I’ve begun the process of rebranding my non-fiction books, which are all an outgrowth of my blogging life, with covers based on those of the last two, A Declaration of Peace and See the World! The first of these was Refuse to be Afraid.
The book encourages us not to let fear cloud our judgment, because fearful people do silly things like surrender bits of freedom to others whose main interest is not our well-being. A central theme is H.L. Mencken’s warning, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
Most of these hobgoblins are other people. But people have more in common than not — the desire to live in peace, prepare our children to live their own lives in peace, to be safe in our homes, to HAVE homes — and the fear mongers wants us to believe those things are in constant peril.
My book — my mission — is to reassure you that we can live in peace and without fear. Billions of people have trillions of interactions every day, the vast majority of them honest and peaceful. The deviations from this pattern are so rare that we might go a lifetime unaware, except we have regular alerts about this deviant behavior — we call them newscasts.
It’s a public service, but by calling regular attention to these rare non-peaceful and/or dishonest interactions, they create the illusion that these deviations are more commonplace than they really are, and they make us more fearful of one another than we need to be: “I’m David Anchor, XYZ News. Good night and be afraid. Be very afraid.”
The central figure of many people’s faith advocates for a different mind set than fear. He boiled his message down to two basic tenets: Love God, and love your neighbor. He also suggested we need not be afraid of one another if we choose this path of love, because we are all neighbors.
From the start my books have tried to expand on that theme — Refuse to be afraid. Be conscious of the miracles around you — see the world! Live at peace with one another. It’s going to be all right. Rejoice and be glad, because gladness is infectious.
The subtitle of my third non-fiction collection, A Bridge at Crossroads, is “101 Encouragements.” All of my writing is an attempt to encourage — to say that if we love one another, it’s going to be all right.
I’m not naive. I know that some of the hobgoblins are real. But some of the most sinister hobgoblins are the ones who point fingers and say, “Look! A hobgoblin!” They purport that someone else is an existential threat — that is, a threat to our very existence — when their actions reveal themselves to be such a threat.
For the most part we have nothing to fear from one another, and we lose nothing by treating everyone we meet with love and respect — even the suspected hobgoblins; it drives them crazy when we refuse to fall into the trap of fearing one another.
Refuse to be afraid. Free yourself from the web of fear. Dream of a better world. That is what my books are all about.
