I pondered different titles for this little essay. One was “Dreading Dread”; another, “Nightmares and Daymares.”
If not everyone, just about everyone has had a nightmare and, maybe, its daytime parallel, a daymare, that is, some anxiety. “Something might happen” is a background thought of the anxious. And, truly, such a thought is right on the money because “something” is always about to happen. The question is “Do I have to dread its coming?” And what if Roosevelt was correct? What if the only dread we have is the dread of dread? Sure, he spoke of “fear,” and “dread” is different because it’s a deeper kind of fear. Its etymology reveals that dread runs all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, so its origin lies in the root of language, which, I take it, means it lies in the root of being human, maybe even in the root of being itself. Certainly, it runs deep in the brain if it “surfaces” when we are unconscious.
Earth is a place of risks. Maybe we know this from early on, delving into Jungian archetypes that lie in our primitive brain. Little kids—and you were once one—have an occasional nightmare that generates fear that daylight washes from the conscious brain. Some people, as you know, the people who live in constant or semi-constant dread, see the shadows even during daytime; they are awash in anxiety, floating on the sea of archetypes. For them, “Something might happen” is as persistent as tinnitus in an old ear.
After the Russians acquired nuclear weapons, an underlying dread pervaded the psyches of people across the Northern Hemisphere. What if the unthinkable should happen? What if the bombs begin to fall? When the world opened itself to weapons of mass destruction, it opened a door to a tinnitus of dread. A constant ringing of a bell that tolls for all. The thought that any moment can be almost everyone’s last moment lies in the background of anyone who knows that such weapons exist. We’ve added other such weapons since 1945’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Chemicals, microorganisms, and now computers running artificial intelligence—this last one predicted by science fiction writers ever since IBM filled a room with “thinking machines.” Seems that we do have much to dread. Not only will the ringing not stop, but it also is getting louder.
And dread feeds on the feeling of helplessness. I don’t know about you, but the thought in 2020 that an unseen biological agent, a deadly virus possibly manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction, had been unleashed on the planet generated a reasonable sense of concern bordering on dread: Dread of the marketplace, of confined plane cabins, of churches full of exhaling singers, and of schools filled with elderly susceptible teachers and unsusceptible young breathers. As thousands and then millions died, the dread manifested itself in public policies that restricted how humans could be human. And the dread still remains as threats to reimpose those restrictions resurface during any kind of sickness, from flu to strep throat. We’re all living by imposition or choice in Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”
And as in Poe’s story, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere that is dread-free. We can seal ourselves off from the rest of society like Poe’s character, hiding behind masks, but we all know “deep down” that viruses and bacteria can find a way into our protected places, into secure confines, and into our lungs. Ultimately, since dread lies within, it also follows where we go, even when we distract ourselves with partying.
Does dread, deep-seated as it is, have a counterpart, some antithesis from which we can draw resistance to its detrimental effects on our psyches?
All that retreating from society foreshadowed by Poe’s characters probably did little to stop the spread of Covid-19 during the height of the pandemic. Viruses and bacteria are ubiquitous. Quash one, the other survives. Bacteria once ruled the planet—and maybe they still do because they can be found in every environment, even the environment inside rocks sampled from mines and wells miles deep and in hydrothermal vents and hot springs that exceed the boiling point of water. And viruses are probably just as ubiquitous—and maybe even older than bacteria that seem to have originated more than 3.5 billion years ago. They are a persistent danger to us, but we evolved under their threat, and here we are, almost eight billion in number.
Of course, the large number of humans is not a guarantee of any individual’s survival, but it does give each a statistical advantage as a weapon against dread. It’s an advantage we use all the time. Fear an auto wreck? Then why take the risk of going above the speed limit? Is it because your chance of being in an injuring or fatal accident is minimal when there are billions of drivers? Planes crash, but we still enter them. We accept risks on a risky planet. We accept security in the midst of dread. We counter dread in almost every kind of place at almost any time.
We’re equipped to handle dread, persistent and insidious as it is. When our physical places don’t shield us from it, our mental places do.
If not everyone, just about everyone has had a nightmare and, maybe, its daytime parallel, a daymare, that is, some anxiety. “Something might happen” is a background thought of the anxious. And, truly, such a thought is right on the money because “something” is always about to happen. The question is “Do I have to dread its coming?” And what if Roosevelt was correct? What if the only dread we have is the dread of dread? Sure, he spoke of “fear,” and “dread” is different because it’s a deeper kind of fear. Its etymology reveals that dread runs all the way back to Proto-Indo-European, so its origin lies in the root of language, which, I take it, means it lies in the root of being human, maybe even in the root of being itself. Certainly, it runs deep in the brain if it “surfaces” when we are unconscious.
Earth is a place of risks. Maybe we know this from early on, delving into Jungian archetypes that lie in our primitive brain. Little kids—and you were once one—have an occasional nightmare that generates fear that daylight washes from the conscious brain. Some people, as you know, the people who live in constant or semi-constant dread, see the shadows even during daytime; they are awash in anxiety, floating on the sea of archetypes. For them, “Something might happen” is as persistent as tinnitus in an old ear.
After the Russians acquired nuclear weapons, an underlying dread pervaded the psyches of people across the Northern Hemisphere. What if the unthinkable should happen? What if the bombs begin to fall? When the world opened itself to weapons of mass destruction, it opened a door to a tinnitus of dread. A constant ringing of a bell that tolls for all. The thought that any moment can be almost everyone’s last moment lies in the background of anyone who knows that such weapons exist. We’ve added other such weapons since 1945’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Chemicals, microorganisms, and now computers running artificial intelligence—this last one predicted by science fiction writers ever since IBM filled a room with “thinking machines.” Seems that we do have much to dread. Not only will the ringing not stop, but it also is getting louder.
And dread feeds on the feeling of helplessness. I don’t know about you, but the thought in 2020 that an unseen biological agent, a deadly virus possibly manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction, had been unleashed on the planet generated a reasonable sense of concern bordering on dread: Dread of the marketplace, of confined plane cabins, of churches full of exhaling singers, and of schools filled with elderly susceptible teachers and unsusceptible young breathers. As thousands and then millions died, the dread manifested itself in public policies that restricted how humans could be human. And the dread still remains as threats to reimpose those restrictions resurface during any kind of sickness, from flu to strep throat. We’re all living by imposition or choice in Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death.”
And as in Poe’s story, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere that is dread-free. We can seal ourselves off from the rest of society like Poe’s character, hiding behind masks, but we all know “deep down” that viruses and bacteria can find a way into our protected places, into secure confines, and into our lungs. Ultimately, since dread lies within, it also follows where we go, even when we distract ourselves with partying.
Does dread, deep-seated as it is, have a counterpart, some antithesis from which we can draw resistance to its detrimental effects on our psyches?
All that retreating from society foreshadowed by Poe’s characters probably did little to stop the spread of Covid-19 during the height of the pandemic. Viruses and bacteria are ubiquitous. Quash one, the other survives. Bacteria once ruled the planet—and maybe they still do because they can be found in every environment, even the environment inside rocks sampled from mines and wells miles deep and in hydrothermal vents and hot springs that exceed the boiling point of water. And viruses are probably just as ubiquitous—and maybe even older than bacteria that seem to have originated more than 3.5 billion years ago. They are a persistent danger to us, but we evolved under their threat, and here we are, almost eight billion in number.
Of course, the large number of humans is not a guarantee of any individual’s survival, but it does give each a statistical advantage as a weapon against dread. It’s an advantage we use all the time. Fear an auto wreck? Then why take the risk of going above the speed limit? Is it because your chance of being in an injuring or fatal accident is minimal when there are billions of drivers? Planes crash, but we still enter them. We accept risks on a risky planet. We accept security in the midst of dread. We counter dread in almost every kind of place at almost any time.
We’re equipped to handle dread, persistent and insidious as it is. When our physical places don’t shield us from it, our mental places do.
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