Alicia’s View: Confronting fears first step in debating issues

Published 1:30 am Saturday, April 29, 2023

By Alicia Crank / Herald Columnist

One of my favorite episodes of the television series, “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” is titled “Fear Itself,” and involves a character named Gachnar, a fear demon. Said demon manifested everyone’s worst fears, including the heroine herself. Eventually, Buffy and her crew gathered up enough courage to face this big, bad demon, only to find it was only a few inches tall. They laugh at it, toss it around, and Buffy squashes it with her shoe.

While a humorous episode, it is a life lesson in and of itself; we often perceive fears as larger or more dangerous than what they really are. We fear being wrong about something. We fear taking in new information that may challenge our belief systems. We fear being corrected in public. Overarching, we fear not being listened to (remember my earlier column on the difference of hearing versus listening).

I believe this is why civil discourse becomes harder to see modeled in community and political landscapes. The fears I identified above can trigger a fight or flight response when the opportunity for an exchange of information arises that may challenge what we know. It also lends itself to having to model the civil discourse we say we want to see from our leaders. Can we be brave enough to set the example?

Brave may seem like a strong word, but I submit it is an accurate one. We are now part of a society that has deemed it OK to personally attack anyone who displays or shares a different way of thinking or supports a candidate or law that the other doesn’t. Having been on the personally attacked side several times, I found it easier to deal with because I only have myself to worry about. In hindsight, if I had a spouse and/or children, I may not have stepped into the crosshairs as often as I have.

Yet, I go back to the “fear demon” because many of the fears I ended up taking head-on ended up not being as horrible as I’d imagined. Often, it ended up helping me connect with others who had the same concerns but didn’t know how to go about addressing them. Some have been afraid to participate in community dialogue in seeing what’s happened to me at times but appreciated seeing the civil discourse model at least being attempted.

In that spirit, I’m looking forward to my next civil discourse project in Edmonds this summer, one I hope those in other communities may want to experiment with as well.

“Open Invitation” is intended as a weekly, online community discussion in June and July that will focus on topics relevant to the upcoming Edmonds City Council and mayoral elections leading into the primary in August. A subject matter expert or two will help lead these discussions with me, and residents and stakeholders can join in and give their thoughts and opinions. The kicker is that every person running for office in Edmonds has an open invitation to drop into these conversations and engage with their constituents. My hope is that candidates will take this as an opportunity to engage. These conversations will take place online and the videos will be ready to watch on demand on my Alicia In Edmonds Facebook page.

What do I hope to accomplish? A few things:

• That every person realized they are a leader and can take initiative to move the needle.

• That every person understands that civil discourse starts (or ends) with them.

• Recognition that our fears are smaller than what’s being amplified.

• Understanding that having differences in opinions or beliefs doesn’t have to lead to disrespecting one another.

To quote Justice Leah Ward Sears, former chief justice of Georgia’s state Supreme Court: “ We need to in this country begin again to raise civil discourse to another level. I mean, we shout and scream and yell and get very little accomplished, but you can disagree very much with the next guy and still be friends and acquaintances.”

Alicia Crank lives in Edmonds. Email her at alicia@aliciainedmonds.com.