A Tale of Two Doormats

January 6, 2025. Fear seems to have become the emotion of these times, and not without reason. Be afraid, we are told, of the violence in the streets and on the internet, of the immigrants at the border and the enemies within, of the different and of the unknown. Above all, be afraid for the future.

When danger is everywhere, how can we feel safe?

One response is to shrink our world – to make it as small, sheltered, and homogenous as possible – so that we can more easily distinguish our allies from our enemies. “There are three kinds of people,” my late friend Sam once said to me, “those I know and I like; those I know and I don’t like; and those I don’t know and I don’t like.” And so, we are taught to avoid people who don’t look like us, who don’t talk like us, who don’t dress like us. In both our real and our virtual lives, we increasingly seek out communities of people who seem just like us. In times when the threats seem especially great, we turn for protection to leaders who tell us they are tough.

Fear has always been critical to human survival, and we need to pay attention to it. But the powerful few have too often exploited our so they can keep us compliant. And when they have scared us into silence, they offer us “consumer goods in exchange for mindlessness,” as Timothy Snyder writes in On Freedom. He was describing Soviet puppets in eastern Europe in the 1970s. Today, in this country, “Drill, baby, drill” has become the mantra of those who offer us cheap gasoline in exchange for the future of the earth. This is not a good deal for my grandchildren.

Fear is not the only way to engage with the world. Remember the excitement of going to an unknown place for the first time and savoring the cacophony of sounds and colors and curious customs? Tourism wasn’t even a word until 1811, and now it’s a $2 trillion industry. And while the tourist business seems bent on sanitizing the experiences of its “customers,” the attraction for many is still to escape the known and the safe, to be open to the new, and to hope for the unexpected.

Or remember when the mats at front doors said “Welcome” instead of “Beware of Dog.”

In reality, we thrive on openness and diversity, a word that Project 2025 has promised to delete from our politics. But beset by fear, we seek refuge in safe places and small pleasures. We are apprehensive about the future, but we are tired of the acrimony, and so we turn inward. Openness. Generosity. Wonder. Kindness. Compassion. Integrity. These are some of the values we jeopardize when we do so.

Above all, perhaps, we worry that we lack courage. But courage need not be heroic. There are ways it can assert itself besides lying down in front of a tank or getting hauled off to prison. For many of us, it can be simply trying to hold onto our values in these times, both when we are afraid and when we are comfortable. That will take courage enough.