however, and it is both pervasive and insidious, because those who are terrorized by it do not even are totally unaware of it. It works, because most of mankind is hopelessly ignorant and gullible and ready to believe whatever they are taught, especially by their, “leaders,” “experts,” and, “authorities.”

“The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear—fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety,” H. L. Mencken wrote, and explained how it is used: “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Not only imaginary, but totally made up.

There Is Nothing To Fear

In old (2004) article, “Freedom Now,” I wrote:

Ayn Rand was very impressed by the following:

“God grant me the serenity to accept things I cannot change, courage to change things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

She said of it:

“This remarkable statement is attributed to a theologian with whose ideas I disagree in every fundamental respect: Reinhold Niebuhr. But—omitting the form of a prayer, i.e., the implication that one’s mental—emotional states are a gift from God—that statement is profoundly true, as a summary and a guideline: it names the mental attitude which a rational man must seek to achieve.” [My emphasis]

“Most men spend their lives in futile rebellion against things they cannot change, in passive resignation to things they can, and—never attempting to learn the difference—in chronic guilt and self-doubt on both counts.” [The Ayn Rand Letter, Vol. II, No. 12 March 12, 1973 “The Metaphysical Versus The Man-Made”]

The context in that article was freedom, but the concept pertains to all aspects of life. One must only be concerned with what they can actually do something about. Disasters, dangers, and trouble are inevitable and unpredictable but always exceptions. One can prepare for the worst (and should) but always work for the best. Disasters, from the natural to the man-made, are always predicted and almost never occur. Since no one can predict the future only that which is certain needs ever to be considered. Though always doubtful, even if the most horrible of predictions should be correct, there is no point in worrying about it unless one can actually do something about it.

There are only two possible events in the future, those you can do something about, and those which are inevitable. Whatever is in the future that is within one’s ability and power to control, they must do whatever is required to make it what they choose. Whatever is in the future that is outside one’s ability and control, they must simply accept and adjust their own choices and actions to, embracing the facts of reality. There is nothing in the future to worry about—change whatever you can and accept and prepare for what you cannot change.

—(11/19/2020)