The world, as God’s creation, is a place of beauty, goodness, and even awe-inspiring. 

Yet it also can be a scary place. It contains things, including people, that reasonable, wise human beings should fear. 

The current political climate is no different from virtually every other such climate in being ugly. Politicians, activists, journalists, and media commentators, however well-intentioned some individuals may be, constitute a system that is powered by stoking the fears of the citizenry. This is bad, but not because there is anything wrong with fear per se. There’s not:

Fear is not a malfunction. Fear is a performance system—a deeply integrated physiological process that exists to prepare the human organism for moments of extreme demand.

What makes the political system unhealthy is that partisan political actors in government and the media labor tirelessly to instill fear without recommending ways in which that fear can be managed or constructively expressed. This also explains why fear is invariably accompanied by anger—an emotion that, physiologically (even if not necessarily psychologically), is identical to fear.

Stop and consider what happens when the body experiences fear.

The amygdala, an almond-sized structure located deep inside the brain, is activated by information conveyed to it through the senses. It is an early warning system that danger may be on the horizon.

And it is early because, of necessity, it acts within milliseconds—well before the emergence of conscious thought. After all, if the brain had to wait........

© Townhall