Embrace your fears, like Jack Sparrow does. With those words, Dutch Minister for European Affairs Frans Timmermans kicks off his TEDx talk. The pirates loved fear and used it for their own good. Just like children, who love it when you read scary bedtime stories. Fear can unleash forces men didn’t know existed. When the Americans saw that the Russians had an advantage in space, JFK said: ,,We’ll put a man on the moon.”And so it happened.
Yet fear can also suffocate and paralyze you. And when used as a political commodity, fear can paralyze a whole society. Like writers as Mark Steyn do. They warn people that European values can dissolve because of foreign elements. Those foreign elements should disappear, those writers say. But come on, Timmermans said, how can those writers reach such a low level. How can they imagine a small minority change a whole continent?
That’s the negative side of fear. It turns some people into Lance-Corporal Jack Jones from Dad’s Army. As soon as he’s afraid, he starts shouting: ,,don’t panic!”
So, would you like to be Sparrow or Jones?
We stand for a humongous challenges now, Timmermans said. Because of climate change, we have to redefine the relationship between humanity and nature for the very first time. We need to feed more and more people. Those are daunting challenges that ask us to rethink everything we do. From a personal level, to a governmental one. A nation state government isn’t good enough anymore. We need continental solutions to face the challenges. And we can do this, Timmermans exclaimed.
The right technology is already out there. Science has invented solutions. We now have to do the right thing and apply the knowledge. Because this earth can feed 9 billion people. If we don’t apply the existing technologies and just wait, our future efforts will all be focused on managing disasters, instead of creating opportunities.
But just like Jack Sparrow, we face an enemy with a lot of tentacles. With complex and fast emerging problems. How are we going to react to the fear these tentacles cause?
Like the fearmongers? Who use the fear as a political commodity?
Or will we dismissing fears as irrational? We can’t actually, it’s not a done deal that we’ll have peace and prosperity. The problems are real, we have to be honest about this.
Some people react like fearmongers lite and adopt parts of the feamongers program. Others are just blaming other people and say: ,,We’re right, they’re wrong, yippie-a-hee.”
Those are all wrong reactions. We have to look for confrontations. Everybody should do that. Not just politicians. We’ve outsourced our problems to them. We treat them like people from a phone company. We only call them when we have problems and then forget about them again. We should change that relationship.
Politicians should go out there. Talk to people, confront them. The average man and woman, on the other hand, should take their own responsibility and leave their own group. ,,Diversity is key”, Timmermans said. We need to look the problems in the eye and say – just like Sparrow - ,,hello beasty.”
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