Fear Itself

A lot of people did not like the 2015 Walt Disney Pictures film, “Tomorrowland.” Perhaps, I think, it is because it’s central message was that we have to take responsibility to do something about hope.

In the film, there is a parallel reality called ‘Tomorrowland’. Originally a place of hope, inspiration and innovation — the place has fallen into decay and ruin. In its center is a tachyon machine which, it seems, is predicting an apocalyptic end to the world and humanity.

It seems that this prediction is being subliminally cast into the minds of all humanity in our own world. Humanity, in the film, is filled with this despair over the fate approaching them and has lost all hope of saving itself. The tachyon machine in Tomorrowland is showing humanity their bleak future — and humanity is responding to it by losing faith.

David Nix, the governor presiding over the collapse of Tomorrowland, (played by the brilliant Hugh Laurie) tells his perspective on humanity’s failure. It’s worth repeating:

Let’s imagine… if you glimpsed the future, you were frightened by what you saw, what would you do with that information? You would go to… the politicians, captains of industry? And how would you convince them? Data? Facts? Good luck! The only facts they won’t challenge are the ones that keep the wheels greased and the dollars rolling in.

But what if… what if there was a way of skipping the middle man and putting the critical news directly into everyone’s head? The probability of wide-spread annihilation kept going up. The only way to stop it was to show it. To scare people straight. Because, what reasonable human being wouldn’t be galvanized by the potential destruction of everything they’ve ever known or loved? To save civilization, I would show its collapse.

But, how do you think this vision was received? How do you think people responded to the prospect of imminent doom? They gobbled it up like a chocolate eclair! They didn’t fear their demise, they re-packaged it. It could be enjoyed as video-games, as TV shows, books, movies, the entire world wholeheartedly embraced the apocalypse and sprinted towards it with gleeful abandon. Meanwhile, your Earth was crumbling all around you. You’ve got simultaneous epidemics of obesity and starvation. Explain that one! Bees and butterflies start to disappear, the glaciers melt, algae blooms. All around you the coal mine canaries are dropping dead and you won’t take the hint!

In every moment there’s the possibility of a better future, but you people won’t believe it. And because you won’t believe it you won’t do what is necessary to make it a reality. So, you dwell on this terrible future. You resign yourselves to it for one reason, because *that* future does not ask anything of you today. So yes, we saw the iceberg and warned the Titanic. But you all just steered for it anyway, full steam ahead. Why? Because you want to sink! You gave up! That’s not the monitor’s fault. That’s yours.

David Nix (Hugh Laurie) – “Tomorrowland”

In the film, David Nix fails to see the full truth: the tachyon machine is not just predicting the failure of the future … it is causing that failure as a self-fulfilling prophesy. The more people who are influenced by this vision of gloom and doom, the more that doom is assured from their loosing faith in the future and hope for a better one. It’s a feedback loop where people in fear are being told that their fears are real. The more they fear … the more they are insuring their fears will come about.

Today, here in the United States of America we increasingly are told that we are less united. This is largely because we look into the mirror of media and mistake it for truth. It is as though we are looking constantly into a Mirror of Raef, a more terrible version of Harry Potter’s Mirror of Erised. We are looking for a prediction of our worst fears … and the mirror of the internet, podcasts, streams and news channels obligingly reflects back to us our fears because giving us what we want is how it sells. We want to be know if we are being betrayed by ‘the man’, big business, conspiracy, the ‘deep state’, or the courts. And, obligingly, the Mirror of Raef gives us back exactly what we are paying for … confirmation that our fears are correct. There are so many different channels of information available to us that there is one mirror out there that will obligingly, carefully, lovingly tell you that you are absolutely RIGHT in your fears. That our fears are largely a fabricated boogie man without truth or substance is irrelevant: it doesn’t have to BE TRUE so long as you BELIEVE it.

When being right is more important than being true … then fear rules.

Franklin D. Roosevelt is famous for saying ‘We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.’ That has never been more true than today. We are drowning in fear of the future because we have allowed ourself to become part of this self-fulfilling prophesy. We are afraid because we have looked for things to fear and, not surprisingly, found our fears packaged, sold and reflected back to us.

In every moment there’s the possibility of a better future…

Do we face challenges, obstacles and problems? Yes, but we do not have to fear them. We can face them, head on. We can act on them … and refuse to be acted on by them.

Join me in letting go of fear. We are not in its grip … it is we who are holding on to it. Let us turn a skeptical eye to the glowing glass Mirror of Raef that so completely occupies our attention. Embrace hope for our future. Have faith that there are good people who will join us in that vision of a better tomorrow.

I refuse to give in to fear itself.