Turn on the news and you’ll see that the world appears to balance on a precipice, with our very survival at risk. One false step equals oblivion. Fear for our future seems reasonable, given threats to democracy here and abroad, the ravages of climate change, the upheaval in Israel and the all-too-familiar insidious antisemitism.
Yet, ask yourself, are today’s challenges as terrifying as in the past? Has there been anything in recent memory that comes even close to the destruction wrought by the 20th century’s two world wars? There are some really scary folks out there, but does anyone now pose as great a danger as Hitler or Stalin? And I have vivid memories of crouching under my desk as we all waited to see whether the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with nuclear annihilation. The world has survived that and much more.
Sociologist Barry Glassner, the author of the bestseller, “The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things,” argues that one reason we live in fear is that an entire industry exists to scare us. Open your mail and let me know when you receive a fundraising letter that says: “Congratulations, your contributions seem to be working, and things are looking up. But send more money anyway.” Glassner can’t predict which fears will haunt us in the days ahead, but he states with confidence that scaremongers will propagate their scares much as they have done in the past.
Maybe it is human nature to be terrified — that it is the prospect of looming disaster that gives us purpose. If we are truly the last hope for humanity, how important we must be!
Whatever the rationale, it seems that the one thing that all generations share is the conviction that they live at the most critical and, often, most perilous, period in human history. Maybe we feel that way because we know little of that history. As a result, in the words of Marcel Proust, we “imagine ourselves always to be going through an experience which is without precedents in the past.”
I had my own history lesson a decade ago when I had lunch with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres. He asked me how Israel was being perceived on America’s campuses. I told him that it was an unmitigated disaster. Student governments across the country were voting in favor of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions, while progressive voices with conflicting agendas were coalescing on one thing — the delegitimization of the State of Israel. In my view, never had Israel been in such peril.
He smiled and then asked me a series of additional questions. Did I think that the threat to Israel that day was as great as it was in 1956 during the Suez Canal crisis? As great as it was in 1967 during the Six-Day War? As great as it was in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War? I got his point. Without historical perspective we are at the mercy of our emotions.
We should comfort ourselves with the knowledge that the world has always been on the precipice. And that humanity somehow finds a way forward.
While we should never kid ourselves that everything will inevitably turn out for the best, we should comfort ourselves with the knowledge that the world has always been on the precipice. And that humanity somehow finds a way forward.
That perspective doesn’t imply inaction. In fact, it suggests the opposite. Fight for democracy in the U.S. and in Israel, precisely because history reminds us that its fragility required those who came before us to fight for it. Fight for fairness because of a legacy of injustice — and an even greater legacy of reform and renewal.
Isaiah 35:4 gives us hope: “Say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.’”
But we need not wait for divine intervention. If we learn from history to focus on the real challenges that confront us, we just might sleep better at night, while ensuring a more promising future.
Morton Schapiro is the former president of Williams College and Northwestern University. His most recent book (with Gary Saul Morson) is “Minds Wide Shut: How the New Fundamentalisms Divide Us.”
