Every one of us knows what it is like to be afraid. It is something that, while not pleasant, is a good thing when it keeps you alive and forces you to stay alert. It is a whole different thing when that fear is for something that is not real, or poses a threat you do not understand well enough for you to react in a productive and useful way to it.
And that is what we see today. The enemy we fight seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It is not even a single threat, and different impulses contradict each other all the time.
What is safe? What is the best thing to do for your own well-being? Hide at home? Or go to work so your family does not starve? Or meet up with friends so you do not go crazy? All of these are legitimate impulses. There is more than one thing we need if we are going to get through this time of crisis relatively unharmed. But often it is no longer possible to satisfy all our needs at the same time, and sometimes our own needs strongly conflict with what is in the best interest of the general population.
And so we get into a state of confusion. And we begin to feel the need to understand the world in a more reliable way. Have clearly identifiable enemies so that our fear can at least have a clear focus, so that we will again know when to run and when and where things are safe.
Fear eats at us. It can consume us if we allow it to sit within our psyche for too long. And then it gets something like a mind of its own. Where it begins to control us rather than serve us.
That is what we are seeing happening these days. Unfortunately, fear is an energy that always has a master. Usually this is us, when we are functionally afraid, but sometimes it is the thing we fear. Sometimes it is even a third person, someone who understands the power that can be generated through fear.
Fear is a great motivator, but not always a healthy one. For fear puts us in a frame of mind where it is important to act urgently, without too much delay. Critical considerations can cost you your life when you come face to face with immediate danger, and you have to react immediately to avoid disaster. And so fear disables part of our brain. It makes us focus on a single thing.
These things are what make fear such an interesting instrument for those who seek power. Make people fear something, and you gain control of them. You can control what they will do to protect themselves, and how they understand the world around them. And you can make them blind for common sense arguments.
It is a hive mind that is created when a lot of people are afraid of the same thing. A single entity that begins to transcend the individual. Again for a reason that makes perfect sense: most of the time being in a group offers safety, and acting against the group makes you risk being thrown out of the group. Not a great prospect in dangerous times, and so your fear will try to make you connect to other people afraid of the same thing, and have you focus on the benefits of that, while forgetting the need to be an individual.
It makes fear into something that acts like a being in its own right. Seeking a master, trying to grow, seeking a purpose.
And the biggest such being in this day and age is probably the fear caused by the pandemic. It might be useful to get a better understanding of its nature before it gets a chance to control us. And so let us give it a chance to explain its perspective
I am the fear of losing the world you could control
I eat the mind of those who have lost a part of their foundation because of this. Those that fear to lose everything. Those that had plans and now see them shattered with no perspective going forward. Those who are afraid to die but too proud to admit it.
I eat the soul of those who cannot cope with the prospect of change.
And I make them into a bare shadow of what they were. I make them lose a part of their humanity, by mobilizing them for a cause that is preserving the way of fear. I have power over the vulnerable and I twist their genuine concern into something that does not serve them anymore.
I seek to control.
I seek to have power.
I seek those who will help me obtain these things.
I am the enemy of love.
anima monday 