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Tommy Druen: Collective gullibility Previous Column: What is Love? By Tommy Druen It was a Wednesday night in the fall of 1989. I was twelve years old, sitting in a half-empty sanctuary at our small country church. Midweek services were never well attended--maybe ten or twelve people in total. That particular night our pastor had brought a whiteboard, treating it more like a class than a sermon. I'll admit, my attention wandered. I probably thumbed through the hymnal or stared at the ceiling, anything to pass the time. The lesson wasn't aimed at a middle schooler anyway. But I remember the moment our pastor drew a strange symbol on the board and asked if anyone knew what it was. I leaned toward my mom and whispered, "Isn't that Pisces?" It wasn't. It was the ichthys--a fish symbol used by early Christians. But in a sanctuary that small, a whisper might as well have been shouted. The pastor heard me and asked me to repeat it aloud. I hesitated, not because I was shy, but because I wasn't sure. When I finally said it, he didn't correct me gently. Instead, he turned to the group and launched into a "what's wrong with our youth today" diatribe. My wrong answer became his example. I was mortified--but, unintentionally, I had proved his point. The series he was teaching was about the dangers of the "New Age movement." The New Age movement had emerged in the 1970s, drawing on astrology, Eastern spirituality, and all sorts of mystical ideas. It spread mostly among the counterculture crowd, particularly along the West Coast. Know where it didn't take root? Rural Kentucky. And know who wasn't exactly the target demographic? Twelve-year-old Kentucky kids. My answer may not have been right, but I wasn't exactly conducing seances while singing "The Age of Aquarius" either. Looking back, I know our pastor meant well. He truly believed this New Age philosophy posed a threat to Christianity. His concern wasn't malicious--it was misplaced. His fear was genuine; the danger was not. Fear itself isn't inherently bad. At its best, it's a safeguard--our instinct to avoid real harm. For instance, I have a healthy fear of snakes. Maybe it's stronger than it needs to be, but it's kept me from ever getting close enough to be bitten. But irrational fear? That's another story. History gives us no shortage of examples. Take Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1690s. For fifteen months, hysteria swept through the town after a handful of young girls accused others of witchcraft. More than two hundred people were accused, thirty were convicted, and nineteen were hanged. One man was pressed to death under stones for refusing to confess. Five more died in jail. All because of an invisible threat that existed only in fear. Of course, that was the 17th century--surely we'd grown past such madness, right? Maybe not. Those of us who grew up in the 1980s remember another wave of mass hysteria: the "Satanic Panic." It's hard to overstate how widespread it was. Across the country, more than 12,000 accusations emerged of ritual sacrifice and child abuse supposedly committed by devil-worshiping cults. People claimed Satanic messages were hidden in heavy metal records, comic books, and even Dungeons & Dragons. Talk show hosts stoked the flames, and lives were destroyed in pursuit of a phantom menace. In the end, no credible evidence ever surfaced. The only real thing about the Satanic Panic was the damage it caused--innocent people accused, families torn apart, and a generation taught to fear shadows. And yet, the cycle always repeats. In 2016, social media gave birth to another moral panic--"Pizzagate." This time, it was claimed that high-ranking politicians were running a child trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria's basement. The fact that the restaurant didn't even have a basement didn't matter. A man from North Carolina showed up with an assault rifle to "rescue" the children anyway. Fear, when left unchecked, spreads faster than reason. It leaps from Salem to the suburbs, from pulpits to podcasts. It adapts to its time and technology, but its root is the same: ignorance. The 19th-century writer Christian Nestell Bovee once said, "We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them." That may be the most enduring truth of all. I'm not suggesting we should be fearless. There are plenty of things in this world worth fearing. But the one fear we should all cultivate--the one that might keep us safest--is fear of ignorance itself. Because if we ever stop questioning, stop learning, stop discerning truth from hysteria, we're bound to repeat the same mistakes. The witches of Salem are long gone. The Satanic cults of the '80s never existed. And the only thing hiding in the basement of that D.C. pizzeria was our own collective gullibility. When we fear knowledge less and ignorance more, maybe then we'll finally break the spell. Tommy Druen is a native of Metcalfe County, with roots in Adair County going back to the 18th century. He presently lives in Georgetown, Kentucky and can be reached at tommydruen@gmail.com. This story was posted on 2025-11-02 21:29:19
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Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic Tommy Druen:
Tommy Druen: What is Love? Tommy Druen: I lost my hero Tommy Druen: Grace in an era of flash Tommy Druen: Next chapter of progress should be co-authored Tommy Druen: The cultivation of understanding Tommy Druen: Words matter Tommy Druen: Literacy was a treasure for Clem Coomer Tommy Druen: The Power of the Small Tommy Druen: Holes in the water Tommy Druen: Leadership Kentucky View even more articles in topic Tommy Druen |
 
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