Collective humanity or collective fear?

Racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, downward class mobility and wage stagnation. The global community is in a state of crisis as we all find ourselves operating in an ever changing world where too many of us fear that we are losing our grasp on our carefully constructed reality.

Last week’s stunning vote in the United Kingdom has shaken many of us to the core and, for those of us in the United States, the rise of Trump at times feels like a collective nightmare that we just can’t wake up from. Though for others, it feels like an opportunity to stick it the system that fucked them out of the American dream and instead left them with the American shreds.

The world has never been soft; it has never been fair. Those of us with non-white skin learn that lesson early on in life. But the game has changed and now everyone but the richest of rich understand that the game we are playing called life is rigged and it’s often not in our favor. Turns out that working hard doesn’t necessarily get you far anymore. Though for some of us it never did.  As a writer whose name escapes me at the moment once said, even whiteness isn’t paying out the dividends that it once did.

People are frustrated and fed up and frankly I am right there with them. I grew up working class in a good year and poor in a bad year…so poor some of those years that far too many of my childhood memories revolve around lack and scarcity. I remember dreaming about growing up and doing better. Having now arrived at the magical stop of “better,” it seems that doing better is awfully damned subjective. Better than what? The better that I have created relies on what increasingly requires nonstop work. In order to make ends meet and deal with the neverending responsibilities of adulthood, it means a day job and side jobs. I currently don’t know the world (and haven’t for more than two decades now) of scraping pennies to put food on the table or a visit to the food bank, which were part of my childhood, but I also know that at any moment if the side projects dry up or the day job fails, I will be back in the world that I grew up in. That reality keeps me awake at night.

While my current reality isn’t what I want nor what I envisioned, I also know that it can be worse and that for far too many other people, it is worse. People working physical jobs while enduring physical pain because the copays are too damn high and they can’t get the time off anyway without affecting their weekly pay. Families that have to piecemeal childcare together just to get to work.

We are living in a time, though, where for too many of us our private struggles are just that. Private. After all, no one wants to share the hard moments in a Facebook and Instagram world. Too often we assume that we are alone in our struggles until we see someone give voice to our private frustrations and fears. Donald Trump is many things, many which are questionable, but the one thing that he has tapped into is the collective rage of an underclass that has felt ignored. However, he has also opened up a box of ugly that most likely won’t be repacked and put back on a shelf anytime soon. While it is easy for many to dismiss Trump, as we are seeing in the UK, once someone opens up the box of frustration and mixes it with hate, what we are all faced with is something that threatens us all.

Despite the ugliness that is brewing across the world, there is a common thread linking it all together and that is fear. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of loss. And on top of those fears, the loss of what we believe to be true as we move toward the unknown…and, by the way, as our perceptions of reality crumble, whether they were even close to actual reality or not, that fuels those fears I mentioned earlier and creates new ones. Fear drives us in many ways. For me, fear drives me to push myself beyond what is healthy at times. For others, fear drives them to hate what they don’t know and what they don’t understand.

Fear can also be a catalyst for collective good, though, if we can surrender our own feelings long enough to see that beneath the surface the vast majority of us seek the same thing. To be whole and secure in our personhood. To have food, shelter, healthy bodies and humans who care about us. To know that we matter and that these lives we lead have meaning. These basic needs cross all lines whether we are Black, White, Latinix, whether we live in the States, the UK or Indonesia.

Will we find our collective humanity or will we collectively destroy each other and this world?
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1 thought on “Collective humanity or collective fear?”

  1. “Will we find our collective humanity or will we collectively destroy each other and this world?”

    True, these are turbulent times, times marked by disunity. And because of the disunity, the suffering that we have inflicted upon ourselves will be magnified.

    There’s much I could reveal, but, alas, I wouldn’t be believed, and that’s just fine as I do my work in secret, along with many others who have chosen to work on behalf of the world.

    I am a Light Worker. I was born for such a time as this, to keep the darkness at bay lest it engulfs us. Join us. We need as many souls as possible, Light Workers as well as Day Workers: “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.”

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