(This diary is cross-posted at
http://www.democracycellproject.net/...)
The first time I heard the term FEAR UP was last summer, when I was working on the theatre piece that eventually acquired that title. It described perfectly the visceral experience of hearing true stories from Guantanamo and Baghdad.
We (my co-writer Marietta Hedges, my husband, Dick, and I) found the description of the torture technique in the The U.S. Army's manual on interrogation, FM 34-52: "The fear-up approach is the exploitation of a source's pre-existing fear during the period of capture and interrogation.... This approach has the greatest potential to violate the law of war."
I couldn't stop thinking about such a strange little phrase: A verb (or a noun), and a preposition--a direction, something your sixth grade English teacher would immediately reject.
Fear. Everywhere I go, every conversation I have about where George W.Bush is leading our country; sooner or later, and most often, sooner, people bring up fear.
There is of course the fear that everyone in the world now lives with of the possibility of finding one's self and one's loved ones in the midst of some awful act of violence committed by god-knows-who.
But the fear that I am hearing people talk about is a different kind of fear. It is not a fear of the Other; it is a fear of ourselves, of the path that we are being forced down.
It is the cold, stomach-grabbing, heart-sinking fear; the kind of fear that is mixed with guilt and regret. It is the kind of fear that makes it from the stomach to the nether regions of the brain, where it lives and breeds, and where we push back at it in order to simply get through the day.
Fear UP.
To clarify: I am picturing a mom or a dad, much like myself, with children and a spouse and a house, and a job, and a very busy schedule. At the end of each day, s/he comes home and checks on the kids' homework progress, puts groceries away, starts dinner, opens mail, and has the news on in the background. This is what s/he hears:
"Scores of bodies found in Baghdad"
"President Bush hails the nuclear agreement with India..."
"U.S. hostage killed in Iraq"
"Sex abuse alleged at kids' hospital"
All these messages are running around in her/his mind, along with the teacher's conference s/he has to schedule, the oil change s/he needs to set up, the heating bill that needs to be paid, etc., etc.
So what happens to the background of information that is running behind the conscious attempts to remember what s/he is doing at that moment? How does it get processed?
Stomach to reptile brain to stomach. Pass the alka-seltzer.
Once the fear is there, the UP part is easy. The fear flavors and infuses each and every little scrap of information that floats by our busy parent. S/he is not processing what s/he hears with his/her rational mind. This stuff -- the words the sounds the images -- are going straight to the reptile brain, the kingdom where fear is the ruler.
And so each drop of this information flow, unmediated by any form of rational discussion or consideration, steadily and stealthily eats away at any possibility that s/he might begin to think critically about what s/he is hearing.
Lest we believe that any of this is accidental, let's go back to the Army Manual:
The Army Manual FM 34-52:
...but all approaches in interrogations have the following purposes in common:
Establish and maintain control over the source and the interrogation.
Establish and maintain rapport between the interrogator and the source.
Manipulate the source's emotions and weaknesses to gain his willing cooperation.
Interrogators use different approach techniques or combine them into a cohesive, logical technique. Smooth transitions, logic, sincerity, and conviction can almost always make a strategy work. The lack of will undoubtedly dooms it to failure.
The lack of will dooms it to failure. In other words, folks, THEY MEAN TO WIN. In fact, consider the possibility that it is merely the intention to win, at all costs, without regard for legalities or rules or morals, that causes the most fear of all. When we are faced with horrific information delivered with relentless "logic, sincerity, and conviction" and "smooth transitions" (sound like anything familiar?), the fear rises up into our throats, our lips and mouth become dry, the pulse races, and we simply shut down, turn on the tv pap, and go quietly into the night.
Or, we keep the car clean, buy organic vegetables, get to work on time, do all the thousand and one little routine tasks that make it seem as if life is carrying on in the best possible way; that we live in the most civilized and enlightened of times.
I can buy organic beef, and know that Mad Cow is out there. I can buy a hybrid car and know that there's a war being fought over oil that my hybrid car really doesn't do anything to stop. I can lead my students through a process of inquiry where they begin to understand fully the forces at work that keep black people in their place and women disenfranchised from their own health care, but the students will only join me in conscious despair. The state government raises their tuition every year, and the federal government is cutting away at their financial resources. What can they do?
In all of this, no matter what ideologies we subscribe to, the underlying fear is ever-present. Conscious attempts to do the right thing for the family, the students, the community, our country, our planet, become a list of mere tasks that we check off in order to push the fear back down, where it festers, and nags at us.
I am not doing enough. I must finish the laundry. If I were to do much more than that, if I were to risk doing more, I might lose my job, or we will lose our oil, our second home, or our children, their education, their health.
Hello? We're losing them anyway. No amount of lists or calendar-keeping or deciding between Whole Foods vs. Trader Joe's is going to solve the problem of FEAR UP. Because it is real and logical fear, reinforced by our government. On purpose.
Try this: "Hope comes from the feet." Not from a new medication, not a great new reality show, not from a new exciting candidate, or a new set of talking points.
Feet to pavement. Here. Now.
I owe this insight to Ann Wright, the highest ranking military official to resign in protest from the State Department over the invasion of Iraq. Since she resigned, she's been out there, on her feet, traveling the country, walking the walk.
When you're afraid, there is really only one option: get braver. The only way through the fear is through. ACT.