The thing about fear

Fear is heavy, have you ever noticed that?

It sinks into your bones the same way love does but it mires itself in the marrow and starts to grow like a weed; it isn’t something that nourishes hope but strangles it, contorts it, drowns it to the exclusion of all else.

Fear seems to be a driving force this week.

Fear of obscurity, of irrelevance, of a changing world, of a progressive one.

Fear of women in power, of loss of power in the case of Sanna Marin’s detractors.

Janne M. Korhonen 🇫🇮🇪🇺🇺🇳🐟🇺🇦🇵🇸 @jmkorhonen

4. The trolls from the anonymous message board - a hotbed of misogynism and far right trolling - began to drum up the "controversy." A known pro-Putin conspiracy theorist picked up the neo-nazi tweets and amplified them.

Fear of loss of status, feeding of ego, focusing on playing the persecuted instead of taking accountability for being the persecutor, in the case of some who are supposed to be leaders but are not leading.

How can you lead if you are unable to see the fear you have participated in creating for someone else?

Using fear as a weapon, stoking it deliberately in service of ambition to obtain power, creating fertile ground for it to grow and spread and create such a weight by increments that we fail to realise how dangerous a load we carry, in the case of those who would disregard democracy and normalise violence.

It is a lot. There is a lot of fear, and I understand the temptation to go “oh well, it’s here now. May as well let it stay.”

I think there is always space to do things differently. I think there is always space to listen to those who have done the thinking about how to do that.

Scott Hechinger @ScottHech

Christine: "I hear a lot that we can't do anything to stop violence. But we can. It affects us all. Some of those in the streets are not there because they want to be. There is a deeper problem. If we could help families with just basic needs that would go a long way."

I think we can allow ourselves to be buoyed by those who reject fear, those who hear what it’s saying and why and then choose to act from a different place. I think there is space to actively seek those people out, and learn from them.

“When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear, against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect, to find ourselves in the other.”

- bell hooks

The thing about fear, whether we are acting from it or using it to manipulate others, is that it’s heavy, and all-consuming… but it’s not sustainable.

It serves a purpose, and then we have to find something new to motivate us, once we are tired of running from ourselves, once we are aware of being preyed on by others.

I’d hope that those who are so threatened by women in power start to think carefully about why that is, and how that shows up in their actions, their writing, their headlines, their contribution to a culture that is increasingly misogynistic.

I’d hope that those people realise that they contribute to the same culture that Andrew Tate does.

The Spinoff @TheSpinoffTV

Violent misogynist Andrew Tate is our school’s own pandemic, write two young teachers

thespinoff.co.nzAndrew Tate is a new virus in our schoolsThe violently misogynist internet star is our school’s own pandemic, write two young teachers.

I’d hope that those who create fear in others learn to centre those people over themselves when they are asked for accountability.

I’d hope that those who use fear as a tool to obtain power are called out.

I’d hope that those who willingly engage in the toxic behaviour that can be driven by fear are called out.

I hope that those who are so afraid find a different path.

“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.”

- Rebecca Solnit