Fear is the heroin of power...and audacity breaks the addiction
By Indy Johar
It started with a strategy, a strategy of fear. A Gulf War where we were told “the end justified the means".
Our so-called progressive politicians used fear to organise us, to validate and empower their so-called “just” strategies. “Facts” become devices to structure fear — subservient tools to the love of power.
10 years on, fear has transmogrified. It has become the defacto tool - empowering the elite, whilst simultaneously driving an "othering" of fellow citizens. It impels the fracturing of the 99%. It has become the strategic means to divide us all.
Slowly and inevitably our politicians have been seduced by the strategy of fear. For fear and its power erodes democracy from within - whilst demanding centralization, control and the irrational release of power to the wanna be king and king makers .
Fear is the heroin of power — addictive, cheap and deeply corrosive of democracy.
Fear has spread from the headlines into our hearts, mistrust growing systemically. We increasingly stare across our Tube rides with a touch of fear of the other - not that spark of joy as to the magical possibility of all our humanity.
Slowly we start to withdraw into ourselves. Slowly the shadows creep in and we start to re-whisper the TV news “ghost” stories to ourselves , self justifying our new found fears.
And thus the echo chamber starts to resonate and provoke — awaiting for that one match to be lit, at the perfect moment in the perfect place. To give birth to the Bonfire of Humanity.
This is the journey we are on. This is our path dependence with the route we have taken.
However, the answer to fear, and the strategy of fear, is not rational fact checking, or even more debates of the facts in disputes, or listening more carefully to the fear makers ...
It is audacity, and an audacious belief in a radically better tomorrow. An audacious belief in our humanity, not a grudging nod to diversity - but our complete audacious belief in humanity as a whole. An audacious belief in the future not being a zero sum game.
Fear cannot be crawled away from — it must be audaciously fought. Let us reignite our democracy of dreams and fuel the audacity that is the antidote to fear.
Who wants to live in fear — when we can live with audacity ? Let us give people THIS choice.