Most of the inaction I bear has been due to fear. Fear of reprimand and fear of violence in particular.

I’m reading a lot of lefty stuff (old posts, old articles, hoping I can make my way to books) and it seems like my biggest hurdle to becoming a proper leftist will be removing myself of these fears, if I ever want to do anything productive.

But fuck, fear is just so prevalent in my life. It could be my trauma, my privilege or literally anything else I’m not aware of. Whatever the cause, I don’t like it, it’s made me a worse person, and I wanna get rid of it.

Seeing as most of you are good about this, I want to hear about how you stopped letting fear and (social/physical) self-preservation control you.

  • Beaver [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    10·
    1 year ago

    There’s no silver bullet, you have to practice acting in the face of fear. This is something you can deliberatly practice and become better at.

    The other end of it is to not let fear dominate your thoughts in times of inaction (late at night in bed is the classic case). No silver bullet here either, it requires a lot of introspection about what you can control, and keeping things in perspective.

    Leftist action can be a properly scary thing to engage with, because it demands real change in society. Not only is there real danger from the forces of reaction, but real change is itself a scary prospect.