We Do Have to Fear "Fear Itself" -- Too Much and Too Little!

The Oval Office has been renovated, and five quotes chosen by President Obama now ring the circle in the new carpet. One of those quotes is "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself," Franklin Roosevelt's declaration in his second inaugural address that irrational fear is the biggest bogeyman of all. How appropriate that this quote is literally stitched into the fabric at the center of arguably the most powerful office in the world. So much of what is decided there, and so much of what we do in our own individual daily lives, is driven by fear, the conscious name we give to the overpowering subconscious animal imperative to survive.

But may I humbly suggest to the current team that works in the Oval Office that Roosevelt was only half right. We do have to fear "fear itself", but we have to fear too much, and too little fear. We have to be afraid of being too afraid, yes, but we also need to beware of not being wary enough. What we really need to fear is getting fear wrong, worrying too much about relatively smaller threats and not enough about the bigger ones. It's not quite as pithy as what Roosevelt said but, in the gap between our fears and the facts lies perhaps the greatest danger.

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