The Fear We Loathe to Face
If you’ve never been in a real fight then there are certain things you cannot understand, even if you believe them to be true.
A real fight is a maelstrom of chaos, emotion, and instinct. Real fights often include smoke and fire and an uncanny amount of sharp and sticky sensations — even when these things seem out of place. If you’ve ever been in a bad car accident, it’s similar, except that the moment of impact can extend for minutes, hours, days. What was a well contoured and comfortable situation can turn into an oozing, jagged tangle of steel, glass, and blood — in an instant. When you’re in the thick of it, there is no thought of anything outside of it that does not lead to immediate paralysis. Those who succumb to this paralysis can be identified from afar — even through the smoke — even through the fire. They become pillars of disassociated consciousness and meat.
Whether you are fighting for your life or a cause, you don’t feel bad about hurting people. That is the dance. Pain. Pain feels different during a fight. It has the same sharpness or dull pressing ache, but it doesn’t carry the same offensiveness. It can be invigorating.
And, even if these are things that you can’t directly relate to, part of you understands. It’s in our bones. The whole of our physiology and the architecture of our brains evolved over millions of years of our ancestors sitting neatly in the middle of the food chain. We were hunted and eaten with total indifference by many things — including each other — for more millennia than we can conceive of.
That is the reality that shaped us. That is the reality which we feel when we meet an opposing politics — or even an unfamiliar idea.
And, here we are, centuries after realizing that we are entirely capable talking and drafting our way through any disagreement or conflict, we are still the same bald apes always ready to eat each others faces.
We can be ashamed of this reality. We can deny it. And, those who do are easily the most venomous of us all. The dandy that plays at non-violence is often the Iago in waiting, a cruel villain — hidden even to himself.
These are our fears. We fear the crocodile that sits quietly in the base of our skull. And, we are afraid to face the simple truth, that we have created this world. The world in which we live is the world in which we have chosen to live. It was not imposed on us by a deceitful few against our will. Though, yes, there are deceivers among us. But, we do so love to be deceived. No, this civilization was co-created every step of the way with the full participation of all involved. And, for the most part, people continue to choose for it to stay this way.
But, there’s something else that we’re even more afraid of, just the other side of the same assertion. We can change it. We can change it all. What’s more, we will. We always do. And, how much and in what direction we change things, how deep we go and how many compromises we accept, and who we become — individually and collectively — along the way, all of that is up to us.
Honestly, that whole last bit is really what everyone is afraid to look at. More people are willing to accept that they have some responsibility for the way things are than are willing to accept the obvious and necessary converse:
If we are co-creators in our suffering then we can unmake our suffering.
The fight has been beaten out of us.
I’m here to tell you that it can be beaten back in.
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