Fear and Hope
It occurred to me recently that the opposite of fear is hope. Well, of course, you will say, didn't you know that? I did, but I also didn't fully grasp the concept. It doesn't help that fear is considered an emotion, yet hope a more complicated idea.
I was thinking about the things that go wrong in my country and some of it, a large part, comes from bad laws. And I was trying to understand what a "bad law" is. I tried some examples, like the dog leash one - I know, I have a special personal hate for that one in particular - but I noticed a pattern. It's not about the content of the law as it is about its trigger. You see, lawmen don't propose and pass laws because they like work, but because there was an event that triggered the need for that law. Law is always reactive, not proactive. It could be proactive, but there is a lot more effort involved, like convincing people that there is an actual problem that needs addressing. It's much easier to wait for the problem to manifest and then try (or pretend) to fix it.
Anyway, the pattern that I noticed was related to the trigger for individual laws. The bad laws were the ones that came out of fear. One kid got killed by stray dogs, kill them all and institute mandatory leashes on pets. The good laws, on the other hand, come from hope. Lower taxes so people are more inclined to work and thus produce more and so get more tax in. Hopefully people will not be lazy.
And it's not only related to laws, but to personal decisions as well. Will I try a new thing, hoping that it will make me better, teach me something, be fun, or will I not try it because it is dangerous, somebody might get hurt, I may lose precious time, etc? When it is so abstract it's almost a given that you will take the first choice, yet when it is more personal fear tends to paralyze.
Fear is also contagious. The people who want us to be afraid are afraid themselves. Control freaks, power hungry people, they don't want to take us to a better place because they are afraid to lose that control, because they are afraid of what might happen. And their toolkit is based on fear, too. Something exploded and killed people, some asshole drove a car into people: we must ban explosives, cars and - just to be safe - people. Don't go to space because people might die, although they die every second and most of the time you don't care about it. Let's hoard money and things because we might not get another chance to have them, because we might lose them, because we are so afraid. The fear people don't know any other language but fear and they will use it against you. Much easier to instill fear than to give hope, so hope is not that contagious. It is fragile and it is precious.
I submit that while fear might keep us safe it will never make us happy. The very expression "to keep safe" implies stagnation, keeping, holding, controlling, restricting freedom.
So here is my solution. As Saint-Exupery said, perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Let's strictly define our safe zone, or the area we need to be safe in order to not be afraid. Personally, as a group, as a country, as a planet, let's set the minimum requirements to being safe, a place or situation we can always retreat to and not be afraid. Whether it is a place that is your own, or a lack of debt, or a job or business that will give you just enough money to survive and not spiral out of control, a relationship or some other safety net, everyone needs it. But beyond it, let's abandon fear and instead use hope. Hope that you can do more, you can be better, you can live more or have fun, that other people will act good rather than badly, that strangers will help rather than harm you, that the unknown will reveal beauty rather than terror.
I will choose to define good decisions as coming from hope. Will that hope be proven to be unfounded? Maybe. But a decision based on fear will never ever be good enough. And if all else fails, I have my safe zone to get back to. And I know, I very much know that having a place to get back to from failure is a luxury, that not many people have it as good as I do, but to have it and still live in fear, that's just stupid.
I was thinking about the things that go wrong in my country and some of it, a large part, comes from bad laws. And I was trying to understand what a "bad law" is. I tried some examples, like the dog leash one - I know, I have a special personal hate for that one in particular - but I noticed a pattern. It's not about the content of the law as it is about its trigger. You see, lawmen don't propose and pass laws because they like work, but because there was an event that triggered the need for that law. Law is always reactive, not proactive. It could be proactive, but there is a lot more effort involved, like convincing people that there is an actual problem that needs addressing. It's much easier to wait for the problem to manifest and then try (or pretend) to fix it.
Anyway, the pattern that I noticed was related to the trigger for individual laws. The bad laws were the ones that came out of fear. One kid got killed by stray dogs, kill them all and institute mandatory leashes on pets. The good laws, on the other hand, come from hope. Lower taxes so people are more inclined to work and thus produce more and so get more tax in. Hopefully people will not be lazy.
And it's not only related to laws, but to personal decisions as well. Will I try a new thing, hoping that it will make me better, teach me something, be fun, or will I not try it because it is dangerous, somebody might get hurt, I may lose precious time, etc? When it is so abstract it's almost a given that you will take the first choice, yet when it is more personal fear tends to paralyze.
Fear is also contagious. The people who want us to be afraid are afraid themselves. Control freaks, power hungry people, they don't want to take us to a better place because they are afraid to lose that control, because they are afraid of what might happen. And their toolkit is based on fear, too. Something exploded and killed people, some asshole drove a car into people: we must ban explosives, cars and - just to be safe - people. Don't go to space because people might die, although they die every second and most of the time you don't care about it. Let's hoard money and things because we might not get another chance to have them, because we might lose them, because we are so afraid. The fear people don't know any other language but fear and they will use it against you. Much easier to instill fear than to give hope, so hope is not that contagious. It is fragile and it is precious.
I submit that while fear might keep us safe it will never make us happy. The very expression "to keep safe" implies stagnation, keeping, holding, controlling, restricting freedom.
So here is my solution. As Saint-Exupery said, perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Let's strictly define our safe zone, or the area we need to be safe in order to not be afraid. Personally, as a group, as a country, as a planet, let's set the minimum requirements to being safe, a place or situation we can always retreat to and not be afraid. Whether it is a place that is your own, or a lack of debt, or a job or business that will give you just enough money to survive and not spiral out of control, a relationship or some other safety net, everyone needs it. But beyond it, let's abandon fear and instead use hope. Hope that you can do more, you can be better, you can live more or have fun, that other people will act good rather than badly, that strangers will help rather than harm you, that the unknown will reveal beauty rather than terror.
I will choose to define good decisions as coming from hope. Will that hope be proven to be unfounded? Maybe. But a decision based on fear will never ever be good enough. And if all else fails, I have my safe zone to get back to. And I know, I very much know that having a place to get back to from failure is a luxury, that not many people have it as good as I do, but to have it and still live in fear, that's just stupid.
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