Amoebas have feelings too, you know

An article I read recently reminded me of something I wrote on message boards a long, long time ago (like back when message boards were actually cool. Well, scratch that, actually, they never were, but I sure thought I was. Still do, in fact. I digress).

The article's details aren't what struck me most. To be sure, the surface details are striking: a man wearing a t-shirt with an expression in both Farsi and English was told that he could not board a flight with the t-shirt. The salient details here being that the passenger in question, Raed Jarrar, is of Arabic descent, is a widely read peace activist, and that the t-shirt in question bore the expression "We Will Not Be Silent."

He was told that wearing the t-shirt on a flight was like entering a bank with a shirt that says "I am a bank robber". No kidding, this really happened.

People's reactions to such news items are often—and rightly—visceral and immediate. We've cultivated a society where tolerance is an exalted virtue, and an indignant reaction to such baseless paranoia is the most socially acceptable reaction. But my own reaction is what struck me most about the article, and what reminded me of a discussion I had long ago.

I'd like to believe that most people are profoundly insulted by this story out of an understanding of the root causes of this kind of intolerance—namely fear. To succumb to fear, it is said, is to surrender our sanity to the irrational forces of paranoia.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
—Bertrand Russell

Betrand Russell's one of the few voices of reason that cuts through the din of an irrational world. The quote above isn't a statement of opinion—it's a statemeent of fact. One of the easiest ways to get coordinated action or thought is through fear or coercion, and our current political and social climate is especially adept at both. By way of illustrating the extent to which irrationality has infiltrated our daily lives, consider some numbers.

Total deaths, since 1995:
- Driving off the road: 254,419
- Falling: 146,542
- Accidental poisoning: 140,327
- Dying from work: 59,730
- Walking down the street: 52,000
- Accidentally drowning: 38,302
- Terrorism: 3,147

Now, I understand that one doesn't mobilize an entire country to the cause of something as resolutely unsexy as automobile safety or accidental drowning. But, isn't there a lesson to be learned in just how easy it has been to foment paranoia by tapping into the primal fear of "others", as we have been trained to do by political handlers? What we fear of terrorists isn't the minuscule chance of them blowing up a plane or a building, though that's how everyone seems to justify their unquestioning acceptance of the ridiculous security measures and privacy intrusions imposed on air travelers lately. I don't remember any major newscast downplaying the threat of terrorism by presenting the numbers above (except for the Wired article from which I drew the onse above), so it's not like anyone's aware that their fears are wholly unfounded.

No, what people really fear, deep down in that place they don't talk about in public, is "those other people". You know, the ones who speak a different language, eat different food, wear different clothes, and pray to a different god. We speak of tolerance, and exalt it as a virtue in an increasingly diverse world, but fundamentally, we are terrified of diversity. The fact of the matter is that the most obvious and immediately observable trait displayed by humanity is conformity. We are social animals. We want to belong; we need to belong. Not only do we want to belong, but we want to belong to other people like us. Think about it. It may not be a cheery thought, but it's fundamentally accurate. How are truly different individuals treated in our world? They are seen as outcasts. Heck, even the term "anticonformist" has negative connotations!

But this is an unsettling truth. People would much rather believe they are individuals, and as a result, we deny the origin of these fears and readily accept all manners of pre-cooked reasons to manifest them in guise:

"Am I scared of Arabs? Well no, of course not. I love and embrace all that they are and marvel at the beauty of their culture. It's those terrorists that must be stopped."

Please. There's nothing wrong with examining our fears. In fact, shouldn't it be seen as the only viable first step in conquering them? Humans are xenophobic. We just are. It's not a pretty thing to say, and it has the added disadvantage of making us feel somewhat less than perfect, but it's no less true. This is what I wrote once upon a time in a forum dedicated to an exploration of the roots of racism. My main argument was that racism can't be wished away or made to vanish by a few trite slogans and pictures of multicolored babies playing together. It takes anything but color blindness; in point of fact, the more aware we are of the differences, the better we can understand what we find unsettling about them.

To have a sense of self, we must necessarily develop an awareness of what is "me" and what is "everyone else". Hell, even an amoeba has this rudimentary sense of self. It may seem obvious, but knowing what is "me" and what is "everything else" is how it avoids eating itself, for instance. An important difference between amoebas and humans, it would then appear, is that amoebas can't devise elaborate scenarios to rationalize their fears. Good for them.

So can we really hope to reign in this fear, especially since it's so intrinsically tied to our sense of self? The idea that eliminating fear will somehow lead to harmony is a pervasive truism, but I'm going on the record as saying that it's an empty and incurious statement on humanity. Rather than accepting the blanket proposition that fear must be eliminated in order to achieve harmony, I would like to believe everyone has the ability to address the root cause of the fear. But that's a hopeful (and hopeless) desire.

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
—Carl Sagan