Risk-Averse Americans and How Fear Makes Captives of Us All

“When did Americans become risk averse?”

Hearing a college professor from Georgia ask that question corresponds to questions I have asked myself. Maybe you too wonder about how Americans have responded to crises throughout the past year.

In speaking, he noted the pioneers who first settled this country. And the ones who fought in the Revolutionary War. By extension, the professor could point to every war that cost Americans sacrifices and involved taking risks, including The Civil War, The Depression, the 1918 pandemic, and a host of other threats Americans have had to face in the past 300 years. 

Storms, natural disasters, and diseases and accidents present risks inherent in life itself. From the moment any person is born, these crises and more cover a gambit of possible threats to safety.

Taking risks makes me think of a scene in the movie Dances with Wolves when the old muleskinner points to human skeletal remains found drying––bleached bones on the prairie. Through tobacco-stained teeth and a wry smile, he says to Kevin Costner’s character, Lieutenant Dunbar, “There’s somebody back East sayin’, ‘Why don’t he write?’”

How the West Was Won––in history, how America was settled and civilized––people ventured beyond limitations that carried enormous risks. If safety had been the primary concern, America would not have reached from sea to shining sea. Instead, people loaded rickety covered wagons with steel rimmed wooden wheels, wagons pulled by horses, heading into uncharted territory. You could not call those pioneers risk averse.

Only who cares about American history?

Untold numbers of people died in the course of settling this vast country. And countless more have died to protect American soil. Some were never heard of again. Some were never heard from again. Some had no grave to mark either their existence or departure.

And while hard facts of our own mortality surface when anyone you or I know personally dies, that professor is right. 

When did Americans become so risk averse?

What began with the belief that millions of Americans would die from coronavirus (not with coronavirus––there is a distinct difference, you know), nearly a year later, that fear has turned into a cloak of fear laid upon the shoulders of every person in this country. 

In the movie Moonstruck, Cosmo is having a mid-life crisis. He’s having an affair with a younger woman. Near the end of the film, Cosmo’s wife, played brilliantly by Olivia Dukakis says to him, “Cosmo, you’re gonna die.” And those words snap him out of the delusion he created to evade and ignore that fact.

How Then Should We Live?: The Rise and Decline of Western Culture, by Dr. Francis Shaeffer, written more than half a century ago, overviews the Judeo-Christian values and worldview and its decline in American culture. 

The decline I have witnessed in the past 50 years corresponds to abandoning Judeo-Christian values, which then undermined education that included teaching history.

History records the past to reference events and experiences we can adjust in the present to protect our future. In the current social upheaval, history is being attacked and torn down.

“What we can know of the truth all resides in the past, because the present is fleeting and confusing and tomorrow has yet to come. The past, on the other hand, is complete.”

Larry P. Arnn, President Hillsdale College

In the past year, freedom shifted from individual citizens into the hands of those powerful few who continue to use a pandemic to extend their reach into the lives of ordinary citizens. So-called leaders have tasted what dictators in other nations claim for themselves and wield––”an intoxication of power”––power that corrupts and dismantles the very idea of individual freedoms upon which this nation was founded.

Government Overreach Attacks Personal Freedoms

Even amidst World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously declared that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.

Today’s government overreach takes me back to 9-11, before the Federal government created TSA (Transportation Safety Administration) with its efforts to keep people safe. This was the proper role of industry, not government. Before terrorist attacks on American soil, people could go to the arrival and departure gates at airports, neither checked or threatened by search and seizure. But we the people got used to these unconstitutional changes, in order to feel safe.

“It’s never about what they say it’s about.”

Tucker Carlson, February 16, 2021

And then there’s the mask. 

Not because the mask can prevent people from catching the virus. The mask might lessen the chance of spreading the virus. But if nothing else, the mask indicates government control, portending the real threat behind the mask.

What has happened in the past year of American history fuels restrictions ever more far-reaching than masks or vaccines.

The irony of mask-wearing cannot escape notice. It used to be that criminals wore a mask! Now, those who refuse to wear a mask are considered criminal.

Masks serve as a way to enforce conformity––a way to see who will obey and who will not. 

I wear a mask where required and made masks to wear. And if wearing a mask makes you feel better, wear a mask. Only step down from the bench, judging those who choose not to wear a mask and declaring people guilty of threatening your safety. 

And the same goes for taking the vaccine. Take it or leave it. 

And according to HIPAA laws, you do not have to answer when someone asks whether you have taken the vaccine or not. And you should refrain from asking others this personal question.

And while every person has different reasons for wearing a mask, or not wearing a mask, America used to be a nation where individuals had a choice. A place where people could judge for themselves risks they are willing to take. In order to live. To make a life. To have a life. Because life is so daily.

Not one of the days lost to the pandemic can come back. Yet, our future remains at stake. And that future includes how we spend today.

Making the choice to go along in order to get along would come easier if our nation’s leaders hadn’t lied to Americans for the past year. (Well, there have plenty of lies all along, but none so devastating to the nation as a whole as the lies of this politically-charged past year.) Leaders should be the clearest thinkers of all. Leaders should have a grasp of history in order to avoid repeating history’s mistakes.

And if you want to identify those leaders who repeatedly lie, look at the ones who exempt themselves from the very orders they insist others abide.

How then should we live?

Yes. Everyone dies.

A better question to ponder: How then should we live?

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Annie Dillard

Whether wearing a mask or not, taking risks or not, a quote from the Shawshank Redemption reminds me to “Get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.'”