Fear will fall; love, fire, truth will rise;

The Fearless Manifesto

R.I.P. Michelle Danek, victim of sociopathy. I will fuck things up for you.

The world has been effaced. The mind-killing, beauty-killing lies that have kept the sociopaths in power and allowed them to rob the world now sound as ridiculous as they are. The idiocracy which they have spawned is accelerating itself into oblivion. Sociopaths are embarrassed and far more terrified than the rest of us. There is a beauty to this. I'd prefer that the collapse of global civilization wasn't happening, but it already has. Revolutionary movements today are missing a liveliness and excitement, as they are crippled by a general fear. We fear failure and the horrors to come.

Stop. Humans are a failed species. If you want to do the most good for the most people in whatever time is left, refuse fear now. Here's something the good can all look forward to: scaring sociopaths shitless. Mutual aid systems and movements with impact today are only possible with the loss of hope and fear. Total effacement is our opportunity to let truth burgeon. Don't pass it up. The world is ending. Be truer than true now.

∞

". . .we will fight obscenity with its own weapons."

—Jean Baudrillard

And so we will.

We will fight obscene wealth disparity with obscene compassion, obscene indifference with obscene spirit, obscene propaganda-filth with obscene self-expression, obscene insincerity with obscene realness, obscene self-aversion with obscene self-effacement, obscene fear with obscene courage, obscene banality with obscene imagination, obscene boredom with obscene joy. We will do this and we will die trying, or we will not and we will die rotting.

We will give the reprehensible sociopaths who have destroyed our world and its beauty something more terrifying than the apocalypse—we will give them a beautiful apocalypse.

I personally see no choice here. I'm not so concerned about preservation. It doesn't really surprise me that we're destroying ourselves; the fear culture I was born into made me expect it. But our terminal rot into absolute banality and the slow and silent death of truth, should the decline continue in its current form, is unacceptable. We will make the sociopathic ruling class shit their pants, and we will violently tear apart the cultural cancer of spiritual death and apathy which they have instigated. I'd prefer that we was not one person.

I'm calling on people to be fearless and sincere immediately. Something rather awful is happening, far more awful in my opinion than extinction. The human mind is rotting in fear and self-hate. The inexplicable amounts of beauty humans have created are being steadily forgotten and disappearing without a trace. After spending two years in deep existential depression—being homeless and moneyless, having been assaulted on the street and suffered brain trauma, losing my fearless companion Michelle Danek, and learning how totally fucked we are—I am now in an intense state of personal emergency (and rather enjoying the rush). I am calling on anyone who shares this sense of emergency to drop all pretense, be more alive than ever (and more alive than Paris), let your mind illuminate, be moving, be obscenely yourself, and FUCK SHIT UP.

Are you not prepared to let the cancer of banality steadily smother a long history of creative passion without letting the sociopaths know what they have destroyed? Do you love human creativity so much that you will suffer to give it new life knowing that you will soon lose it? Then you are Fearless, and this is our manifesto. If you relate to what I'm saying but have children, your have much more daunting obstacles than I do, but there is a loving and sound solution to everything if fear is taken out of the equation.

Expect to fail. Expect not only for no effective policy action to be taken on our dire climate situation; expect also that our society will continue declining into infantility and apathy with hardly a heart moved. This outcome is unacceptable, but expect it. Reason has never sufficed. What matter are strength and love. We do what we do either because we're afraid and selfish, or compassionate and curious. I prefer to suffer because it opens the mind to new and greater realms of joy. America is the unhappiest first-world country because we've fallen for the lie that we can be happy without suffering, without feeling. The fearless task before us will be difficult, risky, and hopeless, but I imagine it is the only way to feel joy in our last days.

I have a luxury some do not, as I do not have children. However, enough strength will overcome any circumstance, and since no one else will say it, I'm inclined to mention a thing called euthanasia motivated by love. If you're offended by that, please grow up and learn to love more. Timelines are very unpredictable, so start developing a plan today. Talk to your children. And when the struggle for survival has reached a dead end, apologize to them and tell them they will see you in the afterlife. Be sincere. You will either have the courage to do this, or you will condemn them to something worse. Too many innocent people have suffered unacceptably due to humans' unwillingness to contemplate the dark. It is time for us to grow up. Many artists and activists whose work has been the only thing between me and suicide have children, and I care about them.

Mitigating suffering in this complex world is a difficult task, but it's not nearly as complicated as we think. There's one simple ingredient: you must refuse fear. Do this, and everything else will fall into place. Lose fear and there is no limit to what acts of kindness and sacrifice you are capable of. Why don't we cooperate? Why don't we share? Why is distrust a cultural epidemic? And why the hell are we destroying ourselves? It's because we are collectively drowning in fear. Every cultural norm that defines America is self-defeating in the most tragic way. The worst of these tragedies: fear. That we have (probably) driven ourselves to extinction comes down to this one emotion. Humans were given amazing gifts of thought, emotional depth, imagination, humor, sensuality,... We had the opportunity to build a world of beauty beyond our own imaginations. Instead, we're burning children alive in carpet bombings and racing ourselves to extinction—because of fear.

We have so despicably fucked ourselves with this cyclic self-defeatism; fear only creates more things to fear and things to fear more. And we never get it. It shouldn't take that much intelligence to realize that fear is a terrible emotion that needs gotten rid of. But as the litany against fear says, "Fear is the mind-killer" (Frank Herbert, Dune). So explains our plummet into idiocracy. We fail to abolish our fear because we're afraid to. Absolutely fucking brilliant.

Imagine if we stopped being afraid of losing our fear! It's a daunting task, and I expect no one to be as radical as I am, but if my words speak to you, you are much stronger than most and much more capable of creating and experiencing joy. So please start doing so now. Challenge yourself. Think of creative acts that you've never thought of before, and do them. No long-term goals. Only self-expression in the moment. Dance, sing, and shout jarring truths in public spaces. Print essays, poems, and encouraging propaganda and post them around cities. Dump a box of them in a bank or corporate building lobby. Go out of your way to help anyone in need. Be real at your workplace and show no sympathy for the insincere. Spread humor like a disease. Attend Extinction Rebellion and other protests in your city and erupt in fits of passion to demonstrate how to be Fearless. Be sure to make people die laughing. Fuck the liars up. Scare them.

Let me be clear: I hate what is happening with passion. There are few scenarios I desire less than this. But one of them is a world where we regress to the point we are now and sustain ourselves as such. If I'm without confidence that the human species is on its way toward becoming fearless (the only real progress), I don't mind the thought of us disappearing. How it will happen is another matter, and no, I'm not excited about it. Tragedies like this I don't and will never find acceptable. I will never reach the fifth stage of grief, so help me God. Unless the fifth stage is awe.

My disappointment with us is off the charts. I hardly feel any fear anymore, because I've pretty well destroyed it in my hate for it. Fear is the emotion that drives greed, exploitation, manipulation, insincerity, and everything else responsible for our self-destruction. Fear is behind the unwillingness to think independently, and consequently, behind the idiotic cultural notion that fear is a good or necessary emotion and that those who don't fear are the sociopaths. I'm saddened by this cultural confusion of values, and I will fuck it up and set things straight.

Let the truth be told: the sociopaths who have robbed and raped our world—the Wall Street banksters, corrupt politicians, greedy CEOs, and NSA perverts—are the most fearful. They are terrified of the real world. They are terrified of humans. They are terrified of truth, beauty, creativity, and all things human. They are so terrified that they see it necessary to cause millions of children to starve and innocent people all around the world to suffer in horrific ways so that their own worthless asses can have maximum security and protection against even a moment of reality. Where did America get the idea that sociopaths are interesting, stimulating people without fear? Oh that's right, they got it from sociopaths!

America has been the ultimately sickening demonstration of how corruption of culture happens from the top down. Quite literally every human value has been perverted and reversed. Weakness is rewarded and strength is punished. Indifference is celebrated and thought is scorned. Conformity is encouraged and imagination is feared. Fear is considered a virtue and empathy is loathed. Every human value has been destroyed and a society of hate and failure to understand each other has thrived.

My fury overpowers my sadness. I can take this task on because my anger has pushed me to a higher level. Find this within yourself, please. Reject depression and reject guilt. If I'm speaking to you, you are not guilty. I am reckoning that the most major source of collapse depression is failure to understand how we have done this to ourselves. I've seen no explanations yet that are emotionally satisfactory and empowering, so allow me.

That we are "animals programmed to consume as much as possible" does not suffice. Why, in all our intellect, have we let this happen? The human tragedy is this:

Some humans are born or raised to hate humanity. They are the sociopaths, the ones who know nothing but fear. The sociopathic do not understand the good; and the good do not understand the sociopathic—until suffering has taught them lessons. The good (and there is far more good than evil in the world) have failed due to inevitable ignorance; we have put too much faith in humanity. That the sociopaths would con us, seize power, and destroy us (and themselves) was inevitable. They have perpetually made us and themselves dumber in their fear and ruse to not suffer from a pin-prick.

An antagonism fueled by reciprocal lack of understanding has been escalating at an exponential rate since the Agricultural Revolution. Creative people create beauty to incite joy and inspiration in others, motivated by love. Sociopaths, afraid of living and wanting nothing but comfort, take advantage of the creators, exploiting their creations via marketing and distribution schemes, the creators sadly assuming no ill intent.

As the sociopaths accumulate wealth and power, they use their vocal influence to manipulate the masses and systematize culture so as to funnel money from the rest to them. The wealth gap expands at an exponential rate, and so are social values perverted at an exponentially growing rate, and so does the "intelligence gap" expand at an exponential rate, and so does destruction occur at an exponentially accelerating rate.

Every human character on the planet is being effaced at an exponential rate. This is an opportunity. If you are Fearless, let beauty bloom at an exponential rate. Those who are most feared by society are those who exhibit no fear. If there was ever a time when it was okay to take pleasure in terrifying the corrupt while shouting at max volume for the good, it is now. Don't mind that people might not understand you; the good do not fear the unknown.

I've spent my life challenging my mind, pushing the limits of emotional experience, running toward every terror I could find, suffering and growing stronger, and tearing away at my fear until only I remained. I'm an artist and social theorist with no social status or recognition. Being born in Amarillo, TX in 1988, I quite simply thought America was a ridiculously stupid joke and saw no meaningful way I could contribute to society after high school. I find the thought of "meaningful employment" hilarious. I didn't attend college. I was raised upper-middle class. I leeched off my dad (a coal lobbyist) for five years, after which I made a living as a dishwasher for five years. I'm now on SSI. I have bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. I was homeless during the winter of 16-17 and was assaulted with a blow to the head. I've had two laptops stolen. I have experienced levels of beauty terrifyingly extreme. I have done questionably obscene things that I regret. I've paid more than my due in guilt. I have so much love for the world that it's almost disgusting. I'm an antinatalist, but only because my upbringing made it too obvious that humanity was going to be a disaster. If I'd thought humanity was on a path toward becoming fearless, I would've had children.

My hope is that this manifesto will inspire and empower those who share my love of the world and hatred of fear to act always in the moment with passion. May you, like I, love the world so much that you're willing to let go of it. Use the reddit forum r/FearlessRising to share ideas, post videos of Fearlessness in action, plan local meet-ups, etc. Make damn sure to show up to Extinction Rebellion protests. This is about encouraging what compassion is out there but sitting in timid silence. Good needs good to uplift it. I'd prefer not to be disappointed.

My home is Denver, Colorado. I've been away for two years, but I'm heading back to Denver in a week. If you live in Denver, you might see someone dancing down Broadway and 16th Street Mall. I have a unique style of dance that expresses my feelings of fearlessness and power over myself. I'll dance in Wells Fargo lobbies. I'll dance wherever consumerism and corporatism thrive. I'll shout poetry and jarring truths at the top of my lungs. I would be awed if someone started doing crazy shit before me.

If after reading this you're thinking that it's distasteful that I'm enjoying this, you may either not understand being human or you may have a distaste for humanity. Masochism to me is progress. Contact me with critiques or objections.

“The world … is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not reconciliation or synthesis.”

—Jean Baudrillard

“Imagine a good resplendent with all the power of Evil: this is God, a perverse god creating the world on a dare and calling on it to destroy itself ….”

—Jean Baudrillard

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