Thread by @VividVoid_

There are not many incontrovertible facts in human psychology, but this is one of them:

If you want to be healthy, you have to learn to stand up for yourself. No one else can do this for you.

If you don't, you will inevitably become corrupt, cowardly and full of hate.

To practice courage is to feel and contain the fullness of your fear, and choose to do the right thing despite it. It doesn't feel good. It feels like shit.

Hatred is a defense against those feelings of fear by projecting them outward. It feels good. Hot and righteous.

Hatred, then, should be understood as the inevitable end state of cowardice, and the shadow of courage. It is the refuge of weakness.

The antidote is to become strong enough to endure the cold, fiery ordeal of courage, over and over, as many times as it takes to transform you.

You can train this. You can take a hero's journey without leaving town. You can take pen and paper and write down 100 fears, and then go face them, over and over, until you develop in yourself the ability to maintain the presence of mind when you are afraid.

We live in an era when the art of self-defense has progressed to a point where one year of training and a can of pepper spray will make you a more dangerous fighter than 95% of human beings.

We are unbelievably privileged for it to be so accessible and affordable.

And yet we continue to expect others to protect us - society, the government, the Other - anyone but ourselves.

But how could any human system respond to every danger on this planet?

No one can protect you but you. If you won't, why would anyone else? How could they?

Worse, to refuse to take responsibility for your own safety is, itself, unjust to the people in your life.

To choose weakness is to choose to be unreliable, dependent, incapable of equality with your peers.

You are not entitled to infinite forbearance from your community!

If you don't overcome your weakness, it will become a fear of victimization. That metastasizes into a hellish complex, a twisted, infinite loop of derision, terror and outrage, oscillating btwn obsession w inferiority and superiority, crowding out any possibility of equanimity.

This is the source of the barely contained cruelty that exists just under the surface of many people's characters. It is the source of the barely contained compulsion to aggress on and exploit any visible weakness in the people around them.

The epidemic of violence in this society is the epidemic of anxiety. They are the same thing.

Our tribal rage, our ruthless Hobbesian economy, our oppression and dehumanization of the Other, our destruction of the land and culture that literally make us up - it's all fear.

The fear of others' weaknesses is the fear of one's own weakness.

The hatred of the Other is the hatred of the Self.

Always has been.

The only, only way out is courage.

We live in an extraordinary time of abundance. Practicing courage has never been more accessible, or more necessary.

Why do you cling to your weakness?

What is your excuse for your cowardice?

When will you choose to put your hatred down?

Took me a little bit to realize this, but hate is inseparable from feelings of constant fear. It's not a defense against fear, it's a defense against the pain of courage - and therefore of growth, of life itself.