I’ve been noticing in recent years that a lot of the extreme polarization (and a warlike enemy-making in the mind) on certain public topics comes from fear.  More specifically, the unwillingness to tolerate risk and fear.

An example is the vaccine debate during COVID pandemic. Those who were on the side of the vaccine feared getting COVID and got the vaccine and since the vaccine is imperfect, they also wanted everyone else to get it to minimize the chance of getting COVID. On the other side were people who were afraid of the vaccines – that they might have adverse health consequences or even death from it.  But some pro-vaccine folks wanted a mandate (or at least something that was effectively a mandate by denying services to unvaccinated people).   They mocked the fears of the other side because they weren’t their own fears.  They felt that they needed to eliminate all chance of having to risk COVID and be free from their fear.  So, their solution was to force the other people to live with their fear.  Likewise, in the case of the anti-vax/anti-mask people, they did not want to deal with their fear of the vaccine or their fear of the government taking over their freedoms by wearing masks etc.  And so they walked around in a manner that forced the elderly/frail (or just scared) people on the other side to live with their fears.

The current Israel-Palestine conflict is another example.  It’s well-known that each group in the conflict thinks the other side poses an existential threat to them.  Furthermore, they feel that the only way to feel secure is to exterminate the identified enemy on the other side (and destroy a lot of innocents on the other side if that’s a by-product).  This desire to be entirely free from a fear of the other (given beliefs about the other – no doubt in the mind well supported by numerous pieces of experience) is a root cause of why each side poses an existential threat.

I also see this in the politico-social polarization into echo chambers in the my own country – with more and more people viewing people who adhere to opposite viewpoints or values as a threat by their very existence/thinking.

The dhamma suggests that living with what is, is a fantastic inner weapon for achieving peace. And that includes living with certain risks and fears. Pema Chodron even has a compilation of teachings on this topic, aptly named “Living with uncertainty”. These teachings show us a way towards fearlessness that is through allowing certain fears rather than seeking to eliminate them entirely.