United States of Fear by Mark McDonald M.D

Author:Mark McDonald M.D. [Mark McDonald, M.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637583203
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2021-11-10T14:07:54+00:00

Chapter 4

The Way Forward: Working Our Way Back to Sanity

The United States is now made up of two distinct classes of individuals: the rational and the irrational. Rational individuals are largely fearless, while the irrational tend to be living in tremendous fear. Unfortunately, the rational cannot rescue the irrational. The irrational must first commit to confronting their irrational beliefs and overcoming them. The path forward will be different for each person, but several recurring themes will almost certainly emerge.

For men, it will require a display of courage. They will need to stand up to hysteria and refuse to allow it to drive decision-making. Self-emasculation must end.

For women, it will require emotional restraint. They will need to confront, to the extent they have succumbed to it, the hyper-emotionality that has led them to respond to the current crisis in unhealthy ways.

Finally, to properly address the ongoing damage being done to children, men and women will need to cooperate in this shared endeavor. Children have been victimized by often well-intentioned but thoroughly misguided adults who have abdicated their responsibility to protect their children from harm.

More generally, individual accountability must be found before repair can begin at the group, community, and national levels. Only then can we make full use of organizational and institutional change, which is critical for returning the nation to a state of health for the long term.

When I begin my work with patients, I remind them that everything starts with a shared commitment to reality. The goal of therapy is not to feel good—it is to live in reality, regardless of how it may feel. Over time, patients can modulate the way they feel, but they can never modify reality itself, as it exists independent of them. Attempting to redefine reality is delusional and serves only as a defense against emotional discomfort.

For many women, the threat of mass infection by an invisible pathogen has been terrifying. As previously discussed, women have been primed biologically and culturally to respond to the viral pandemic with uncontained fear, so they cannot be blamed for acting irrationally. Fear activates a primitive protective response that bypasses higher-level thinking. It also inhibits the ability to learn, particularly from one’s mistakes.

I suspect that is one reason we have continued to practice self-defeating, ineffectual behaviors such as masking that simply do not achieve the promised outcome of protection. Exploring options that might actually be helpful in reducing the spread of infection or reducing the severity of disease is a process that is simply closed off to us right now—we are not open to it emotionally.

Being afraid, however, does not absolve anyone from the responsibility of taking corrective action. As I have said in my public talks for over a year, “Acknowledge your fear and act in spite of it.” I realize that this is not an easy task—especially for women—but it is a necessary one in order to return to a life that is grounded in reality and not emotionality.

I don’t mean to imply that feelings are unimportant or that they should be suppressed.

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