Living on the edge

We are currently living in a world of fear, worthiness and shame. We are fearful of those who look different from us and express themselves in strange tongues, but we also live in constant fear of not being able to measure up to what our highly competitive societal norms deem as success. As individuals we fear that we are not enough. We fear failure. We fear fear itself.

It used to be that many people measured up their self-worth by “keeping up with the Joneses”, in a constant race to see who had the biggest house, the best car, and the latest model of whatever new gadget went on the market. Now, many also measure themselves by the number of likes, friends and connections they are able to muster on the various social networks.

It’s like we all live in a bubble, enveloped by a membrane (or thin layer) of a (more-often-than-not) perceived threat capable of turning otherwise decent folks into monsters. It’s like we stopped using our collective brains and now live constantly on the attack, trusting no one but a select few.

We fear not being good enough, safe enough, rich enough, or thin enough when, what this world is really scarce of, is good-will, empathy and open-mindness.

And so it goes in most of the western world, the so-called “civilized world”. And the end result is a slew of problems easily avoidable if it weren’t for so much vulnerability running amuck. Vulnerability, a by-product of all these fears, is the culprit of many of the most serious problems in this world of ours.