Fear is everywhere. Fear is free floating. Fear is subjective, fear is ideological.
I like to be coherent, but sometimes I feel inhibited by my need to be coherent.
Newspaper columnists often comment on a variety of unrelated subjects, these are then nicely laid out on the page. I'm tempted by that approach, but I make connections, that's my thing. Sometimes there is a temptation to make connections that are forced or dubious. But fear is always a factor always lurking.
Fear and the state, repression vs protection, civil disobedience vs security.
Fear is our evolutionary inheritance, it is fight or flight, fear is our internal warning system, fear is useful to us, it alerts us to danger.
Is it absurd to talk about a right amount or balance of fear? Good paranoia vs bad paranoia. Sensible precautions vs dangerously reckless.
Fear as anxiety, self-preservation, awareness of threats.
Debilitating fear
I'd already decided to write about fear before a couple of things happened. The first relates to my topic, I attended an online workplace call about BHD, that's bullying, harassment and discrimination. The second thing which dominated my mind to the exclusion of anything else was a problem with my car. This may or may not be the part where I smuggle in my own personal concerns into a more general thesis. But let’s just forget about me and use this as an example. Stuff going wrong and needing fixing, just practical problems right? But I'm a bit scared of driving anyway, especially in places that I don't know and especially over to a garage on the other side of town in a faulty car, through a long tunnel under the Thames, although the breakdown guy said the car is fine when it's moving it's just that when it stops I might have a problem strating it again, and he wouldn't come out again for the same problem, but he did show me a little trick that I can use.
The car example raises the question of the 'unknown unknowns' things that we cannot imagine that can and will go wrong. I've usually driven old car, so a'software problem' is a new experience to me. I called a previous piece 'The Nuts and Bolts of AI', about the way that new technologies seem to exist on some higher astral plane, but they are made out of stuff, they are manufactured and they breakdown. Fear of technology anyone?
Maybe I don't sound like a scared person, but when I grew up learned (as boys did) not to show my fear, or to overcome it. We understood that our fear was a gift to our enemies and opponents, we understood the need for a show of strength, these rules still apply, we need to be wary of those who try to convince us otherwise. We can understand why weak and cowardly leaders are attracted to the idea that strength and bravery are 'toxic', they would say that wouldn't they?
I'd like to go back to the beginning now and to end on this question for now. I'm looking at my society which is the UK. I can imagine (you may say I'm a dreamer etc) that British society can find some kind of social peace, it already exist to some degree, we've seen the reality and the potential. But I'm reminded of the Russian Revolutionaries and their preoccupation with the idea or concept of 'revolution in one country'. They understood that they faced external enemies, and that these enemies give encouragement and support to subversive elements at home. In any case no society is static, if we create paradise on earth today, by tomorrow someone will be dissatisfied. Every state or society has had to be wary of rivals, enemies, potential invaders and conquerors. At home too someone else's paradise can and no doubt will become an imposition on others.
I was thinking about how we cope with fear and deal with fear, for a state or society the obvious answer is through organisations and institutions, we find strength in numbers. I wouldn't say that I grew up on the mean streets exactly, but I was always aware of potential violence. In the previous paragraph I referred to 'my' country. But that 'my' hides a long story. Growing up in the 1970's I was very aware that I was part of a minority that a significant proportion of the population were hostile too. I was actually born in the UK to West Indian parents and one of the slogans on our tormentors was 'send them back'. Today there are some who maintain that black people can not be British, but the ground has shifted even under those people, officially we are now multicultural, and we struggle to find anyone in our governing classes who is proud to be British.
I didn't admit to my fear then, but fear in some circumstances is no use to you, we might have a rush of adrenaline, we may find like minded people or organise or find security among them. With the passing of time I can see that there was fear on the other side too, they were frightened of us, young black men (often referred to as 'black youths') became a kind folk devils, racial ideology played a part too, black people(men in particular) were in this view violent, sexually ravenous, low IQ, back then this hostility could often be found within state institutions, the American Rap group Public Enemy chose their name well, and we experienced this in the UK too.
When I was studying politics at school in the early 1980’s, we looked at an article from The Economist, the heading has stayed with me, it was The Two Minority Conundrum; this referred to the situation in Northern Ireland where as the article stated the Catholics saw themselves as an oppressed minority in the North while the Protestants in the North saw themselves as threatened by the majority in the South. I will not attempt to comment on the complexities of that time and place, but that idea that we are all oppressed or victimised speaks to us today. I referred earlier to my 'Webinar' on bullying, harassment and discrimination (BDH), I'll finish with some thoughts and observations. There are many of us who are frustrated with 'woke', some has even suggested that woke has peaked. But there are issues that precede woke and which are well embedded in society, in short this is the therapeutic society. There is no convincing some of the anti-woke otherwise, that woke is left-wing they then go on to presume that all left wing people are woke and that they always have been.
I'm wary of saying that I'm of the left, because of what others might assume that I'm signed up for. Unlike today back in the 1970's we were clear about the meaning of left and right, left wing people were basically socially conscious. I would have opposed racism, supported rights for women and freedom for gay men and women, I would have considered these things as socially progressive, I would not have seen these things as all encompassing ideologies, around which society should be organised.
From my perspective the left has been nationalised, the state have stolen our clothes. Of course to be fair I must add that I felt some deja vu during my BHD webinar, I was reminded of those elements of the left who spouted the party line, those who back then would have been raging against the evils of capitalism are now in the same tone with the same righteousness and certainty raging against bullies, harassers and discriminators, but they are now raging from within the HR department. So who are the bullies? My leftism challenged the state, institutions and anonymous or corrupt authorities. Now it seems the state is calling out the bullies, but who are the bullies? I was beginning to feel as though the finger was pointing at me. I'm someone who is usually prepared to speak out, but I'm feeling outmaneuvered (like when I was a moderate delegate at a militant tendency meeting), they've created a new vocabulary, they are training us in how to defend ourselves, they are explaining the Equality Act. I once joked that there were so many protected characteristics under the Equality Act that soon all of us would fall under its rubric. This 'joke' has become a reality and we are all encouraged to find some protected characteristic that we can use to our advantage. Oppressed minorities sometimes need special protections, now however the state assumes that everyone is oppressed and everyone needs special protection all of the time, but protection from what and who? And protection by whom? I'll give a straight answer, the state decrees that we all need protection from each other and the state is our protector.
Final observation, during my webinar a photo and a quote from Martin Luther King popped up, they have even appropriated MLK, later it occurred to me that the state really has learned well from the left and from the counterculture. It occurred to me that the state is using non-violence against us. Violence and masculinity have been declared toxic, we must be kind and considerate and mind our language, if we feel bullied (which is both subjective and codified in law) we must appeal through the appropriate official channel.
When we finally lose our cool and attempt to knock someone's head off, then we have truly lost, as violence will not be tolerated. Clearly we have to reclaim our right to free speech, and resist the victim vocabulary that is being foisted on us, we need to assert that we are free to use our own words to express our own thoughts and of course to restrain ourselves as we see fit. We must also reclaim the right to use violence as necessary.