FEAR

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

II

“The voice / that could have been the remedy / but for fear / was nothing”.

It is time to take action against those who perceive the world simply as an immense market and the world’s inhabitants as mere consumers. It is time to apply our great stock of available knowledge to meet the challenges of a raging environment.

We must recover from our apathy, our fear. The first paragraph of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration that it has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of human kind "the advent of a world in which human beings, freed from fear and want, shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief…”.

From time immemorial humans have existed in very limited spaces, both physically and spiritually. Thus, with the exception of a few great minds capable of overcoming that confinement, they lived in fear of angry and merciless gods and lords of the manor here on earth. All possible efforts have been made to prevent citizens from abandoning their status as vassals. Until the 1980s education was always limited to teaching basic literacy and basic instruction on the part of the colonial powers, and authoritarian systems promoted indoctrination, dependence and herd mentality. There is no greater ignorance than the ignorance of a trapped man, and “kidnapped thought” (as Susan George calls it) leads to superstition… And this generates fanaticism, dogmatism, obstinacy and cowardice.