As Mary Anne Williamson says in her book Return to Love, the “fear” worldview and the “love” worldview do not know one another. What I’m calling the fear worldview is what John calls “the world.” It is “the system.” Our culture teaches us that everything out there is hostile. We have to compare, dominate, control, and insure. In brief, we have to be in charge. That need to be in charge moves us deeper and deeper into a world of anxiety. As with our attachment to the system of producing and consuming, this anxiety gets worse as we get older.
