Fear Itself

Society clearly needs, to survive, a new organizing principle, paradigm, format, pattern for arranging affairs, standard, prototype, basic conception and/or awareness…

We too often ignore pressing realities to preserve ego, self-conception, illusions, sense of self-importance and pride. We tend to fail to keep things in proportion, to remember much that we have perceived, and to acknowledge the importance of others to every aspect of our lives. We’re not only selfish, short-sighted and greedy, but self-defeating. We apparently enjoy being lied to, bamboozled and conned. Swindled, defrauded, cheated and deceived. Hoodwinked, duped, and taken in. It’s fun, because we’re usually flattered in the process.

And we seem to relish flattery, even if it’s only self-praise and unlikely to achieve any lasting result. And the reason is –
We’re afraid. Afraid of pain, of losing, of being looked down on, of being emasculated or cut down to the point where we somehow lose the ability to accomplish anything.
And that’s reasonable, to a certain extent. For confidence, among other things, including appearance, not only can be very important, but usually is. We need our strokes. But we might learn to be less choosy about where we find them.
Lots of people get by, and even have big egos, without the status-symbols so many others require. And there are ways of competing without receiving, or causing, much pain. We need to find them, to find our way around the ultimate humiliation –
the suicide we are currently engaged in.