Fear itself: We don’t fear it anymore

I'm going back through Writing Boots posts these days looking for meat for a collection of essays on communication. Some of the stuff fades over time. Some—like this quote from one of my posts—gets more vivid.  

"I hate to say it, but I think a default posture of human beings is fear," said writer Marilynne Robinson two years ago. "What it comes down to—and I think this has become prominent in our culture recently—is that fear is an excuse. 'I would like to have done something, but of course I couldn't.' … Fear has, in this moment, a respectability I've never seen in my life."

And getting more respectable every day, it seems to me.