Fear and Hope: The Intersection of Star Wars, Dune and the American Cultural Psychology, Part II

Fear is the mind killer

The consequences of Fear is ultimately suffering, but why? In another galaxy and most assuredly a very different time, Frank Herbert, the author of the Dune series, gave us the answer. “Fear is the mind-killer.” And while that quote is a bit out of context, like most quotes, it does serve the context here. 

      The children of Fear includes ignorance, whether willful or not. Fear is the mind-killer, the oblation of rational powers, the negation of the hopeful expectation that You can figure things out. Ignorance is not stupidity. It is the lack of knowledge and the lack of will to seek knowledge …. You just don’t know, which leads to a sense of a lack of control. It’s why humans choose "belief," which requires little effort other than obedience to authority imagined or real. Knowledge through reason requires work, doubt and will. Work, to gather and evaluate information, doubt, to discount or affirm sources to determine if they conform to reality or imagination, and will to formulate ideas based on that research and those challenges. Fear kills the mind.

      The northern colonies, and later states, were not without their own fears, but Fear played less of a part in forming the overall cultural psychology that by extension spread from the North to the rest of the United States – except the South – but it could have.  Fear could have dominated all of American life but the road to Fear was blocked by a congerie of hopes that emanated from some very peculiar places.

It's horrible that some people believe
this was a promise by their god not to
murder every man, woman and child,
but I guess that would be the ultimate hope?

       The greatest distinguishing feature between the south and the north in cultural psychology is the importance of race and a differing definition of the “other.” The North in its settlement patterns by European populations followed European patterns of identity and cultural psychology, which revolved around religion rather than the new conceptual pattern of the Americas, as did the South, around race. In brief the North’s origin is not embedded in racism – though it is embedded in religion-ism.

      We don’t often dissect the meaning of “Racism” and what that might mean, because we think we know what it means – fear, hate, anger – discriminatory and privileging policies and institutions. While that definition is totally valid it does little to explain the phenomena and even posit or compare or suggest alternatives (Are there non-racist human societies? Only in Utopia, right?). From an anthropological perspective, not physical anthropology, but the study of human culture and behavior, human groups develop various ways to define identity and community – to basically define who belongs and who does not, who is in our group, what is our group and who is not and why. As written in Understanding Different Worlds (Blog April, 2018) the primary basis for a definition of self and society is external markers that indicate shared blood. “Natural” humans protected their DNA to preserve their DNA. They promoted the needs of their blood group over those of groups where there was no shared blood – just like most animals. Over time, and incorporated into the earliest “Archaic” civilizations, was this rule of blood. Today, we hear it termed in political discourse as the negative term Tribalism, but that is what we are, tribal. 

Our team wears orange hats

What entails belonging in the tribe, however, became more complex as societies developed the resource base to become more complex. Blood, membership in a particular tribe, ethnicity, or “Race” was a common unifying element, and recognized by humans by their external markers – “Our blood wears this kind of hat – others wear different hats.” But blood was not always the unifying principle of identity and group think. In 17^th century England (when colonization to North America began) the primary sense of belonging, that which established identity and cultural psychology, was religion, not race. When English colonists finally established colonies in the South through Tobacco production and, eventually, African slave labor, religion gave way to “Race,” as it did in most of the Americas, but not in the northern colonies. Religion decided whether you received privilege or persecution within the context of the earliest colonies – even treatment of the PAI Native Americans was often rooted in their alien (and therefore incorrect) religious practice. Colonies, like Massachusetts Bay, were Religionist not racist. Religion defined your place in society and if you were not a Calvinist (or at the very least Christian) you were out. 

But the superstitional, irrational basis of religion got the best of them in Massachusetts as is best witnessed by the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. English society was at the cusp of Modernity – developing rational systems for society, and the irrational craziness of “is she a good witch or a bad witch – who cares, burn her,” got the best of them. Leaders, like Cotton Mather (ironically a Minister) realized that religion as the defining principle had to be tempered to stop the insanity of religion itself. Over the next century, Massachusetts and most northern colonies became more secular and rationally based, not wholly secular, mind you, but a lot less holy minded. The ultimate unifier became the principles of the American Revolution – ideas of self-definition and self-determination. It’s why Massachusetts was the radical hub of the Revolution and was not mired (with some exceptions) to the total hypocrisy of the “freedom for all, except for them” racist South. 

Building is difficult.
Sometimes the plan works and sometimes not.

It is not to suggest that the North was devoid of racist, nationalist, ethnicist, religionist concepts in its evolution – it certainly was, but the primary locus of identity was founded in rationality with the hope – Hope – that all people might one day pursue life, liberty and happiness on their own terms. It is why abolitionism, woman’s rights, urban culture, social experimentation were established in the North – and not the South. There were fears, but not Fear. Hope was a possibility and was the basis of social and political organization, and then one day …. Fear.

The “other” and the fear of losing the familiar are the Great Fear and it came to the north as industrialization necessitated cheap labor. Immigration. 

      The relatively homogenous Anglo-Saxon Protestant population of the north had to deal with new populations immigrating to America that were not like themselves triggering fears of how to deal with alien cultures integrating into the happy rationality of their “idea” based society. These immigrants were Catholic and Jewish, Irish, Italian and Russian who, if they had political thoughts, were perceived by the ASP population of the North to not have any knowledge of British based American political principles of the rule of law, separation of powers, checks and balances, rights and liberties – the new immigrants, in the minds and hearts of the Founders – knew nothing of the unifying principle of “Ideology” that formed the basis of American identity and cultural psychology. And so the rational turned to the irrational to find a way to deal with the immigrant situation. They turned to Race – the irony of which is that they turned to race as they were fighting and just defeated the South’s racism in the Civil War. Add the W.

The Statue of Liberty promised a Golden Door,
but it was really a White door.

      WASP populations used race to protect what they perceived as theirs (even if the cogency of their ideology demanded that they accept “all men” – oh well, human see, human do). 

      The adoption of Southern definitions of identity emanating out of slavery in terms of race is quite clear. WASP populations considered the Irish, Italians and Eastern European Jews as Black, not as White, at least initially, but as Black. Maybe it was because the northern population was only about 1% African? More probable is that blackness had already been demonized as inferior, as alien, as sub-human – as not belonging. And the immigrants parleyed their numbers into success in America – through capitalism, in use of space, in electoral politics. WASPS fought back. They invigorated their own brand of KKKism and were able to fight the tide of immigrant hordes by laws restricting immigration in the 1920s. But the damage was done. The focus of identity was now race – regardless of privilege or persectution – the North and all of America was decidedly a racist society.

      But Hope fought back. World War II happened, and while it could not budge Jim Crow, it did effect the rest of the country (all those immigrants were redefined as White!). Oh, not that white southerners didn’t want to fight their racist cousins in the Third Reich and Land of the Rising Sun. They did, but the consequences of the war were somewhat different south to north. Maybe because of formerly black people in the north being Europeans and not Africans for the most part. Maybe it was because many of those immigrants bought into “ideology” over ethnicity and religion in forming their identity as Americans. Maybe. But with the revelations of the Holocaust (an unlikely pillar of Hope), northern politicians, scholars and peoples were stunned by the potentiality of their own racist conceptions. They turned back to Hope and freedom, or at least they wanted to. But Fear is a formidable opponent especially when it comes to the practical matters of how humans live their lives, far away from the abstractions of concepts of identity and cultural psychology.

Fear can be from real causes
or imagined.
Chill, it was only ketchup.

      Fear chipped away at Hope in little daggers of fear. The Communist threat – those Eastern Europeans – and then, real Black People! The Great Migration begun in the 20s was in overdrive by the 1960s and was transforming, once again, the WASP homeland and the cities of all of the White northern populations. Red lining, bussing, informal Jim Crow. Privilege and persecution became a black and white issue. Was race and Fear winning? The evidence suggests …. Kind of.

      Without Northern white liberals, there would have been little success to the “Civil Rights Movement” (put in quotes because the CRM was not merely a struggle in the 1950s and 60s but a perpetual fight that went on long before and is still going on). It wasn’t white southern “Christians” who deconstructed the legal apparatus of Jim Crow. It was secular northern political groups, like SDS, that compelled their politicians and judges to act. I know, Johnson was a Texan – but some Texans are ok. Some.

      Today, the Battle of Fear and Hope rages in American society, but Fear has a stinging new ally in its fight. And the child of Fear is the Mind killer and it’s ultimate manifestation is the (not so heroic) hero of the early books of the Dune saga.

One of my favorite Chinese phrases, featured with this photo in Part I, means literally, “frog at the bottom of a well.” It means ignorance, a lack of perspective, because like the frog at the bottom of a well can only see a small part of the sky, ignorance cannot, or will not, grasp more than the obvious, or even worse, that which comes from authority.

Ignorance, the Child of Fear, is the Mind Killer and how it informs the current state of American politics will be the subject of a 3^rd and final part of this series.