Scare tactics

The Only Thing They Have to Fear…are People that Refuse to Play Along Anymore.

A modest proposal to get out from under it.

Forty years ago, it was Communists. Eighty years ago too.

Thirty years ago, it was Saddam Hussein.

Twenty years ago, it was all Muslims.

More recently, it’s Trans Gendered people. Refugees and migrants from south of the border get it when people’s hatreds begin to wane. Around here, there are people who for some reason get angry at the start of hockey games when it’s acknowledged that the spectacle that they are about to watch is being played on the unceded ancestral territory of particular First Nations groups.

Russians again, too. We’re conveniently back to them.

Be afraid.

We live under a system in which we are led to believe that there is always someone else working to undermine and destroy that system either from without or within. Is that true? Are there “others” hiding in plain sight among us? Are we in danger of losing our cherished way of life to people that hate it?

Why is it that there is always someone to be afraid of? Does our political system just require it? What about the economic one that we labour under? Who benefits from the creation of this fear? Who suffers from it?

Why are we so easily convinced of its existence? What forces are harnessed and by whom to ensure that our attention is always focused on the next group of people to be afraid of?

How is it that those with millions are able to convince those with thousands that those with pennies are the enemy? Why is it so easy for them?

These are big questions and though I think I know the answers, it’s not really what I want to get into here right now. There are entities and forces at work to keep us in place through fear, and they have convinced us that our personal hamster wheel is of our own choosing and that keeping it moving at all costs is our main purpose in life.

There are those who are indeed able to thrive this way. But some people aren’t surviving this, and some barely are. I see tent cities and an addiction crisis in one of the wealthiest places to ever exist in all of human history. There is one street in the downtown core of my city that is a depressing hellscape to walk down. I choose the streets that run parallel to it on either side and it’s a completely different experience. The problems on that street have been allowed to deteriorate and are getting worse and there seems to be little that can be done about it.

It has gotten to a point where the cynic in me begins to wonder if the reason that this has been permitted to occur is to serve as a reminder to anyone of the fate that can befall them if they lift their heads up, get some funny ideas and contemplate not playing ball anymore. A sort of “look what can happen to you” reminder.

Again, fear.

But correction, there is plenty that can be done. There is just not the political or economic will to do it. And the levers of power that are still firmly in the grip of an elite that has convinced itself that it can live separately by walling itself off from the maelstrom of society.

Most people don’t have that luxury. Most people also aren’t in any position to take serious organizational action against the tenets, strictures, beliefs, conventions, laws, injustices, assumptions, prejudices, traditions and shibboleths that underpin this society.

So what can be done? What can the average person do to get out from under this fear that is harnessed so effectively to keep us firmly rooted in place?

Well, in the immortal words of Stone Cold Steve Austin, “Fuck Fear”.

That’ll be a start, if we can do that. That’ll make us a little less manipulable. That’ll show them. Or not. But maybe consideration of a few of the following can lead to a different approach to a different kind of life, in which fear doesn’t have to be the main motivator.

Focus on those simple things that make you happy, whatever they are. I find cooking, reading, writing, listening to or writing about music, talking to others in person, and creating things provide a lot of meaning and I want to find a way that I can do it all day long.

Consider other places to live besides large cities.

Believe firmly that money is not wealth. That rather, time is. Evidence of this is seen in the fact that our attention is worth more than money to anyone who is trying to sell us anything. Despite their best efforts to short circuit and work around the neural pathways around decision making processes, it’s still in our hands to decide where we spend it.

End paying too much attention to what inconsequential people think, or at least notice that it makes less difference to you with each day that goes by.

Create a life based on simplicity and free from the industrial production of anything, especially food.

Develop a social life that revolves around more than drinking and eating in bars and restaurants, in which conversations centre on politics and sports almost exclusively.

Spend time examining the things that cause peace in your world.

Continue to learn new skills — not to increase your income or marketability — but to increase your means of living a better life.

Cut out shopping when it feels like little more than a tedious chore that makes you want to do less and less of it.

Eliminate empty and spirit stealing career and social ladder-climbing. Interest yourself in relationships and work that give meaning and serve the world.

Realize that the reason you are on this earth for a short and limited period of time has little to do with working and creating wealth for someone else and know fully and completely that we don’t exist here to spend most of our lives being employed, or making ourselves more employable. There is more to it than that. There has to be.

Stop watching the one way conversation that is presented via TV, cancel Netflix and cut down on your consumption of “the news”. And yet, find that somehow you still feel informed.

Pick a record and put it on, consciously. Let it play, the whole side.

Go outside as much as you can.

Be brave and don’t let them make you afraid. We are going to be fine.

A bit more on this, from the perspective of a piece of art history