Confronting Worldview Panic

Very few things threaten people more than having their worldview challenged. And when something arises that threatens their worldview, the first reaction is to destroy it.

We see this with Hurricane Carter. Since he was a child he was seen as a dangerous individual. What made him dangerous? Quite simply, that he was a black person who was not a loser. The people around him kept wanting to claim that black people are losers; but Hurrican Carter became a champion fighter. This made him a living, walking refutation of the lie that the people

around him wanted to shove down the throats of their children. And that made him very dangerous to such people.

With Obama, we see someone who's become many times more successful than Hurricane Carter could dream of being; and here we are seeing even greater slanders. He is claimed to be Antichrist, he is claimed to be Hitler, he is claimed to be Satan. The reason? That the people who make such claims want everyone to believe that only white people raised in nuclear Christian

families can become successful; which excludes a black person raised by a single atheist mother from success. So then Obama must be evil to have gotten as far as he has. Instead he is a great man; and he is especially made great given what he has been getting from the American Right.

Similar situation exists in the historical treatment of Jews. The White Anglo Saxon Protestants believe that they own success; but Jews are in many cases more successful than White Anglo Saxon Protestants. This likewise draws accusations of evil against Jewish people.

We see similar things with the treatment of professionally successful women. Women are supposed to be stupid; so when a woman shows intelligence it flies in the face of this worldview. Once again, these women get attacked, claimed to be evil, claimed to be manipulative, and further along the same line. No, they are just women who happened to be smart.

People tend to push anything into their worldview, and having something not fitting causes a panic reaction. When someone who is not supposed to be successful according to the person's worldview becomes successful, that's when the panic reaction becomes the worst. One then starts making all sorts of reasons to see the person as evil; or one attempts to destroy the

person; or the one decides that something is wrong with the world. In reality, the only thing that's wrong is the one's worldview. Like those who claim that, taken as whole, the universe is absurd, project their thinking upon the universe and judge it when it differs from their way of thinking, so we see the person whose worldview is challenged attack the thing that challenges it; and if that does not work, then he attacks the world.

We see this with those in Christianity and Islam who believe that the world is evil. They have decided, because the universe does not run by Biblical or Quranic values, that the problem is the Universe. No, it is not. The problem is those who want to project upon the universe a set of judgments that are unrelated to how it functions. The problem is not with the world. It is with the worldview.

Some people challenge worldviews actively; but others challenge them passively just by being who and what they are. And in both cases the work is dangerous. It becomes incumbent to remain conscious of what is going on so that one can defend oneself from attacks that happen in both cases. And then one becomes a positive force that refutes rackets and gets people to see

things more clearly.