The Politics of Fear

Hola mi Gente,

Yesterday was a very challenging day…

Ever simply feel that someone or some thing, or some situation is just right? Have you ever followed that inner feeling? How was that? Then again, I know many people who had children on account of a “feeling.”

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Responding to Fear

Nothing in life is to be feared; it only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

 -- Marie Curie

Today, here in the United States and in many other regions throughout the global village, we live under the shadow of an oligarchy. To be clear, a shadow is created by blocking, deflecting, or otherwise obstructing light. Whenever fear appears, it lives, grows, and remains a part of us by embedding itself between the light of creative vision and our intuition. It is the shadow, not a lack of ability, that is the biggest obstacle we face today as a global community. The shadow, as I see it, is the space between what we want and what we get. It’s the distance between who we are and who we are meant to be, with the biggest, deepest, and widest gap occurring between the present crisis and our vision.

Look around at what has so many of us mesmerized: paranoia, worry, doubt, disease. They cast a spell on almost every aspect of our lives. Fear prevents us from seeing or feeling clearly. Fear compels us to vote for a “lesser of two evils” as if that were really a choice. Fear blocks the natural flow of our creative energy and hampers our ability to be radically innovative. As a society, we seem to be caught in a state of generalized anxiety that makes solutions impossible or paralyzes their implementation. When we do manage to get started, it is fear that often calls us back at the first sign of disappointment or problem. Fear, keeps us “stuck on stupid” as in the example of the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. It stunts our growth and suffocates our awakening, causing us to repeat painful and habitual patterns of behavior and making us lose sight of our vision (or uncommon sense). In order for us to envision and create a better society we must get past this fearful landscape.

Historically, creative people have often felt separated from their communities. It’s as if their ability to see clearly between what is and what could be serves to stigmatize them. Innovators are often ridiculed, their ideas and insights too far ahead of the curve of the “conventional wisdom” (whatever that means). This isolation strikes fear within us: we fear that if we express our ideas, or rock the boat a little, or act on them, others will ridicule us. The truth is that our visionary thinking is the only thing that will save us. But people are afraid to follow their own ideas. They’re sure they will be perceived as crazy, or radical, or -- gasp! -- outside of the political norm.

We are defeated not by our uniqueness, but by our fear of the unusual, the new, the strange. We live in a society obsessed by numbers and norms, with its averages, means, and medians spurring us to believe in a modern myth called “normal” which has little to do with being real. The idea of “average” or “typical behavior” is nothing more than a mathematical conceit.

Similarly, we fear information that challenges our ingrained worldview. Most of the resistance we see today is really about killing the messenger than a defense of reason. Those yelling about fictitious unicorns, or decrying single-payer healthcare, or those who have made it their business to discredit all forms of science are protecting hidden agendas composed of fear and loathing.

We fear losing an illusory safe existence as self-doubt zeroes in on the space between our potential and insecurity. We’re not thin enough, smart enough, or committed. As a nation too many of us focus on what we can’t do, rather than what we’re capable of. We’re too late with too little. Such doubts and fears make us hesitate at a moment in time in which we can ill afford to hesitate. Others fear an innovative idea actually succeeding and taking hold because it means their worldview was wrong -- fear of success. Many fear death, or loss of control. Whatever the case, it’s fear-based living at a time of crisis.

A sure recipe for catastrophe.

Those who insist that nothing needs to be done, or that we must maintain at any cost a status quo that is eating us alive, demonstrate a complacency that’s ignorant, dis-empowering. And dangerous. Awakening to our full potential is not a spectator sport. If we’re going to respond the challenges we face, we must act and act thoughtfully with foresight. Whenever a group tries something different, there’s an initial period of turbulence. Many people, fearful of new ways, mistake turbulence for change itself and decide they would rather go back to the “good old days.” And let me be clear, there’s little difference between Trump wanting to “make America great again,” and Hillary Clinton demanding we stay the course -- a course that has seen 95% of the wealth generated in recent years going to the richest 1%. Indeed, we dismiss the world of potential and vision for a past that never existed and a recent past that’s killing us. 

If we allow ourselves to be led by a creative vision, we will never lose. We can let go of right and wrong, winning and losing, approval and disapproval. Right now, we are on the cusp of a new world emerging and behind us an old world imploding upon itself. The only rational response to fear is to fully embrace this new world. Our potential can only be realized by collective innovation. This new world has been hovering over us for a long time and it has nothing to do with some bullshit calendar and everything to do with being awake, and we have heard it speaking all our lives:

Seize the day. Go for broke. Walk the walk. Try your wings. Do unto others... 

Stop the fear.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…