Fear ensnares and petrifies the mind, shutting it down, making us break into a cold sweat. Certainly, the fight-or-flight reaction can always be triggered. Still, as Western human beings of the twenty-first century, we have unfortunately distanced ourselves even from this primitive mechanism, as our very condition as a “species” falters.
Fear has always existed, and in nature, in the animal kingdom, it is a mechanism that sustains survival and thus the preservation of the species. In many cases, fear can lead us to “wiser counsels,” keeping us from reckless choices that might prove harmful, or even fatal. On the whole, it wouldn’t be a serious problem, but we humans have turned fear into a weapon of mass oppression.
The process is as insidious as it is pervasive, as it begins in childhood. As children, we do not understand the meaning of danger and only learn it through subsequent events and specific situations that teach us to increase our awareness of real threats. More frequently though—and I speak from my own experience, which resonates with many—fear is instilled, induced, and taught through deliberately induced traumatic states.
Rather than guiding children by making them aware of dangers and how to manage them, parents often resort to terrifying them.
For instance, they tell them not to venture into the dark because something dreadful might happen.
Therefore, as if under a spell, our curiosity about the unknown is transformed into pure and simple terror.
Once this process is in place, everything else follows in a cascade, and fear slowly but inexorably becomes the dominant force in our lives.
Little by little, through threats, we learn to fear the consequences of not doing what we’re told to do.
We learn to fear not being accepted, not being loved; we fear rejection, being turned away, expelled, isolated, repudiated.
Fear, however, produces a further side effect. In fact, we are also taught that it is not good to be scared, that one must not “appear fearful,” as “only cowards are afraid.”
At this point, the manipulation is complete, and its poisonous fruit begins to bear. We learn that fear is an emotion to be concealed—if possible, suppressed—because showing it exposes us to mockery or, worse still, humiliation. We must not “show” fear, and in order to achieve this, we mask everything with violence. Violence is fear’s greatest ally.
Not “appearing” fearful, thus becomes the hallmark of success in our competitive societies. The better we hide our fear, the more we seem to be winners, capable of confronting dangers or enemies to be vanquished.
The violence we learn to inflict on ourselves will inevitably spill into our relationships and society, as fear is a teacher of distrust, and distrust goes hand in hand with suspicion, generating that vicious circle we all know too well.
From this point onwards, it will become evident how easily those in power can instil a fear of being attacked or invaded by enemies who are coming always and only from the outside. This way they relieve us = or block us= from the unpleasant and burdensome task of facing our “ghosts”, which we call that, precisely because they are ephemeral.
Meanwhile, those in power have reduced humanity to beings filled with rage, perpetually on the brink of explosion, and always directed towards a newly fabricated external adversary. The notion of requiring protection from outside ourselves has, shall we say, ancestral origins, given that we are born vulnerable and incapable of providing for ourselves.
Indeed, all young creatures, including humans, require maternal and communal protection; however, within the human race, this need reaches its utmost extent. The powers that be have been remarkably adept at exploiting this transient “weakness,” transforming it into a formidable weapon of oppression, control, and manipulation of individuals. In fact, today’s Western societies fundamentally stand on so-called emergencies, or rather, fear that manifests in different forms over time, first appearing as terrorism, then turning into economic crisis, followed by environmental or climate crises, and so forth.
This mechanism, unsurprisingly, found its most significant application during the years of the so-called global health emergency, when the entire authoritarian and freedom-eroding framework was established and sustained solely through fear and the apprehension of the invisible unknown.
It is rather paradoxical yet inevitable to compare this fear of the unseen to the anxieties most of us experienced in childhood.
By leveraging this simple yet powerful mechanism, those in power have stripped citizens of their fundamental rights to freedom of movement, expression, work, education, and even control over their own bodies, forcing us to live a dystopian nightmare that is far from over.
Therefore, the work we strive to do within our groups is meaningful: to recognise fear; to pause and look at it; to accept it—indeed, to embrace it—so that we may cease to identify with it and ultimately gain distance from it. In doing so, we can avoid becoming mere victims destined for suffering or, in this time of war, cannon fodder.
Fear has always existed, and in nature, in the animal kingdom, it is a mechanism that sustains survival and thus the preservation of the species. In many cases, fear can lead us to “wiser counsels,” keeping us from reckless choices that might prove harmful, or even fatal. On the whole, it wouldn’t be a serious problem, but we humans have turned fear into a weapon of mass oppression.
The process is as insidious as it is pervasive, as it begins in childhood. As children, we do not understand the meaning of danger and only learn it through subsequent events and specific situations that teach us to increase our awareness of real threats. More frequently though—and I speak from my own experience, which resonates with many—fear is instilled, induced, and taught through deliberately induced traumatic states.
Rather than guiding children by making them aware of dangers and how to manage them, parents often resort to terrifying them.
For instance, they tell them not to venture into the dark because something dreadful might happen.
Therefore, as if under a spell, our curiosity about the unknown is transformed into pure and simple terror.
Once this process is in place, everything else follows in a cascade, and fear slowly but inexorably becomes the dominant force in our lives.
Little by little, through threats, we learn to fear the consequences of not doing what we’re told to do.
We learn to fear not being accepted, not being loved; we fear rejection, being turned away, expelled, isolated, repudiated.
Fear, however, produces a further side effect. In fact, we are also taught that it is not good to be scared, that one must not “appear fearful,” as “only cowards are afraid.”
At this point, the manipulation is complete, and its poisonous fruit begins to bear. We learn that fear is an emotion to be concealed—if possible, suppressed—because showing it exposes us to mockery or, worse still, humiliation. We must not “show” fear, and in order to achieve this, we mask everything with violence. Violence is fear’s greatest ally.
Not “appearing” fearful, thus becomes the hallmark of success in our competitive societies. The better we hide our fear, the more we seem to be winners, capable of confronting dangers or enemies to be vanquished.
The violence we learn to inflict on ourselves will inevitably spill into our relationships and society, as fear is a teacher of distrust, and distrust goes hand in hand with suspicion, generating that vicious circle we all know too well.
From this point onwards, it will become evident how easily those in power can instil a fear of being attacked or invaded by enemies who are coming always and only from the outside. This way they relieve us = or block us= from the unpleasant and burdensome task of facing our “ghosts”, which we call that, precisely because they are ephemeral.
Meanwhile, those in power have reduced humanity to beings filled with rage, perpetually on the brink of explosion, and always directed towards a newly fabricated external adversary. The notion of requiring protection from outside ourselves has, shall we say, ancestral origins, given that we are born vulnerable and incapable of providing for ourselves.
Indeed, all young creatures, including humans, require maternal and communal protection; however, within the human race, this need reaches its utmost extent. The powers that be have been remarkably adept at exploiting this transient “weakness,” transforming it into a formidable weapon of oppression, control, and manipulation of individuals. In fact, today’s Western societies fundamentally stand on so-called emergencies, or rather, fear that manifests in different forms over time, first appearing as terrorism, then turning into economic crisis, followed by environmental or climate crises, and so forth.
This mechanism, unsurprisingly, found its most significant application during the years of the so-called global health emergency, when the entire authoritarian and freedom-eroding framework was established and sustained solely through fear and the apprehension of the invisible unknown.
It is rather paradoxical yet inevitable to compare this fear of the unseen to the anxieties most of us experienced in childhood.
By leveraging this simple yet powerful mechanism, those in power have stripped citizens of their fundamental rights to freedom of movement, expression, work, education, and even control over their own bodies, forcing us to live a dystopian nightmare that is far from over.
Therefore, the work we strive to do within our groups is meaningful: to recognise fear; to pause and look at it; to accept it—indeed, to embrace it—so that we may cease to identify with it and ultimately gain distance from it. In doing so, we can avoid becoming mere victims destined for suffering or, in this time of war, cannon fodder.