I was recently having a conversation…

…with a participant in the Navigating to a New Normal study about politics and, in particular, the increasing healthcare premiums and expiring subsidies. She commented, playing back all the conservative talking points, how illegal immigrants were buying health insurance on the exchanges and it was driving up all of our health insurance premiums. In earlier conversations she had talked about immigrants being responsible for rising crime rates and how they’ve taken jobs away. All of these points have been proven false by various studies, but there she was, repeating these fear-based talking points.

And then it struck me: fear today isn’t just a response in our bodies and brains. It’s in our feeds, our conversations, our algorithms, our politics. It’s not simply that we fear one another — it’s that we’re being encouraged to. Nudged. Rewarded. Repeatedly told to fear the “other.”

“The only thing we have to fear…” is usually quoted as optimism. But what if we re-read it this way:
The only thing we have to fear is letting fear tell the story for us.

Why Fear Hits Us So Hard (and So Fast)

Fear isn’t moral. It’s biological. It’s ancient.

Neuroscientists like Joseph LeDoux remind us that our amygdala acts as the threat detector and fires before we consciously understand what’s happening. The body floods with cortisol while the heart rate spikes and muscles tense. We interpret difference, uncertainty, and conflict as danger.

Neuroscientists go further: humans evolved what researchers call the Survival Optimization System — an adaptive, threat-detection operating system focused on managing predators, scarcity, and social danger.

But…

Our brains evolved for lions and rival tribes, not misinformation, not algorithmic outrage, not political manipulation, not social media reward loops.

Modern stimuli trigger the same ancient circuits. As a result, we feel unsafe, even when the threat is abstract or manufactured, like when politicians or leaders tell us to be afraid of a group of people.

And then?
We retreat. We defend. We dehumanize. We divide.

(the video version…)

Weaponizing Fear (and Why It Works So Well)

Politicians have long understood that fear is a mobilizing force. Look at political history and we can see how fear has been utilized throughout time. But digital culture has multiplied its power.

👁 The Political Lever

A recent political science study shows fear + anger are intentionally invoked to create “in-groups” and “out-groups”.

Fear breeds loyalty. Loyalty feeds power. Power rewards with more fear.

📱 The Algorithmic Amplifier

Social media platforms optimize for engagement — and fear, outrage, and anxiety are highly engaging. Just notice how you keep swiping and liking and sharing and what those things are.

INSS’s report “Social Media, Messaging, and the Influencing of Public Emotions” explains how platforms amplify emotional triggers to shape public opinion. Disinformation studies show polarization grows fastest where fear is the emotional fuel.

The result?
We are more “connected” than any generation in history — and simultaneously more afraid of each other.

Something feels wrong about that, doesn’t it?

🧩 The Shadow Side of Empathy

You named it perfectly:
The same neural machinery that lets us feel someone else’s emotions can be distorted to make us fear someone else’s being.

Politicians and leaders are often like the tagline from the classic movie, Poltergeist. “It knows what scares you.”

They can intuitively understand what might motivate their base. Often that is fear of the other, whether it is immigrants, people with guns, trans kids or people from the other political party.

Social media does it too, particularly with political content where there is a “confrontation effect” which means we react with anger (often rooted in fear) to content from opposing viewpoints.
Politicians call it “protecting our people.”
Algorithms call it “recommended for you.”
Our bodies call it “danger.”

Fear foments disconnection.
That disconnection becomes the norm.

And suddenly we’re staring across a chasm, wondering ‘how in the world did we get here?” and “what do we do now?”

It’s all courtesy of the Fear Industrial Complex. Keeping you in some state of fear keeps you under control and prevents you from connecting with your neighbors to choose an alternate path.

Empathy as the Antidote to Fear

Here’s the good news: empathy works on the same circuitry that fear hijacks.
A 2021 study on perspective-taking to reduce affective polarization showed empathy-based prompts decreased anger and increased openness to political opponents.

Empathy is not soft. It has the ability to do some neurological rewiring. It interrupts automatic threat responses and opens cognitive space.

Without knowing what was happening neurologically, I put this to use way back when I was living in Los Angeles and had just come out. This was back in the early-mid 90s, pre-Ellen, before Will & Grace, when “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a thing and the AIDS epidemic was continuing to decimate the community. We were feared as a community.

I attended a reading by the gay author Paul Monette promoting his book Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story. There we were, sitting outside under a big tree in a park for this reading, Monette told the audience how we needed to show the other side how we are no different than they are, that we are who they are; their family, their friends, their co-workers, their neighbors.

His words struck me deeply. In fact, they inspired me. I had started volunteering with GLAAD’s LA chapter and proposed that what we needed to do was combat homophobia with increased awareness and one way to do that is through a visibility campaign.

That’s how the Bus Bench Campaign was born. Featuring a group of LGBTQ+ individuals (I put my money where my mouth was and volunteered to represent white gays), we placed the benches in more conservative parts of LA County where people might need the reminder that “We Are Who YOU Are: Your Family, Your Friends, Your Co-Workers, Your Neighbors”.

By showing human faces and reminding people that we are part of their daily life, it signaled that we aren’t something to be afraid of. The same is true today of those people who we are being told are “other” and should be afraid of them.

For more on this, check out Chapter 8: Fear, in my book (note: Amazon link) . It’s the one about people who have carry/conceal permits and explores gun safety and gun control.

Empathy helped me overcome fear in that situation learning about people who want to carry guns because that’s what empathy does.

Using the 5 Steps to Empathy, here’s the trail to follow:

Step 1: Dismantle Judgment

Notice when you’re activated.
What story did your brain supply?
Is it true, or just ancient circuitry fired by modern triggers?

Can you take a Curious Breath and calm your parasympathetic nervous system? That helps you go from ‘fight or flight’ to considering how to respond and build empathy.

Step 2: Ask Good Questions

“What do I don’t know yet?”
“What might they be afraid of?”
Fear dissolves in curiosity.

Step 3: Actively Listen

Notice tone, pauses, body language.
Sometimes people are not angry — they’re scared.

Let them know you hear them by repeating back what they said.

Then ask them if you got it right, giving them a chance to correct you.

Step 4: Integrate into Understanding

You don’t have to agree.
You only have to understand how another human arrived where they are.

You can use this information to find common ground and collaborate toward a mutually-agreeable solution.

Step 5: Use Solution Imagination

Imagine a next step together:
“What could we build that works for both of us?”
“What’s one thing we both value?”

Keep stepping toward a positive outcome, leaving fear in the dust behind you.

A Strange Yet Needed Reframing

I want to offer a thought experiment…
The day humanity collectively realizes we’re not alone in the universe will be the day we stop seeing fellow humans as the primary threat.

Sociologists call this superordinate identity formation: when faced with a larger external challenge, in-groups and out-groups dissolve. We become “we.”

Think about the elements of your identity and how you identify. Each one nests within the next and there may also be a common threat.

I live in San Francisco. We have a rival in Los Angeles.

But we live in California, so together we are rivals to Texas.

But we all live in the United States, which has rivals in various countries depending on world situations. So we come together as a nation against another nation or external threat.

So what happens when we discover the presence of extra-terrestrial or dimensional intelligence?

Suddenly, we are all the same and it’s the aliens that’s the threat, so it brings humanity together, possibly in the way that Star Trek shows a human utopian future.

We don’t have to wait for aliens to land to practice this kind of perspective shift.
We can choose to see each other as part of the same fragile, astonishing, interdependent species.

Aliens just make the metaphor obvious.

What To Do Now (Practical Moves)

Here are four concrete actions you can take this week:

1. Name the fear

When you feel activated, pause. Label the emotion.
Research shows naming reduces amygdala activity.

2. Replace assumption with inquiry

Before deciding what someone “means,” ask:
“Can you say more about how you see this?”

3. Create one cross-difference conversation

Pick someone you normally avoid talking politics or big topics with.
Ask one curiosity-led question.

4. Audit your algorithm

Notice who you’re being told to fear.
Then seek out a source that brings nuance, context, or connection.

What Are We Waiting For?

Fear may be ancient, but connection is chosen.
Empathy doesn’t erase fear, it simply refuses to let fear write the story.

And if we really are headed toward a future where non-human intelligence becomes part of the picture?
All the more reason to get better at being human to one another now.

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What do you think? About aliens, fear, politicians, any of it.

Comment below or send me a note: [email protected]

MacGyvering an Ironing Board

If you are looking for a dynamic speaker for your team, company or organization to help strengthen business results through the use of empathy, let’s talk. Email me [email protected] and we can discuss your group’s needs and a program that will fit.

I was recently giving a talk on how to improve marketing efforts by leveraging empathy to a group from the AMA-South Florida chapter. The challenge was that I was in Salt Lake City for another commitment and had to figure out how to set up my hotel room so I can have the camera at eye view, with a good background, etc.

This is where I’ve found ironing boards to be quite handy. In this case, at the LeMeridien hotel, I perched it on the love seat in order to get good light and the right height.

Gifts and My Gratitude

I’d also be grateful if you’d consider giving a copy of my book to a friend this year at the holidays, or perhaps buy a copy for the Little Free Library in your neighborhood. Spreading the 5 Steps to Empathy among your community will help us overcome our divides even faster.

Finally, I’ll be back in a few days with some Thanksgiving tips so you aren’t the turkey at the table, including the ever-popular Holiday Lifeology game.