The terror, the terror

Humanity’s place in nature is terrifying. Fires, floods, landslides, predatory animals, starvation, poisoned water, infection, plague; the list of depredations goes on. Were it not for each other we’d have never survived; alone we are weak and vulnerable.

Some animals are solitary, but human beings are not. We are intensely social. The bonds we form as members of a family can and do get extended to others as clans, tribes and groups. Together, we form collective bodies for protection, support and comfort. Given our success as a species, our social habits are an obvious advantage.

Despite that collective success, however, on an individual basis life remains filled with terror. The prospect of death, our own and of those we care about, is always with us no matter how hard we try to forget about it. Pain and injury are in store for all of us at some time or another. The likelihood of being maimed by a bear is low, but rather high when it comes to being maimed by an auto accident. Being alive is traumatic.

Levels of trauma range from modest to severe. Modest trauma is enduring the stress and disappointments of ordinary life. Civilization offsets many of the traumas inflicted by nature; indoor plumbing, air conditioning, refrigeration, electricity, etc. soften the blow of living, but are accompanied by a general sense of helplessness. Few of us can repair our own refrigerator. As civilization coddles us it also increases our vulnerability.

When once we had to master the basic skills that living required – growing food, hunting game, butchering, cooking, sewing, setting broken bones, etc. – today we rely upon civilization to meet our needs. To buy goods and services we use money and trade our time to accumulate it. This makes us subject to the ruling social order. To gain security, we give up some freedom.

For many, the security of a job comes at the cost of self-respect. When work was utilizing mastered skills like cobbling shoes or baking bread that helped others conduct their own lives, the day ended with a sense of self-respect and value. Today’s mindless jobs, by contrast, routinely leave people feeling empty and undervalued. It’s a form of modest trauma that accumulates over time and becomes chronic, leading to anger, resentment and substance abuse. In this way, even modest trauma becomes debilitating.

There is severe trauma, of course, such as being the victim of violence or sexual abuse. Severe trauma can be self-perpetuating when victims repeatedly act out their experience of trauma on others. This is what psychologist Sue Grand calls the reproduction of evil.

Whatever its level, either sublimated through artifacts of civilization and modest or severe and experienced directly, trauma generates terror, just as nature once did and still does. When unprocessed, the terror of trauma seeks relief, sometimes in the form of blame. By blaming others – immigrants, gays, Jews, Muslims, blacks, Asians, the poor – terror is displaced, the textbook definition of scapegoating, a transference of anger at one’s own vulnerability and disappointment. Once an ancient group ritual of magic, scapegoating’s now a social media phenomenon.

The root cause of so much anger in America today is life of desperation, and nowadays it’s not quiet. People feel helpless and deservedly so. Modern life demands surrender to technology, economics, social change, and repeated experiences of terror. If you’ve ever gone online to try to correct inaccurate medical bills, you know exactly what I mean.