James Howard Kunstler is a writer and a critic of culture. I first saw him in the documentary The End of Suburbia which came out in 2004. You can find it on-line but what you find is an edited version. The longer version is the version I recommend. I learned from that documentary something called Peak Oil. James Howard Kunstler wrote several books along that topic including The Long Emergency in 2005, and a series of novels set in a post-oil future including A World Made By Hand, Witch of Hebron, A History of the Future, and The Harrows of Spring.
In March 2020, he published. Living in the Long Emergency: Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way.
Mr. Kunstler was on my radio show in 2012. At that time we discussed his book Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation. Nine years ago we discussed Peak Oil, “Happy Motoring,” and the coming collapse of an unsustainable experiment in living. Now here we are in 2021. Is what James Howard Kunstler wrote about then manifesting itself now? In other words, to be more direct, is the Covid pandemic, outside of the virus itself, but the lockdowns, the closure of businesses, the economic contraction connected at all with Peak Oil, and perhaps other peaks? That is why I invited James Howard Kunstler to be on Freedom Loves Company.
In this episode I reflect on fear and why it is an unhelpful emotion in the battle against danger. I quote from Tessa Lena’s excellent article, On Fear of the Monster and Fanaticism: Some Spontaneous Philosophy and make the case for acting from love, joy, courage, and freedom. (Text Below)
“Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”
The mainstream media on behalf of its handlers has the
population in a state of fear. Fear of a virus that no matter how you look at
it is not deserving of fear at all. 99.97% survive. It is about as deadly as
the flu. But the fear has created a real danger. Fear has made people become
irrational in both belief and behavior.
They believe that they are sick when they are not. They
believe in an experimental injection that will protect them, but only if
everyone is injected. Their fear has been turned into rage. The target of this
fear-induced rage are those people who don’t believe the media’s propaganda.
They are labeled “the unvaccinated” and people want these unvaccinated people
to suffer until they join the vaccinated.
Now we have so-called variants, that to the extent they are
real, are likely caused or aided by the vaccines themselves. It is not the
unvaccinated that are getting sick, but the vaccinated or partially vaccinated.
This is due to adverse reactions to the vaccine or due to the variants the
vaccine is causing, or due to the violence the vaccines are doing to their
immune systems. I am no expert. This is just from what I am reading from
doctors and scientists.
The media is promoting fear of the unvaccinated every second
of every day. There is danger to the unvaccinated. Apparently, the vaccinated
can “shed” on the unvaccinated and cause harmful reactions. While the
unvaccinated could be afraid of this, and I would expect that many are,
nonetheless, it is the fear the vaccinated have of the unvaccinated that is
driving the police state reactions and the vaccine passports, and the firing of
medical workers and teachers if they are not vaccinated.
The fear and ultimately, disgust, which could be an even
more dangerous emotion, that many of the vaccinated display toward the
unvaccinated and those who openly question the media is a very real danger. But
it is not good to respond to this with fear.
A few weeks ago, Tessa Lena was on my program. I have some
of her essay in front of me. It is called “On Fear of the
Monster and Fanaticism: Some Spontaneous Philosophy.” She advocates for
love, courage, and joy. I couldn’t agree more. But doing so is not easy. Tessa
Lena writes:
QUOTE:
“I want to make a
clear case against fear and fanaticism, especially in the people “on my side.”
I think we all
occasionally feel like this: “I have looked into it, and I’ve discovered a
monster, so how dare you not focus on this thing that hurts so much in me? How
dare you? How dare you be so complacent about the monster?”
Now, sometimes the
feeling may be entirely legitimate. The monster may be scary, and it may be in
everyone’s best interest to get their shit [act] together. But for all
practical purposes, fear still doesn’t help.
The dance of fighting
the monster without being scared is not an easy dance by any stretch of
imagination. It’s a difficult dance that requires life-long focus and
rebalancing yourself again and again. So I am saying it with hope to be heard
and without judgement. The reactive behavior, to my senses, comes from unhealed
trauma, not from the lack of intelligence or good intention. But I also believe
that anyone who aspires to show the way to others has the obligation to
recognize it when they act on fear and fight the beast with tooth and claw. And
it is particularly important when fighting a good fight.
How does fanaticism
come to exist? I believe that it’s a protective mechanism that shows up in
reaction to our fear of horrible things that may happen to us due to no fault
of our own but due other people’s poor choices. It’s a tower in one’s head that
describes the world in a way that minimizes the sense of helplessness. It’s a
reaction to trauma of real or anticipated unearned pain, combined with the lack
of desire to investigate the trauma and tackle it head on—or maybe the lack of
understanding of how to do it this very second. And perhaps it’s a necessary
phase of our emotional growth of every human being…
With all that said, I
feel a very strong desire make a case against fear because the times are
cray-cray, and we need all hands on deck—and fear is impractical. Fear impacts
our bodies, whipping out the hormones that prevent us from thinking straight.
If we allow that to happen to us for too long, then instead of acting in an
even-headed manner, including in protective ways, we’ll act like fools and
regret it later.
(For example, I am not
a fan of the popular medical product of the day. Twitter editorials say there
isn’t and cannot be any shedding, and perhaps there isn’t, except in, say, Pfizer clinical trial documents— see 8.3.5—and a bunch of other papers, like here and here. But if there is, I am not going to drive myself insane thinking about
it all day but instead, do what I think is right, pray for clarity and
protection, take a million vitamins, and live my life.)
We are in this
mysterious dance with other people, and we are supposed to help each other
heal, and it really is a mystery how it works. So I believe that we have an
obligation to relax and have faith in joy.”
I do agree with her that we need to act from love, courage,
and joy in this dangerous time. We need to face the fears we have. The fear we
may have in this current situation, with this particular monster, is not a
unique fear. That is to say, the fear that breaks out in us is a fear we have
had at times dormant and at times active from our life’s history, including
childhood. Some of my old-time fears include fear that I will not do the right
thing, fear that I won’t be adequate to the task, fear of losing my security,
fear of conflict, fear of being made to look foolish, fear of shame, fear of
suffering. Perhaps of all of those, the fear of shame is most dominant.
So important then to act from love, courage, and joy.
I do what I do, that is I do this radio show, and I am
active on social media, and I do what I do in my interactions with my work and
my family because I love life, I love people, I love this world, and Life
itself. I believe the Monster is attacking what I love, so I act not from fear
of the monster, or from my old fears that like to dominate my life, but I act
from love of myself, and of others, and of this world.
Courage, or heart, is that which knows the fear, but says,
act with heart anyway. Act with love. Act with who I really am. That brings
joy. I am joyful when I act from love and from courage. It is love, courage,
and joy that will give us the weapons we need to slay this monster. Our fear is
not a helpful motivator. I will not let the monster take my love or take my
courage or take my joy. While I cannot guarantee the outcome of my fight with
the monster using love, courage, and joy, I do know that if I begin with fear,
the monster will win.
I woke up with fear today. I see what is happening in
Australia and Europe and in the United States with people being manipulated and
forced to do things against their will or against their nature.
These are dangerous times. They do not have to be fearful
times. Fears will come up. They will arise. Our old foe, fear, will attack us
and want to drive us. Love, Courage, and Joy are stronger than fear, when we
give them control and let them drive our beliefs and actions.
Acting from Love, Courage, and Joy will result in actions
that reflect our true selves. They will be beautiful actions whether or not
they result in outcomes that will be convincing to others. But they will defeat
the Monster in that the Monster will not control our true self. When we act
from fear, the Monster controls us. When we act from Love, Courage, and Joy,
the Monster cannot control us.
On my new LIVE show, Freedom Loves Company (Revolution.radio Studio B, 8-10 pm Eastern, Sundays), I tell my Covid story through sharing essays I had written when the government lockdowns, restrictions, impositions, and hysteria had just begun. How has my mind changed since those early weeks? This is a great audio podcast to hear and share to recount how this PSYOP began with comment on what I think today. Essays include…
Freedom Loves Company 