Good morning lucky subscribers! This is a ‘secret’ issue of the newsletter, for your eyes only. One of the reasons I chose to use Substack is because the blogs are only visible to subscribers and cannot be googled.
Feel free to share such posts yourself, but I won’t be posting this kind of personal newsletter on my social media myself.
The fearful roots of bravery
For most of my childhood I was profoundly disabled by fear. Screaming, shaking and crying were daily events, sparked by things like... trying to leave the house. Later on I decided I needed to get a life and get an education, and so as an 18/19-year-old I would force myself through a daily series of panic attacks just to make the few minutes’ walk to my local college. For those two years I had a 100% attendance record in all my subjects. I then left for university in York, and slowly my life merged into what society sees as a kind of ‘normality’.
But what remains is my drive to force my way through my fears. In pursuit of this I’ve probably done a lot of foolhardy things and taken too many risks. I say this in order to brag (of course) and also to give you an idea of just why I think that cowardice is one of the worst sins. All through my life I’ve had to ask myself whether trying a new experience or taking a certain risk is possible, and often I’ve done this by asking, ‘but will you die, though?’ Will your world really end if you try this and fail? Isn’t your desire to be the person you want to be, worth facing your fear for? Cowardice lies not in being afraid, but in giving in to fears without a struggle. Bravery isn’t about not-being afraid, either; it was only because I had agoraphobia and was scared of leaving the house that bravery was demanded. Everyone feels different fears and has different challenges. What I’m talking about is how important it is to fight the fears.
Often those who are truly the bravest are disabled or discriminated people who have to face unspeakable fears just to live their lives, every single day. So this is why I have so little sympathy for people in positions of power and people who live in comfort who nevertheless choose to give in to fears. When really all they face losing is just a little comfort, or a little normality, or risk some slight embarrassment by trying to, for example, carry out better policies which might be less popular. I’m talking about non-disabling fears, and I’m talking about people In power and privilege who choose fear when they could instead help others so much.
Cry havoc
To bring this back to storytelling and the climate era, this personal story shows you what is at the root of my need for us to tell heroic and epic stories about the time of chaos and change we’re passing through. It is this teenage experience that is at the root of my demand that we have leaders who can actually be brave and who can stand a little fear, and who can pass through the fear in order to gain something greater.
I think a lot of the time the reason people cling to normality and routine is because they see change and threats, such as scientists’ warning about climate change, as a threat to the only way of life they know. So people double down on conspiracy theories, or on versions of the truth that are pushed by the fossil fuel industry, because it allows them to continue inside the normality and routine that is familiar, and that they have invested so much in.
But will you die?
This kind of fear is also what motivates so many people to react to the climate era with nihilism and a shrug that ‘we’re all fucked’. It is easier to imagine the total end of the world and your own death, than imagine significant change to your world.
But what if we don’t die? What if we survive to see a battered, changed and chaotic future? My personal experiences tell me that it’s possible to pass through the worst panics and to find life on the other side. Even if our comfort zones really do get ruined, we can build new ones together.
And that is why I think we need to start telling epic and heroic stories right now. Stories that allow for the potential of destruction and rebuilding, and that tell of fear and loss but also of eating cake by a fire in the ruins. Stories shape our world and what we think is possible to happen in the world. If we think the alternatives are either strict normality or utter obliteration we’ll freeze in terror. But what we are actually facing is danger, uncertainty, change.
We’re facing a struggle, but that’s ok. That’s what heroes do.
Be seeing you
Loukas Christodoulou