Be like Captain Jack Sparrow: embrace your fears

Toespraak | 17-01-2008

Gelegenheid:

[Summary]
“Never compromise with the need to speak up if fear or extremism put the basic human need for dialogue at peril” says Frans Timmermans in an appeal to writers to speak up. “Fear puts an end to thought. Only he who embraces fear and looks fear in the eye, will start thinking again.”

[Full speech]

Fear can be fun! Ask Captain Jack Sparrow who merrily steps in and out of death. Or ask the two hyenas in The Lion King, who profoundly enjoy the shivers of fear the sound of the name ‘Muphasa’ sends down their spine. Ask any young child who is swept away by the horrors the brothers Grimm have put in their bed time stories. H.P. Lovecraft, E.A. Poe, Stephen King and the somewhat less inspired makers of Evil Dead I to X all enjoy a fair amount of thrilled followers.

Fear is fun…as long as it does not come too close. In one of the most inspiring articles I have ever read, “Le siècle de la peur”, The Century of Fear, written by Albert Camus for Combat in 1948, all the fun is taken out of fear. Camus describes a society in the grips of fear as a consequence of the fact that people see no future. Life is not worth the trouble without projection on the future, without hope of improvement or progress. “Living like this, is living like dogs”, writes Camus.

Those were different times, so soon after the War, so soon after the world had been put on fire by murderous ideologies. For Camus, humanity equalled dialogue, the capacity to talk and above all to listen. A human being is someone who is prepared to be convinced, who is willing to change her or his mind. Someone who is no longer prepared to change his mind can only inspire fear, since he puts his opinions before other people. Nazism, fascism and communism effectively ‘shut up’ humanity and thus paved the way for terror and war.

The genius of Camus and, and may I add, someone like Hannah Arendt, is that they understood the nature of fanaticism and extremism. And that is as true today as it was sixty years ago. Their answer lies in radical humanism. Never to accept that ideas are put before people, never to accept that ideas or fears shut us up. Always speak out against extremists and fundamentalists, appeasement is bound to fail. Evil feeds on our fear and hides in everyday banality.

“We live in fear”, says Camus, “because persuasion is no longer possible, because man has been completely swallowed by history and he is no longer able to turn to that part of himself, which is as true as the historical part, and which he can find in the beauty of the world and of faces: it is because we live in an abstract world of machines and absolutist ideas and messianism without nuances. We suffocate in people who believe they are the guardians of absolute truth. This silence is the end for those of us who crave dialogue and the friendship of men.”

Terrifying stuff. But Camus would not be Camus if he did not offer a way out. Fear puts an end to thought. Only he who embraces fear and looks fear in the eye, will start thinking again. Thinking leads to action, leads to a restoration of dialogue, leads to the willingness to be convinced to change one’s mind from time to time. It leads us back to humanity. And it helps prevent a closing of minds, which is always a consequence of fear taking over.

I am honoured to be among so many pathfinders of humanity here at Winternachten. Deeply honoured by the presence of Elif Shafak who has taught me so much about dialogue between different people. In a wonderful interview in Milliyet some time ago and about which I wrote in October 2006, she quotes Kurt Vonnegut who describes a conversation between an Armenian-American and his father, who fled Turkey in 1915. “If you met a Turk, father, what would you ask him?” asks the son. “I would ask him if the Turks today sense the absence of Armenians”, is the intriguing response. It inspired Elif Shafak to say to an Armenian woman: “Since you left, our country has become more sterile. We dried up, culturally, artistically, philosophically and morally”. This answer bridged a gap between two women before worlds apart.

Shafak is a writer inspired by her curiosity about other people. She invites her readers to take another look at other people and thus recalibrate our believes and reconsider our prejudices. Which she does without avoiding sometimes painful confrontations. She never succumbs to the temptation of convenient silences or looking away when the truth becomes uncomfortable. Elif Shafak is a radical humanitarian in Camus’ tradition. This is a time for writers and thinkers who have maintained or rediscovered their curiosity and who are willing to look, to listen, to be convinced. But also never to compromise with the need to speak up if fear or extremism put the basic human need for dialogue at peril.

Winternachten offers you this possibility. Use it well, be like Jack Sparrow, embrace your fears and inspire us to embrace ours.

Thank you