“Great is the matter of birth and death. All is impermanent, quickly passing. Wake up! Wake up, each one! Don’t waste this life.”
Dogen
Last week we spoke about the fear that haunts the world and how, in order to figure out the solutions to our problems, we need to clear our hearts and minds from that fear. Albert Einstein wrote, When we are clear in heart and mind—only then shall we find courage to surmount the fear which haunts the world.
The world is haunted by fear. Be it climate change, AI, or the impeding cure for aging, the only thing we know for certain about the future is that it is dramatically uncertain.
I don’t know about you, but it’s not the uncertainty that scares me. I am not afraid of the unknown. The unknown excites me. What scares me most is pain and suffering. Most, if not all, of my fear comes from a place of worrying about future pain. I worry that the choices I make (or don’t make) today will lead to feelings of disappointment, strife, and defeat in the future.
Is this the same for you? What is your fear about? The unknown? Or is what you fear most about what you believe to be known and what you fear to be forthcoming?
Feelings of worry are a natural part of the human condition, as we discussed two weeks ago. Too often we make decisions based on hurt from the past or fear of future hurt, denying our courage in service of what is “safe.” We know now that this is not reasonable or intelligent and does not show respect for our time on Earth.
Except, of course, when those worries and fears keep us alive.
Our negative mind has an evolutionary purpose. It does help keep us safe. The part of our brain that scans our environment for safety, crunching the numbers for risk, is not to be ignored.
But is our negative mind—the part of our brain and processing system that keeps us safe—the same part that worries unnecessarily? Where is the line between what is known and unknown, what is certain and uncertain? What is truly deserving of our spiked anxiety and adrenaline, and what must we learn to calm and quell?
When the threat is a bobcat at the entrance to your cave, how do you react? When the threat is a wildfire in the distance, what action do you take? When the threat is exile from your community if you hoard food, what choice do you make?
What about when the threat is the end of a relationship because you spoke your needs clearly? Or when the threat is the loss of a job because you stood up for yourself?
How many of our actions are shaped by our actual safety and how many are shaped by the illusion of safety?
I heard someone say once that all fears are a fear of death and that made sense to me. The bobcat at the cave door is obvious, the loss of a job or relationship less so. But when you think about it, it makes sense. What does the loss of a job lead to? A loss of money and then home and food and then—death. There it is. That’s the fear.
With the loss of a partner, it’s perhaps more ephemeral, but, then again, not really. What gives our life meaning? What makes life worth living? Certainly it’s not only partnership, but that’s the main directive, biologically and sociologically speaking.
What are the risks we take and what are the risks we mitigate?
If all fear is a fear of death, then we must learn to discern between the fears that could legitimately lead to our death and the fears that play into our fear of death, but won’t actually lead to it.
This is not always easy to do. Learning to differentiate between different types of fear, understanding the difference between the fear that keeps us legitimately safe and the fear that keeps us stuck in the illusion of safety, is not straightforward. A roof over your head and money in the bank are versions of safety, but they can be destabilized. They keep us safe in our current society, but what happens if that society collapses?
How do we know what is real safety and what is a house of cards?
Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.
― Terence McKenna
I know that my ability to take risks is in direct correlation to my certainty that I am held in community. When I take a risk, it includes the calculations of my safety net.
While a safety net is not a privilege that everyone has, the concept of community as safety is baked into our DNA. Staying “safe” in today’s society, the onus is on the individual—we have to learn take care of ourselves—but for most of human history, staying safe meant maintaining our position within our community.
The safety of community is how we evolved into the creatures we are today. Unlike our closest living relatives—the chimpanzees and bonobos, creatures who never learned to share resources—early humans developed collaborative social structures, like sharing food and labour efforts, and that collaboration is arguably the ground upon which all civilization was built.
In his book A Natural History of Human Morality, Michael Tomasello argues that our sense of right and wrong grew out of a “we is greater than me” perspective, that all our decisions were based upon how they would affect the safety of our community. It is only in recent history that we began to focus on our safety as individuals, straying from what kept us alive for millennia.
Today, the outcome of individualism is terrifying. The pursuit of “me” over “we” has destabilized the globe. Modern society is collapsing. Greed threatens to end the human race. Dystopia feels like the inevitable conclusion. Collaboration and a return to our moral origins, prioritizing the safety of the collective over the safety of the individual, is the clear path forward. As Einstein wrote, “we must abandon competition and secure cooperation.” But how do we do that?
If the fear of death—that which once guided us to put “we” before “me”—now guides us to look out for ourselves first, how do we subvert and/or reclaim our relationship to that which spikes our blood sugar and makes our heart race?
What stories—what beliefs and behaviours—would we have to leave behind in order to make decisions based on actual safety and not just its illusion? What must crumble within ourselves and in the world for this to happen?
Maybe we can let our fear bring us closer together. Maybe we can meet the unknown with open arms. Maybe we can return to living in relation to our communities. Maybe all this takes is pulling apart the threads of our fear in order to understand where they come from and where they want us to go.
When faced with a fear, ask yourself, Does this fear bring me closer to or further away from collaboration, cooperation, and connection? Who does this fear serve? And, lastly, most importantly, what risks—what leaps—would I be willing to take if I knew that my community could catch me?
Thank you for reading. You are encouraged to like, comment, and share. I would love to hear your thoughts. Not only does it mean the world to me personally, it helps me grow this space so these ideas can reach more people. Thank you for being here. Stay curious!