The fear we would like to talk about here is not that related to an effective and immediate threat, a fear that would then be completely legitimate and justified. No, what we are talking about is the fear that can take hold of us like occupied territory and then accompanies us almost everywhere and determines a large part of our existence and our choices. It is then like a disease that poisons a large part of our existence. One of the characteristics of this disease, which is also a serious obstacle to its cure, is that it is a shameful disease, not really confessable, which must therefore be concealed as much as possible under various masks.
Fear leads to loneliness, a major obstacle to the social bonds that we could forge with those who are different from us and who, by doing so, could help us to enrich our vision of the world and thereby strengthen us.
But difference is scary.
Fear makes people hostile and off-putting, which, by a simple feedback effect, can only confirm our fearful reasoning.
But where does this very contemporary fear come from? We have every reason to believe that it is a direct result of the form of individualism produced by neoliberal ideology, the latest version of capitalism. Wanting to make everyone believe that they are the center of the world and that everything is owed to them, the disappointment is profound because as soon as they leave childhood and are confronted with the realities of that world, most people gradually come to realize that they are nothing, that they count for nothing, and that the individualism of others is directly opposed to their own claims. Yes, there is something to be afraid of!
It should be noted that this fear, this permanent insecurity characterizing the present social organization, is nevertheless very profitable for its instigators, but that the resentment that accompanies it must be channeled. The fact is that fear is malleable at will by those who hold the reins and that totalitarian thinking stemming from neoliberalism considers it a necessity to channel it by designating targets, “culprits”.
In other times, there was the fabrication of the “Jew” which has now been replaced, and very largely, by the fabrication of the “Arab”. There was also the “enemy within” who now seems to have given way to the “Islamo-leftist” or the red-green “watermelon”.
Times change – but what does not change is the use of fear by all systems of domination and its remote control towards something other than its source and the possibility of escaping it.
Escaping fear is already a whole program in which we have decided to venture. Does it not consist for us in starting to make the first breaches in the fortress of fear, those erected within ourselves?
The first fear, for us who claim to want to change the world, is not that of losing our personal certainties, such as constituted identity, most often anchored
in erroneous beliefs.
This “fear of freedom” that Erich Fromm spoke of. To dilute this invisible inner fortress, there is no doubt that only the reopening of a generalized dialogue can overcome it, leading to a collective and emancipatory intelligence. A fertile and generous intelligence from each and every one, so that, turning our backs on organized panic, we can oppose it with common practices of mutual aid where trust in the collective will replace organized mistrust.
Rebounds:
- “SECURITY” – Social Ecology ABC (Coming soon)
- “LIBERALISM” – Social Ecology ABC
[…] “(The) FEAR” – Social Ecology ABC […]