"Live Life Without Fear, The Dune Way"
by John Wilder
“An animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its
own leg to escape. What will you do?”
- "Dune"
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." – Frank Herbert, "Dune"
"In 2025, fear is not just a personal demon. Fear is now a cultural plague, especially for the kids. We have raised a generation terrified of their own shadows, and it shows in every therapy session, pill bottle, riot, and Antifa® meeting.
The number of kids in therapy or pumped full of psychoactive drugs by the quacks who call themselves psychologists seems to be 8 or 9 out of 10. In perspective, this is the era of civilization that has the greatest level of material wealth in history, and the lowest hunger rate in the world. World hunger? It’s a solved problem outside of war and intentional starvation for political reasons.
The drugs and therapy are not making the kids better. At all. The way society is treating kids is like prescribing a hammer to the knees for a headache. The good news is the pain from the hammer will distract you from the headache, but eventually you’ll only be able to walk in circles. And no, these drugs are not good for you like whiskey, whisky, wine or beer. That’s a joke, but if therapy worked as well as a couple of brews after a long day, Antifa® wouldn’t exist.
Kids today are not allowed to figure anything out on their own. Failure? That is a dirty word, banished like fiscal responsibility is banished from Congress. As a proud Gen X kid, my family left me alone for the entire weekend when I was in third grade. No note, no nanny, no neighbor looking in on me from time to time. Nope. Just a key and a fridge full of questionable leftovers. I survived on frozen pizzas and three channels (no one counted PBS®), but I learned to entertain myself without burning the house down. Barely.
By eighth grade, Ma and Pa Wilder upped the ante. They drove off to Florida. For a month, leaving me to fend for myself. I even dealt with a thumb wound that probably should have had stitches from when I was using very poor form to whittle. Did I call for help? No. I fixed it with duct tape, determination, and a healthy glop of Neosporin™. That is what you do when the stakes are low and the lessons are free.
High school? That is when freedom hit near-adult levels. I had my own apartment over an hour from Wilder Mountain (long story). I managed my own schedule, and got home whenever I damn well pleased since Pa Wilder visited only three nights a week (Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday) and he left all the fun nights for me. Sometimes I was home just after practice. Sometimes, I was home at 3am after doing, well, other things. No curfew, no check-ins, just me against the world.
Was I unusual in having my (mostly) own place? Sure. But the freedom? That was standard issue for Gen X. Even before I could drive, I would bolt out the door at sunrise and not return until the streetlights flickered on. No helicopter parents hovering like drones, tracking every move with an app or scheduling athletic events. Nope.
Contrast that with the childhood scripted for kids today. It is structured from dawn to dusk, every moment scheduled like a corporate meeting. Playdates? Organized by committee. Sports? Leagues with participation trophies for showing up. Even recess is micromanaged, with rubberized playgrounds that cushion every tumble. And do not get me started on the deprivation of schoolyard fights and bullying, which back in the day were ritualized tests of mettle to place yourself in the hierarchy.
Freshman initiation in high school was a rite of passage, not a crime. Upperclassmen would haze the newbies with pranks: carrying books, silly chants, maybe a wedgie or two. No gross abuse, just enough strain to test character to see how you’d take it. If you performed well under pressure? Instant respect.
Fold like a cheap suit? Okay, it was tougher. They had to learn resilience the hard way. And fights? They happened. Teachers often let them play out just as long as they had to go as long as no real damage was being done. A bloody nose or a black eye, then it was over. Often, the combatants were friends afterwards, hierarchy established, testosterone balanced, respect earned: male bonding at its rawest.
These rituals, in moderation, built toughness. They taught that pain passes, conflicts resolve, and life demands honor. Bruises faded, but the lessons stuck. Parents? They never heard about it. A fistfight? So what? Boys will be boys.
Today? Heaven forbid a scuffle breaks out in a school (at least a middle-class white majority school). It is not a learning moment; it is a federal case. Suspension, counseling, parental conferences, maybe even charges. Zero tolerance turns into zero growth, however, since kids are shielded from every scrape, every failure, every real consequence.
The world they inherit is virtual, endless screens feeding dopamine hits without risk. Social media wars replace playground brawls, but the scars are deeper: anxiety, isolation, fear of the unknown. Many of these kids have never cold approached a woman and asked for a date.
Part of the point is learning to fail when the stakes are low. A lost fight in fifth grade? Big deal, you dust off and try again. A botched initiation? You toughen up for next time. She said, “No, you’re not my type, I prefer men with two eyebrows?” Fine. There are more girls.
These situations, however, build the muscle to handle adult life without crumbling. Fear becomes a tool, not a tyrant. But cloister kids too long, and they enter the world paralyzed. The Mrs. nailed it when we were talking yesterday: ”If they (kids) cannot handle solving teenage problems, they will commit atrocities as adults.” I liked that line so much I made her text it to me.
Unresolved fears fester into rage, leading kids to lash out at a world they never learned to navigate. Look around at the twisted landscape of 2025:
• Riots over nothing,
• Entitlement epidemics,
• Adults throwing tantrums like toddlers.
Weakness is a result of raising children in bubbles. No free-range exploration, no unsupervised adventures, no low-stakes failures to forge resilience and enough scar tissue to toughen the kid up. Instead, society offers them therapy and pills paper over the cracks and pay for the therapist’s BMW® payment.
The solution is simple. Face the fear, let it pass, emerge stronger. Let kids roam, fight, fail, and fix their own messes. Strip away the structure, the screens, the safety nets. Teach them that bruises heal, but cowardice cripples. Otherwise, we breed a nation of mind-killed adults, obliterated by the little-deaths of unchecked terror who will do anything because they have faith in absolutely nothing. One way or another, courage will return, if not because we shatter the bubble, it will because it collapses under the weight of fear. And then? We’ll have to face our fears."
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