FEAR IS WHAT AMERICANS HAVE IN COMMON BUT IS ALSO WHAT DIVIDES US

Many people have described the United States as driven by fear. That inspite of our power and influence in the world we seem to live in fear and instead of this joining all of us as we face our fears, instead our fear ends up separating us and this increases our fears.

So, why are we afraid and why do we separate ourselves into isolated groups and then blame others for our fears. I believe that blaming others guarantees that we will continue to be afraid and feel alone. So what attracts us to being afraid and feeling alone? It must be how we have learned to cope with stress and anxiety. So, something causes us to instantly react to things that we see as stressful and this reaction is based on past stressful events and not on the current events. So, we react based our past reactions but then believe we need to react even though our reactions actually hurt us now. Many people react this way and some of them link up together to try to feel connected to one another but the fears get in the way and their lonliness and stress continues. What I am describing are symptoms of PTSD. Our brains think that we need to react to current stresses to cope with our fears and yet this is not needed now and only keeps us feeling afraid unnecessarily. 

It can help to be open about what you are reacting to and tell your brain that you don't need to react and don't need to be afraid anymore.  If you have someone that you trust and can talk with about your fears then it might be easier to tell yourself that you don't need to be afraid anymore.  What do you think? 

BEYOND GENDER...WHY DO WE NEED THINGS THAT SEPARATE US?

In August, 2018 I saw the play "Paradise Lost" by Erin Shields that was adapted from the poem by John Milton performed as a world premiere at the Stratford Festival, Directed by Jackie Maxwell. The play portrays the innocence of Adam and Eve and it occurred to me that gender was only recognized after their innocence was lost. So, before that there was no need [?] for gender assignment. This made me think of gender assignment as separating us from each other or at least potentially doing that. It also made me reflect on the fall from innocence portrayed in Paradise Lost as something that separated Adam and Eve from each other and according to some spiritual beliefs, separated them from God. Eve is portrayed as yielding to the temptation to learn about good and evil, and then encouraging Adam to join her. This has been used to blame women for the fall and somehow to also consider women to be inferior to men. This has led to thousands of years of pain and suffering as women were considered separate from and unequal to men. This makes me think that the original understanding of Eve's role is wrong as I believe that whatever separates us as humans is wrong. What does separate us? Feeling better than others; judging others; excluding others; sterotyping others; assigning gender roles? So many ways to justify separating ourselves from others. So, is gender assignment another way to separate us from each other?

What purposes do gender assignment and gender roles have?  They seem to invite thinking sterotypically, seeing differences vs similarities and not being a open to actually seeing each other vs seeing the stereotypes that we have created and stored in our memories.  

What do you think?