How we resolve the tension between risk and reward defines who we are. And fear is a guidepost for how we use the Wedge. It is as much an involuntary response to a prediction of the future as it is a sensation that immobilizes our biology and stops us from taking action. Mastering fear doesn’t mean ignoring danger, but rather finding a reason that makes danger worth it—separating the stimulus from the response.
At present, a postindustrial hollowing out in society, a financial crash, failed wars, and geostrategic fears have shaken voters’ faith in the conservative claim to prudence and superior understanding. With increasing pace during the 2010s, a broadly liberal-minded center-right found itself on the defensive against a confident, disruptive hard right.
Freedom always implies freedom of dissent. No ruler before Stalin and Hitler contested the freedom to say yes—Hitler excluding Jews and gypsies from the right to consent and Stalin having been the only dictator who chopped off the heads of his most enthusiastic supporters, perhaps because he figured that whoever says yes can also say no. No tyrant before them went that far—and that did not pay off either.
Karl Polanyi’s description of modern political economy’s painful birth warns of the difficulty ahead as we try to create an ecological civilization.
In contrast with the simple notions [of power] are the difficult definitions proposed by philosophers, for instance: “Power is the compulsion of composition” (A. N. Whitehead); “[Power is] the production of intended effects” (B. Russell); “[Power is] the difference in probability of an event, given certain actions by A, and the probability of the event given no such actions by A” (R. A. Dahl); “Inherent in power, therefore, as opposed to force, is a certain extension in space and time” (E. Canetti); “By virtue and power I mean the same thing; that is, virtue, insofar as it is referred to man, is a man’s nature or essence” (Spinoza).
Likewise, it is not belief to say God exists and then continue sinning and hoarding your wealth while innocent people die of starvation. When belief does not control your most important decisions, it is not belief in the underlying reality, it is belief in the usefulness of believing."
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