Fear and Anxiety in Burn City

Did that happen, or did you create the possibility of it happening in your head and get afraid from that place?

**I’m feeling provocative and a little bit ‘fight me’ with this post, but that’s how it is sometimes. If you disagree or take offence, tell me. I want to dig into this and find my blindspots. Other people should challenge us to improve, not just agree with us blindly.**

**Also, it’s long. Your boy is back**

I Come From An Upside-Down Land Down Under

I’m back on the other side of the world. This was the first time I really got beaten by the jetlag stick, but staying awake in four hour shifts throughout the night isn’t the worst thing in the world. I got more opportunities to enjoy deep silence and read books, but I felt absolutely alien starting my day at 11am. 

This ‘feeling alien’ thing has been a trend in life, and I have started to wonder whether or not everyone feels this way and doesn’t tap into it, or whether I really am that much of a freak. In Berlin I felt like a freak because I don’t enjoy screaming (or being screamed at) about the rules to strangers to make sure that everyone is aware of the rules, and in Melbourne I feel like a freak because I don’t view everyone as a potential serial killer/rapist/xenophobe. 

This bothered me when I used to live here, and I see that it hasn’t changed, but I’d kind of hoped that either my perception of it would’ve decreased or peoples sensitivities would have improved. Wrong on both counts. 

Melbourne - specifically Brunswick - is stupidly safe. Not just in terms of all the metrics that people like to use to measure such things, but in terms of lived experience. But people are capital A Angry, because emotion is devalued and suppression is encouraged. 

When people aren’t internalising their anger, they’re ridiculously helpful, friendly (albeit superficially), and generally only want their neighbour to like them (people-pleasers across the board). But politics has effectively divided people into tribes, often without people even being aware of it, and it’s reached a level of insanity. 

When I would walk around in Berlin I was constantly on alert. There are junkies and criminals everywhere, there is crime everywhere, and there is generally rapscallious behaviour on every corner. A crack deal there, a guy selling stolen purses here. All in all, everyone is having a good time, but your good time is liable to end in the blink of an eye if the cutpurse decides that you’re not paying attention. 

It’s not like that in Melbourne. The good time seems to end the instant people enter the internet. Facebook groups are used to snitch on their fellow citizens rather than speaking to the citizens in the moment, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g is under constant surveillance, and citizens are the first line of defence against any Minority Report-esque potential thought crimes. (And I’ve just come back from Germany. It’s clear that we learn almost nothing from history)

A thought crime is typically perceived around the following: ‘Do you read the same newspaper? Do you talk about the same tedious topics around the BBQ? Do you vote for the same colour? Is this your favourite sportsball? Do you hold the same political opinions as everyone else on the block?’ Any deviation from this is considered a cardinal sin, and you become persona non grata. 

I will share a few things that occurred that made my radar ping, but I’d like to preface them by saying that in all of these instances, there is a part of me that can see all these things as fair and reasonable. But that part of me is the part that says ‘protect yourself, stay safe, never let anything unsatisfactory happen, control EVERYTHING’. And it is a sad, scared, part of me that doesn’t inspire confidence or positivity. 

You Have To Think Like Me

The first thing that made me go ‘hmm’ was a post in a Facebook group (to find a place in Melbourne, you must use Facebook - another part of that ‘are you in or out?’ mentality). I’m paraphrasing: ‘Some man walked behind me last night as I was walking my dog at 8pm. Men, please be aware of your actions’. A woman responded: ‘How hard it must be to be a man these days, you can’t even walk on the street without coming under suspicion’.

The usual discourse kicked off as you’d expect it, with any man (or ‘male-appearing person’) being silenced because of their genitals, against the You Are Not Defined By Your Gender narrative. But whatever, maybe that’s just an isolated thing. Someone felt weird about someone walking behind them at 8pm, no big deal. 

But then I got an invitation to view a flat. I had listed a post, introduced myself and expressed how I work and what I’m looking for in a flatshare. A woman reached out, we shared a bit about the flat and what we’re both looking for, then she asked me this question (and this one I’ll quote directly): Just a couple of things… Are you racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic etc? It’s important to do a vibe check. Also, do you have some kind of online profile (LinkedIn etc.) so that I can check you’re real. Safety first! :)”

I got the vibe and internally had a huge reaction. I went to bed that night, having not replied, feeling really sad. How far have we fallen that people think we have to ask these questions? How foolish have we become to believe someone who is ‘racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, etc’ would also be truthful and honest? But most importantly I felt sad that, in a place where people, on balance, treat one another so well, that we are still internalising this much fear. 

The Angel and the Devil popped up on my shoulder when I got this message and had a quick chat. 

Devil: ‘You have nowhere to live, you need a place, you are not any of those things, and you have a LinkedIn profile. Just send it to her, swallow down that weird feeling, and go and live with her. The dog is cute, and there’s a pool in the complex. Plus lots of tinsel on the Christmas Tree, how fun’. 

Angel: ‘Your internal feelings are more important than politics. If someone thinks answering “yes” to a question on the internet reflects any sort of “vibe check”, you know you’ll have to move out soon enough because they aren’t checking how they feel, they’re checking how you respond’.

When I woke up, I responded and declined the request to meet and view the room. I explained that ‘if I were (any of those things) I’d surely lie about it, which would perhaps only prove me to be a psychopath as well as an [insert -phobic title here]’, and that ‘the question has given me a vibe and I don’t think I’m the best person to live with you, and thanks for reaching out’. A touch of comedy, a touch of snark, but 100% truthful and honest. 

She responded with ‘Yes, if the question offends you then I guess we wouldn’t do well living together’. 

We go a level deeper here. The reaction to the reaction: offence. I didn’t play the game as she expected the game to be played, and she perceived this as ‘I’ve been offended’. This appears to be the instinctive response to any person who thinks outside of the way you think in Melbourne, and I guess to a greater extent in the English-speaking western world. ‘You don’t agree with me? I’m offended!’. No room for discussion or debate. 

The longer I thought about it, I realised the key was in the final words ‘Safety first! :)’. She wanted to check on her safety (which is fair) but had instead checked how I would respond to a cookie-cutter question (which is bullshit). 

If she’d said ‘I’m a single woman living on my own, can you share your LinkedIn because I don’t feel safe inviting a strange man into my home for a viewing’, or ‘are you a rapist/woman abuser/generally violent man’, I’d have gladly shared my LinkedIn and/or considered these to be honest questions (and I still wouldn’t have taken the offer because living in fear is a habit I’m not interested in indulging). But asking about political opinions on socially or culturally relevant topics is disingenuous and not getting to the heart of it. 

We are creating an insane dichotomy here. On one hand, we want to create safe spaces for everyone to meet, be themselves, and generally have the total and absolute freedom to be and express themselves; yet on the other hand we are drawing a line in the sand and saying that we absolutely will not tolerate any deviations from these viewpoints. We are saying ‘we all believe that this is the right way to be, to think, and to live, and if you don’t like it YOU’RE ABSOLUTELY NOT WELCOME’. 

(Sidenote that’s hard to fit into the piece, but is relevant and I think this is the best place for it: I was having a discussion with someone about police powers. They were of the opinion that the UK’s decision to use Twitter posts as sufficient grounds to imprison people was absurd. I said that Australia is doing the same thing, using Twitter posts to disqualify Palestinian refugees if they’d liked any posts that could be seen as pro-Hamas. 

They said ‘yeah, but I think it’s a bit different because they’re trying to judge on character grounds fitness of character’ etc. I said ‘no, the issue is the fact that authorities are using the internet as grounds for real-world action. If it’s an overreach in Case A against Person A, it’s an overreach in Case B against Person B, otherwise it’s about the person, not the power.) 

But we didn’t always think this way, we learned to think this way, and we could only do this because people were open to show us the errors of our ways, and stood up and fought for things that they believed in, no matter the consequences. While we are fighting for every shape of equality, we are actively excluding anybody who isn’t already in the same boat as us. 

This piece isn’t meant to be all about the gender imbalance between men and women either, because men are just as afraid of their own shadows in Melbourne. It’s also necessary to talk about the fear I’ve seen nestling into the men of Melbourne - because it’s not a female thing, it’s a system thing. 

The first example came about when I was sitting in a cafe and found myself overhearing an older bloke talking to a table of his friends. It was extremely windy, and the state was moving into High Alert for weather warnings because of the wind. Anyway, Old Mate says to his table of friends ‘Hey, I’ve just heard that we’re getting some really dangerous winds coming through, so you shouldn’t be walking or driving anywhere with trees. In fact, it’s better if you just stay home’. (I shudder to hear the pandemic catchphrase come back to life in 2024 - but dear God don’t even let me get started on that one). 

About a week later I saw a headline in a newspaper that said: ‘Woman dies after tree falls on her home’, and I imagined this woman to be the same woman from the cafe, who had followed her friend's advice. Unlikely, but it highlights the fact that staying at home doesn’t mean you’re safe. Death doesn’t care where you are. 

And the second example came about when I asked my brother if I could borrow his car. He advised me that he’s the only person insured to drive the car, so I couldn’t borrow it, but I could borrow another car from his wife. The rejection isn’t the point, that the basis of rejection was formed around a potential outcome rather than any basis in fact is the point. I didn’t ask him if I could crash his car, I asked him if I could drive it. 

As I mentioned earlier, all of the above incidents can be seen as fair and reasonable, that’s not what I’m trying to get at; I’m pointing to the fact that people are living and acting out of fear.

Fear Fuels The Fire Inside

Built up around this fear is deep, dangerous, terrifying anger. It sits bubbling beneath the surface, and is coming from a place of phenomenal repression. Men are terrified that their anger is going to come out one day and they’re going to turn into Mr. Hyde, but rather than finding an outlet for that anger, they suppress it, and that’s when anger becomes truly volatile and unbelievably dangerous. 

That’s the anger that turns a happy-go-lucky scamp into a hate-filled beast because someone cuts him off in traffic. That’s the anger that drives men to beat their wives, or their kids, or turn to suicide. That’s the anger that our entire experience is throwing at us, imploring us to stop being such cowards, and to make a tremendous change for the positive, for the betterment of ourselves, our families, our communities, and all those around us. 

The working class has been replaced by the busy class, and I’d say that 95% of the busy class hate what they’re doing, and it’s this hate that drives this anger, but we’re all so enslaved to supporting this cycle of busyness that nobody seems to be able to say ‘wait a minute, I’ve got 80 years on this weird floating rock (if I’m lucky). What the fuck am I doing this for?’

The working class of old were for the most part physically engaged, even if back-breakingly so; the busy class of today are increasingly physically debilitated by remaining seated for the majority of their time. Physically demanding work that requires occasional moments of brainpower leaves you with an inexplicable sense of accomplishment at the end of the day (ask me about my landscape gardening day); but mentally demanding work (and it’s a big ask to call most busy work ‘mentally demanding’) combined with no physical demand leaves people empty. 

They’ve cultivated no physical energy throughout the day, and they’ve tapped their psychological energy reserves into the red, so when they get home all they can do is prepare a TV dinner (or, more likely, order delivery) and fill their brain with some banal shit that aligns them with their political tribe. The last thing they have the energy to do is to connect with their human tribe, their actual community, the people around them who love them and want only the best for them, regardless of their differences of opinions. 

Bridges, Not Borders

We aren’t meant to agree with everyone about everything. We find the people we align with best, but those people that we best align with better test the absolute fuck out of us if we have any intention of growing as individuals, and we’re only going to grow collectively if we’re growing individually as well. 

If I’ve got a problem with someone, I’m going to tell them on the spot that I’ve got a problem with them, and I’m going to do whatever I can to work towards a solution. I’m not going to be pushing for a change on their behalf, I’m going to be working towards an understanding. If I love black, but you love white, and I am only going to be happy when you renounce your love for white and embrace my love for black, that’s a dictatorship, not a democracy. 

If this rant-esque article achieves anything, I hope it encourages people to launch into healthy debate with one another around topics they disagree on, rather than just talking about the same old shit they agree on. Beyond that, I hope it encourages people to actually talk to one another, rather than tweeting/texting/emailing/whatever-else’ing each other. 

The internet is still way too new for us to be able to do a genuine ‘vibe check’. We’re not that far removed from dinosaurs. We still need to have the person in front of us for our gut feeling to process them properly. And, despite what the media would like you to believe, most people are truly good and only want the best for everyone around them. 

Living in fear is the single worst thing we can do for ourselves and our communities. 

Have a great week, or weekend, and I look forward to getting to you all in the next edition.