Arundhati Roy is a well-known writer and activist for social and economic justice, and was also good friends with Fear.less contributor Howard Zinn. You can watch a discussion of theirs on democracy here.
I’d like to share a few of her nuggets of wisdom that I feel are particularly high-carat.
“I think to be fearless is among the most foolish things in the world. It’s very important to be fearful to understand the dangers that you’re pitted against.”
If you think this sounds like it tears apart the whole reasoning behind Fear.less, you are right. It does. That’s why, starting today, we are quitting. Fear.less is done forever and no new issues are coming out.
That is a lie. In reality, Arundhati Roy’s comment is just an example of the inadequacy of language to fully describe the battle against fear. Instead, her words illuminate a particular aspect of it – the idea that overdevoting to having no fear can make you destructively reckless, and that being aware of the relationship between you and what scares you has it merits too. This makes a lot of sense for a political activist, doesn’t it?
Last week I made a post about Tim O’Reilly’s rise in the technical writing world. Here is a similar little tale from Arundhati Roy, but more cultural than career-related.
“Perhaps, what terrified me most in my formative years was growing up in a small village in Kerala, a close-knit community that didn’t accept me as a part of it because my mother was divorced and had married outside of the culture. To me, terror was the idea of having to remain in that space, to be closed in by it. To have to marry some guy from the village and produce children, and run after them with rolling pins, was awful. But it was just as frightening, perhaps even more frightening, to get out of there and escape into the world with no protections. To then be in India, in a place that wasn’t the western world, where even the poorest have some network, to be in that world without any protection, was incredibly scary.
But once I jumped ship and left, being a very young woman in the world with other people who were completely vulnerable, it gave me the political understanding that I have now. That’s what taught me to see the way I see. So I always go back to that place and look from there, and it’s that which has molded me the most.”
It’s a testament to Roy’s clarity that I don’t have many additional remarks to make on this. I just think it’s a good validation for those feeling stifled by culture/geography, and traces yet another arc of how someone becomes the way they are.
LOVELY! We so often forget lessons learned from the past and how when implanted into a current day situation or crisis, how resilient our being is to create its NEXT new lesson……..