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Fear

I woke up wondering this morning what would happen to our civilization (by the way, I looked up the etymology of this, and it amounts to “citizenification”, or making into citizens, which would bear some interesting observations I don’t have time for at the moment; my thought was that it came from city-fication, making into cities) if I could wave a magic wand and eliminate fear everywhere.

Why do people go to work?  In a great many cases, because they fear getting fired.  They fear not having money and shelter.  The gears of our mechanical order would stop working smoothly.  It depends on fear.  Much of what you see built depended in part on fear.  Not all of it: much work happens through creative engagement and interest. This is good.

What would happen in the Middle East?  I suppose the descendants of those who lived in the Ottoman Empire and British Protectorate, and were displaced by a war they supported but lost, would still hate the Jews, because that conflict is about vanity, greed, and hatred, but I wonder if people like those who populate ISIS would not evaporate.  Their whole creed depends on fear.  The entire Koran consists in little but operant conditioning, little but offering rewards to the pious and infinite pain on those who fail to submit to the Islamic structure of behavior and belief.

What would happen in totalitarian states?  Cuba?  What if everyone stopped fearing the government en masse and at once?  What would happen in Cuba, if the massive forces responsible for repressing the many thousands of very justified riots they see–because their system is fundamentally inhumane and injust, and vastly inferior in every respect to our own, as imperfect as it is–stopped fearing losing their jobs and being themselves repressed?  What if everybody rose up against the creatures who enrich themselves by enslaving the masses in the name of democracy, freedom and equality?

What if I had no fear?  What if you had no fear?

Reality would be no different, but our relationship to it would be more honest, and our perception of our actual options broader and deeper.