It’s Halloween and We Are Afraid: Top 10 US fears include corrupt government, terrorism, world war

With the spooky season nearing its climax, Americans are as scared as ever – and they are generally afraid of more things, too, according to a new survey.

Corrupt government officials, the US becoming involved in a third world war, and terrorism (cyber or otherwise) are all among the top 10 fears flagged by the study released in the waning stages of the 5 November presidential election – and as Russia and Israel continue warring with Ukraine and Hamas, respectively.

More than half of the US is afraid of those particular global-level concerns – as they are more personal hardships such as seeing loved ones die or become ill and having enough money for the future, which are also in the study’s top 10.

...

“This tells me Americans are becoming more afraid in general, about everything,” said a separate statement from Chapman sociology professor and department chairperson Christopher Bader.

Bader said the way people get their information about the world around them is almost certainly playing a role in making them more fearful, whether of the government, nuclear or biological warfare, or deadly illnesses coming for them or those they love.

“Social media and websites target people by showing them things that they are afraid of,” his statement said. “Through algorithms, people are being fed their fears, and we believe that’s increasing people’s overall level of fear.”

Meanwhile, despite warnings of a spike in Islamophobia amid Israel’s war in Gaza, only 8.7% of the Chapman survey’s respondents reported being fearful of Muslims – making that the lowest of the 85 concerns asked about.

Hardly any of the survey’s respondents reported being afraid of immigrants (12.2%) or of American whites no longer being the US’s racial majority (16.2%) despite the racist rhetoric surrounding both topics that has seeped its way into mainstream rightwing politics.

Continue here....

Victimhood

Another lingering reflection, on a recent observation:

It is strangely observable that there is nearly always an appeal to look at things through a lens of victimhood.

Perhaps, this is because there is an element of truth about it that is nearly universal.  But, when it becomes the constant state of the lens of our perception, something is wrong about it.

The question, at the end of the day, really isn’t as much about whether or not I’ve been victimized, as it is about why, if I remain in a victimized state. There is a magnetic quality about it to be sure.  But, to remain in it, and to nurture it (even unwittingly), is problematic.

No one is saying being a victim is easy, especially when it has actually happened.  But, it's how we respond that is important.  Lots of bad (even terrible) things happen (because of our choices, other people's choices, happenstance, etc.).  What is notable is what seems to be involved by those who have found ways to rise above those things.

As enticing as it may seem, boot-strapping is not the real answer.  It seems to be closer to something in the realm of mindset.  And, there are multiple things that seem to contribute to the kind of mindset that allows for the possibility of overcoming things that have happened to us.

We need to know what those things are.  We need to immerse ourselves in them.  We have to want to grow, to recover, to avoid slipping into the easy and widely available morass of  "I can't...because of what someone else did...".

We have to take ownership of our lives, make good choices, including submitting to things that can help us.  We can stay victims and simply validate that state by finding other people who reinforce our victimhood with their own.  But, that really doesn't serve much for us (or them).

I'm facing some things that are hard for me right now.  I feel the temptation to blame, to claim unfairness. 

Or...

...I can be humble, open, honest, seek advice, ask hard questions, learn, take steps, grow, walk towards the difficulty, believe that there is more than what I might lose...that I could gain.

I may have been a victim in one way or another, but I don't need to stay one.

Takes Time

It’s true that becoming an empathic listener takes time, but it doesn’t take any where near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you’re already miles down the road, to redo, and to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems.

-- Stephen Covey

Willingness

Ever noticed...that at the beginning of most days, there’s not much more than facing the juncture of willingness. 

In other words, am I willing to move forward into the day, regardless of how I feel about doing so? 

I can do this with the benefits of having done it before and knowing that simple willingness more often than not is all it takes.

An Opportunity

Events this week have over-taken parts of me.  My sense of who I am has been rocked.

Tami has been a great source of stability...and love, including the sending of these powerful reminders from a book she was reading to her students:

3 Observations & A Question

It is strangely observable that there is nearly always an appeal to look at things through a lens of victimhood. 

At one point or another, your life gets focused on what you can give back to the world — the sooner the better, of course (but, hey, such things can take time, for all kinds of reasons).

Among other things, learning is a key ingredient to our mental health — perhaps because of what it requires of us…like willingness, curiosity, adaptability, humility.

What If…we are so preoccupied with managing the tweaks and adjustments we think we can make in our lives, that we never really avail ourselves to the adjusting nature of the Spirit of God within us?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Sharing Special Moments

So privileged to share the special moments of our lives together!

Fall Tree Of The Day, 2024

 An annual series — Fall Tree Of The Day:

Winona Lake, IN

More Fall pics here....

Lifting Weights

At some point, we discover that the purpose of lifting weights is not really for how it makes us look, as much as it is for the strength it develops and maintains within us.

And what, then, is the purpose of strength if it is not capacity? It is our strength that enables us to do things physically, be true to ourselves, and to make a contribution to the quality of life in our world.

And, of course, strength is not limited to the domain of the physical. Certainly it is needed in psychological, emotional, mental, spiritual dimensions of our lives as well. Again, for what purpose? Ultimately, for the purpose of love — or our ability to love — ourselves and those around us in the world. And, as anyone knows who has either given or received love, love often embodies a tremendous amount of strength.

A question then emerges, in addition to what is needed to develop true strength, that acknowledges what inhibits it. Besides the discipline and effort involved in the activity itself, there is the context that contributes to the likelihood (or not) of doing so. Do I feel like it? Why not? What conditions are involved in my life that impact my context? What am I consuming (literally, emotionally, cognitively, spiritually, etc.)? How is that impacting my sleep?

Ultimately, we have to be honest about what true health is versus just what looks like it.

As with many things, appearance and reality are not always the same thing.

What are you really lifting these days?

Captivated With Purpose

We won't be distracted by comparison if we're captivated with purpose.

-- Bob Goff

Bad Information

Why you should avoid bad information: 

...bad information is worse than no information at all. 

-- Nassim Taleb

Psychological Energy

I’ve noticed…that I am rarely in a context that generates psychological energy. 

More often than not, it feels like I am in a context that requires or consumes my psychological energy. I think this is among the greater misfortunes of this dynamic for me — that too often, I dismiss the notion that I should (or could) be in contexts that are more energizing.

Who I am

A simple prayer of recognition:  

I am forgetful. 
Because I lose track of who you are, God, 
I lose track of who I am.  

Two things help me remember who I am (and to pray); action and the outdoors (it is amazing how my sense of self changes when both are in play).

Action (movement) is often what helps me remember, especially when compared to inactivity.  Moving gets me going.  Going helps me remember what I need to keep in mind.  

The outdoors has unique qualities that seem to speak to my being.  They remind of an order to things that helps me see my rightful size and place more accurately.

If looking down is primarily an attempt to understand how I’m doing, looking outward helps me understand where I am.  Looking up seems to lead to an understanding of who I am.

We could all probably benefit from spending more time looking up and out than looking down (especially since our version of looking down is primarily more about comparison, in the context of social media, than it is about true self understanding).

This observation helps me connect some of the dots about the source of my connection to the pieces I encounter in the universe God created (continues to create) and who I am in it:

Reverence does not happen once per week; it is practiced each day faithfully, moment by moment. It is acknowledging that we are dependent on the systems of life.  

-- Sarah Augustine

3 Observations & A Question

I’m not sure how much people can really change — but, it can really look like they do when they become in harmony with who they really are.

Over time, we realize that it isn’t as much about what tastes good or feels good that matters — it is about what is good that we need.

Perhaps our greatest purpose is to become — not so much who we want to become, as much as who we already are.

Can consumption, in and of itself, be a form of exploitation — what examples come to mind?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

$$ & Power

There's too much money (power) involved...on both sides.

NPR

What Bezos and Musk really want from Trump

America has a choice. We can have great wealth in the hands of a few, or we can have a democracy. But we cannot have both.

-- Louis Brandeis, reputed to have said near the end of America’s first Gilded Age

Visual: Color of Nature

Visual - “Color of Nature”

Park City,  UT

Instagram: theforgottencabins

More pics from a wonder-full trip...here.

Don’t be so trashy.

Don’t be so trashy.

What I mean is, we have to stop creating so much trash.

Single-use items, among other things, just have to go.  We're drowning in all our containers (now from the inside out — see micro-plastics).

Of course, the real issue, is the degree of our consumption in the first place.  I know that's getting into pretty sacred territory for many Americans — who might almost immediately react with something like, "What am I supposed to do...if I can't go shopping?".

Like with many other things, we just don't see things we don't want to see. It’s almost like if we won't look at a consequence, it is easier to avoid the cause.

But, recognize it or not, we have a trash problem that land-fills can't really keep covering up.  And, that's largely because we have a consumption problem.

In the end, it's an identity issue — for too many of us, we just don't seem to know who we are if we can't constantly be buying stuff.

That's actually pretty trashy...on a number of levels.

Not Only Compatible

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

-- Carl Sagan

90 Percent

90 percent of success is not getting distracted.

-- Shane Parrish

Distraction

I’m wondering…about distraction.

In a world of so much distraction, it’s very hard to get on track sometimes (not to mention stay on track).

Perhaps, we need to consider not only what we're looking at, but also the direction we're looking.

How much we miss when we’re always looking down (especially at our phones), rather than looking around (not to mention up) — how much is there already for us to observe and learn from in those directions?

Wisdom Begins in Wonder

Controlling People

Controlling people try to control people, and they do the same with God — but loving anything always means a certain giving up of control.  You tend to create a God who is just like you — whereas it was supposed to be the other way around.

-- Richard Rohr

3 Observations & A Question

When you are closer to a mode of inquiry (genuine curiosity), let me know — I’d enjoy talking more then.

Most of the time there’s a story involved.

There is almost nothing that is not in motion.

What do you feel when people throw trash out the window of their car onto your lawn?  — How is that fundamentally different from what we do with our trash on planet earth?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Confidence in Election Accuracy

GALLUP - Front Page

Mankind & Power

Mankind seems to have an endless propensity to destroy things (even good things), not to mention each other.

We have so much power; we don’t even need to use it to protect ourselves. 

But, for some reason, we are prone to misunderstanding what the nature of that power is.  And, so, rather than use it for the benefit of others, we use it against people who are a little different (from us) by trying to gather people around us who just look a little more like us.  

How much of our power do we forfeit because of how small our view of it is?  Power is exponentially greater when it is used to include and expand (love) than when it is used to exclude and protect (fear).

Living Our Fears

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.

-- Les Brown

Not A Virtue

Given our times, it might actually surprise us to know that being critical, for the sake of being critical, is not a virtue.

The steady diet of our endless critique of the world (or other people) ends up taking on addictive qualities, not to mention the unsightliness of looking like an overly developed bicep in just one arm. Should we really be this convinced that we hold the cards on everything that is wrong, especially when we simultaneously seem quite under-developed in seeing how we ourselves contribute to it?

We seem to think that calling out something that doesn't work well gets us off some kind of hook. And, the gap between seeing something and doing something about it seems to only be growing.

To be sure there, is a lot to be critical of. But, shouldn't we get better at what we're doing about it than simply perfecting our articulation of what they aren't doing about it?

One (perhaps) unintended consequence of this propensity seems to be our declining ability to admire, to appreciate, much of anything at all.

We must equally (if not more) be able to stop the inertia of these inclinations and observe the many wonderful and beautiful things about the world (and, yes, other albeit imperfect people).

Without that kind of balance, we simply end up so deformed in our thinking that we are unable to provide any kind of care at all for what is needed. As has been said before, we should be more defined by what we are for than simply by what we are against.

Besides, it really isn’t that hard. We just need to make ourselves more available to the timeless things that can teach us, like the simple instruction of a morning sunrise.

…willingness to be open and to learn might be closer to virtue.

Out of the Process

The advice I like to give anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to do an awful lot of work.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.

-- Chuck Close

Habits We've Formed

Ever noticed...how much we live out of the habits we form around our insecurities?

Animated by Faith, Hope, and Love

Christians in the United States and around the world have seen their faith in Jesus Christ distorted and leveraged in defense of authoritarian leaders who seek to erode freedoms essential to a thriving democracy. Some Christians enthusiastically praise dictatorial leaders and regimes.

We will meet in a moment of crisis. Yet we do so as people of God animated by faith, hope, and love. It is in this spirit that we reaffirm Christian support for democracy and invite all Christians and people of moral conscience to do the same.

-- Test of Faith: A Summit to Defend Democracy, September 19-20, 2024

Leap of Faith

4 Observations (from Others)

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people becomes an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

-- Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death...four decades ago prophesied an apocalypse of moral idiocy in the age of mass media

Courage is knowing it might hurt, and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same. And that's why life is hard.

-- Jeremy Goldberg

We usually think of resilience as the ability to recover from an adverse experience and pick up our lives where we left off…. But there are times when adversity permanently changes our reality and we can’t go back to the way things were…. Resilience then becomes the work of coming through the adversity. -- Alice Updike Scannell

People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or the power to seek and find.

-- Thomas Mitchell

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Young men and women are moving in opposite directions

Data of all kinds reveals a little-discussed, future-defining trend: Men and women are going separate ways.

Why it matters: The split is clear in politics, religion, education and the labor market. For the next generation, gender is becoming the biggest predictor of how you think, act and vote.

"There’s a much broader story here," says Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life. "Even after all the votes are tallied and we’ve moved on from the 2024 election, we’re not going to have resolved any of the cultural and relational tension between young men and young women."

You see it in politics: Women are turning left, and men are turning right.

You see it in religion: For the first time ever recorded in the U.S., young men are more religious than young women.

You see it in education: There are 2.4 million more women on U.S. college campuses than men, the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM) notes. And those degrees are often resulting in higher-wage jobs for women in big cities, a Pew Research Center analysis of census data found.

You see it in the labor market: Wages and labor force participation have increased since the 1980s for college-educated men and women, and for working-class women. But they have stagnated for working-class men, who are also now significantly less likely to be employed compared to four decades ago, according to AIBM's analysis.

You see it in visions for the future: Men are more likely than women to want marriage and kids, according to Pew. The percentage of 18- to 34-year-old women wanting kids has fallen to 45% versus 57% for men.

What we're watching: The polarization is even stronger among adults under 25, Cox notes. Social media content and algorithms may be one key reason.  Continue here....

-- Erica Pandey

And Own It

You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.

-- Brene Brown

Live & Die, But…

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.

-- Joan Borysenko

We live for a little while and then we die.

...but, how we do the living part, can extend the frame of our existence in dramatic ways. 

If we were to live in complete isolation, that might not be (though terribly reductionist) an inaccurate summary statement. But we don’t live in isolation. We live in utter inter-dependence with everything around us, and it’s in those dimensions that the possibilities of living beyond the short frame of our particular life become realizable. What other people do around me, like it or not, has so much impact on me. And the same is true for me to them. 

This is rather obvious in the sphere of having children. But even having children is done in an inter-dependent context in the world. How they see me interacting with what is around me, with those who are around me, sets in motion, almost irrevocably, their capacity to do the same in their lives. 

If that is done in increasing ways, then the range of this dynamic never ends.  If that is done in diminishing and isolating ways, then that dynamic is thwarted. 

This reality is not confined to parents and children. What I do in any given day is in the context of everything else and thereby has an impact on everything else. What I spend my time on, what I spend my money on, how I wrestle with challenging or painful things, what I allow myself to enjoy, what I point to in the world, physical and metaphysical, how I go about my daily existence in one way or another has an impact. I can either extend the reach and glory of the virtues of living or minimize them.

The problem with the summary statement — we live and then we die — misses so much of the power and joy of everything that goes on in between.

LT: Service To Be Given

Leadership is not a rank or position to be attained. Leadership is a service to be given. 

-- Simon Sinek

This contrast might not be any more evident than...here.