The primary reason human beings grouped into tribes was for safety. As those tribes became villages, cities, states, and nation-states, the goal of providing safety for the people should have never been lost. But it was. And in some parts of the world, governments actually do make their citizens safe.
One of the problems that Americans are having now, that black Americans and other marginalized groups are more familiar with but white Americans seem to be shocked by, is what happens when the government becomes the kind of source of danger, and not safety.
Whether it’s the police, the government being sold out to corporate interests, or the oncoming spike in authoritarianism. Everybody’s scared. Everybody’s looking for safety.
And when we turn to television stations, they’re selling us fear and outrage because that’s what sells. That’s what keeps people watching.
But one thing to know is safety in the modern world is found in simplicity. The simplicity of thought. The simplicity of action. The simplicity of wants. We scale back our participation in consumerism.
We start to understand the important things in life are interpersonal relationships. We provide safety for others if we can.
And we recognize that the world is dangerous and there’s nobody coming to save us but ourselves. It’s the old saying, we have nothing to fear but fear itself. And right now we have a lot of things to fear.
We’re Going To Be Okay
But, we shouldn’t be afraid of the fears. We should be aware of our fear. Lean into our fear. Face our fears. And overcome them through strengthened community and trust in ourselves that we’re going to be okay. Whatever happens, whatever these crazy republican politicians come up with, we’re going to be okay.
This is what fascism does. Everything slowly gets hopeless and there seems to be no way out of it. There’s never a way out until it appears.
It’s hard for people to know how to view any of this.
The Ohio train derailment. That’s going to have a lasting effect on a lot of people. This is kind of like the Reichstag fire that could actually change politics. But politicians clearly have decided they’re going to use it like they use everything else to divide us and maintain their power. Serve the corporations. Serve their white evangelical christian nationalist backers.
But we the people, have to maintain our sanity. We have to be willing to look at our fears, be afraid, and yet move forward and continue in our authentic selves. We have to maintain who we are.