Fear

I have been experiencing a sort of low-level fear for weeks now, a fear that I liked to children who grew up watching ‘what to do in case of nuclear attack’ videos during the height of the cold war, where the ever-present fear of attack was a constant in their lives. I have this vague sense of fear too. Only not really about myself in particular, although that is certainly a part of it. It’s a worldwide fear of destruction: The Doomsday Clock has moved closer to midnight again. Ever-increasing revenge-based violence in Israel/Palestine. India and Pakistan threatening each other. Failure of democratic process in Zimbabwe, further violence and unrest in Madagascar. Civil war in Columbia. Right-wing fanatics running the states. Right-wing corporate whores running this province. Friends everywhere, all overly educated, out of work with not much sense of change. The US realising that it could act unilaterally if it wanted to, and repurcussions from that. Mormons. Catholics. Suddenly, anyone who partipates in activities that centre around worship of a higher power (religion, free-market finance) have become incredibly suspect to me.
During the Cold War, there was a solution to your fear. Bomb Shelters were built. Schools ran test evacuations. There was a sense of ‘being prepared’. I of course do not speak from experience but rather from literature, conversations and films. I don’t have that. There doesn’t appear to me a method of reassurance available to myself.

Perhaps this is not so much fear so much as disapointment. Oddly, leading up to last fall, I’d been feeling optimistic about things. There seemed to be a coming tide of resistance and change, which all changed now. Government and Faceless Power has once again become foremost in the minds of many.

Anxiety about the state of my own affairs is clearly playing a part in this. If my own life were nice and settled, perhaps I would be so sensitive to unrest elsewhere. But maybe not. I’ll hopefully find out in a couple months when the dust settles around here.

2 Replies to “Fear”

  1. i hear ya. i was recently heard proclaiming: “i miss the cold war, everything was just a little more stable then!” Of course that’s a big fallacy and probably based more in the fact that I was 10 at the time, but still it seemed like the black and white, split power balance of the cold war was better than this feeling. a feeling of being on the cuspe of things to come. bad things to come. icky ick.

  2. i hear ya. i was recently heard proclaiming: “i miss the cold war, everything was just a little more stable then!” Of course that’s a big fallacy and probably based more in the fact that I was 10 at the time, but still it seemed like the black and white, split power balance of the cold war was better than this feeling. a feeling of being on the cuspe of things to come. bad things to come. icky ick.

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