Srishti Gupta & Sumeera Godara
India
Civil wars, genocides, inequality, discrimination, proxy wars, encroachment, xenophobia, and terrorism have become the familiar phenomena which have initiated international movements that condemn actions which support any of these. There is a humanitarian crises out there which have shaken several nations and forced us all to change the way we think.
We talk about issues that we see and what our human instincts have led us to feel. But we rarely talk about the issues individuals are fighting in their own experience. There is a need to focus on the emotional crisis that has been ignored for too long. This crisis though has no physical form, it holds the power to uproot one individual’s existence. The roots of this crisis go deep down to a powerful emotion which is fear.
We live in an age where ideas are valued and where we have means to share them with the world. But do we have a platform to share our anxieties? Do we even talk about these fears?
Oxford Dictionary defines fear as “an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm.”
As Winston Churchill rightly said – ‘All great things are simple and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, and hope’. These great yet simple things are what the world is fighting for, like freedom from hunger, discrimination and from fear of being outcasted from society, effective justice and many more.” Churchill introduced us to the elements that we long for in an ideal life and depravity of any of these has caused fear to evolve. And this fear is rising among the world’s population due to the uncertainties that world politics, economics, and media are implicating.
With some nations still fighting to prove their identity and others for their existence, powerful countries are racing to become the next superpower. This supremacy has resulted in struggles across the world. Catalonia is still trying to prove its identity and Taiwan is accepted by some, not by all. The Venezuelan government is ignoring the hunger of its people. The Rohingyas are subjected to a mass genocide. Civil War in Syria is seen by all and how the major countries are trying to have their imprint. Conflict due to discrimination, religions, and racism is not new in many countries. Amongst all this, the governments have chosen to ignore the cries of the victims, their lives governed by evil politics. The possibility of these nations going on a war has increased anxiety and terror among its citizens due to the destruction and effects on the economy that occur in war-stricken countries.
To make matters worse, the world’s population continues to rise. The rising world population, the world running out of food, water, climate change, safety, and protection arises fears in an individual. Every year 3.5 million young children die from malnutrition and 1 out of every 5 women around the world is a victim of rape or attempted rape, with nearly 30 million people held in slavery worldwide.
Today’s society has been impacted by fear-based thinking, and if allowed to breed it will only fester the wound by isolating the individual’s from the world. And many of these individuals would have been a potential change-maker, agents, and facilitators in fighting the other global issues. Yes, we all are equal yet not equal, because of the borders that divide. The holistic growth of any individual depends on the holistic growth of its nation. So all the nations should come forward together in order to achieve the same goal-the betterment of its people.
Fear is undefined so let’s make it-Fear was undefined. It’s time to give our anxieties a voice. Come up, unite, talk about it and make it a revolution that we are not afraid to accept that we were scared and now this should change. We are not alone in this, and it is a struggle of us all to move towards a less fearful world. The world will always have problems and fears associated with it, but the need of the hour is to respond in a way that offers the better chance at living life without fear.