Correr Es Mi Destino

Why are we so scared?

I grew up with the traditional French daemons: fascism and globalization. They were easy enough targets, and fighting against them included chanting socialist songs in demonstrations, keeping an eye on the Front National — the French Nazi party — and watching old French movies to thwart Hollywood’s plans to take on the world. The enemies were white supremacists, recognizable thanks to their shaved head, military boots and cans of kronenbourg in their (right) hand. Or fat American idiots who thought France was some remote countryside without electricity but producing great vines.

It was that easy. The rest of the world was a relatively peaceful place (which we didn’t care about much anyway) and France was still great and powerful (in our dreams).

And one day, it became more complicated. Suddenly, we were scared of having sex. What having sex? Even (French) kisses were out of a question, thanks to a new disease that was going to kill us all. AIDS. Homosexual died, drug addicts died, and apparently we would too if we weren’t careful. Or so said the nurses and doctors who would come at school and teach us all that we needed to know about the virus. At the age of ten, we knew — in theory — what a threesome was, and if a blow job would put us at risk. So much for French romanticism…

Soon after, the infected blood scandal burst out and so did people’s trust in the government and in hospitals. And then, the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Mad Cow Disease) was discovered and most start to question the food industry. Oh, and we also noticed transgenic food was getting quite widespread, and while some would burn generic modified’s field crop, we would squint to read the labels, hoping to eat healthy and stay alive. No sex, no food. That was getting quite fun.

As if inspecting your lovers and your food altogether wasn’t enough, politics were getting a bit scary too. The fascists. Them, again. Suddenly, they weren’t just young skinheads anymore, but respectable people, workers, immigrants even, who feared unemployment and others immigrant’s. Insecurity became the main world, a quick bandage on a variety of symptoms: second generation’s immigrants identity crisis (and sometimes plain stupidity)? Insecurity. A bus driver bullied? Insecurity. Unemployment rate raising? Insecurity. People being sick after eating in a local — ethnic, that goes without saying — restaurant? Insecurity. Oh, excuse me. Food insecurity.

Living is getting quite dangerous. A new disease seems to be discovered every day, and of course, prevention methods follow: bunch of sponsored pills to swallow and a healthy lifestyle (Subway, eat fresh?). For “home insecurity”, a new set of alarm and a big fucking gun (where legal, of course - we wouldn’t want you to break the law, but think of your wife and your kids…). For “work insecurity”, there’s only one way amigo, work work and no complain, no union and walk straight, think straight. And while we’re at it, don’t commute to work (you want to get stab or what?): buy a huge SUV and drive.

And then we found a new reason to be scared. Terrorism and terrorists. Bombs in subways and planes crashing into buildings. Fear is fed 24/7 on TV, on radio, through press conferences and editorials. They want to kill us all, they want to destroy our civilization, they are our enemies. Words, facts, news and data are carefully edited and twisted to make us fear the world and the unknown. “Tomorrow, light snow, some sunshine in the evening and severe risk of terrorist attack - please don’t wander outside after dark“.

Meanwhile, we vote for the guy who has a quick fix. “I’ll bomb them all! I’ll send these immigrants back home and you will get your job back! And you won’t be poor since we won’t tolerate it anyway!“.

Oh that helps. But we are so busy being scared that we don’t think anymore. Lately, we have been accepting almost everything blindly.

You know what? I’m tired. I’m tired of being scared, and I’m tired of be taught new things to be scared of. You don’t scare me.