On Fear, Enemies and the Illusion of Control

Fear rarely announces itself as fear.

More often, it disguises itself as certainty, righteousness, or the urgent need to control outcomes.

In families, organizations, and political movements alike, fear seeks relief. One of the fastest ways to relieve it is to locate an enemy—someone to blame, oppose, or target. Someone whose existence explains why things feel so out of control.

Enemies simplify complexity.
They externalize responsibility.
They offer a temporary sense of order when inner disorder feels unbearable.

This is not new. But it is accelerating.

Many of the systems we inhabit today are led by people who confuse control with leadership. They weaponize fear—sometimes deliberately, sometimes unconsciously—to consolidate power and avoid the harder work of self-examination. Scarcity becomes a tool. Love, affirmation, resources, attention, and even dignity are granted conditionally—not to cultivate growth, but to enforce compliance.

This is not leadership.
It is leverage.

Fear does not remain at the top. It cascades. It shows up in families that need a villain, in workplaces that require a scapegoat, in movements that cannot survive without someone to hate. Over time, entire cultures become organized around grievance rather than responsibility.

I have been criticized by staunch partisans on both sides for refusing to align with one camp or condemn the other wholesale. In climates organized around enemies, nuance is often interpreted as disloyalty.

And yet—despite the effort to control others—the truth remains:

We do not have control over anyone but ourselves.

This is the great illusion fear sells us: that if we can just manage the right people, silence the right dissenters, or defeat the right enemies, we will finally feel safe.

But safety does not come from domination.
It comes from regulation.
From governing one’s own reactions, boundaries, and responsibilities.

Self-control is not repression or passivity. It is not the absence of anger or grief. It is the capacity to feel deeply without handing the steering wheel to fear. It is one of the clearest markers of emotional and spiritual maturity—and one of the most avoided.

I am not writing this as someone who has mastered it.

Recently, I lost my footing in a family conflict. I reacted instead of responding. I overturned the table rather than calmly setting a boundary. It followed long stretches of silence and accommodation—after failing, more than once, to speak when I should have.

When self-control is demanded without mutual accountability, it eventually collapses. Pressure without release always does.

That does not make the explosion right.
But it does make it understandable.

Many people today are trapped in some version of this cycle. Some have been genuinely harmed by systems or individuals. Others continue to live from a victim identity long after the original injury, because it offers explanation without responsibility.

Victimization is something that happens to us.
Victim identity is something we live from.

Fear thrives in the gap between the two.

Right now, many nervous systems are exhausted. Chronic stress, economic instability, and constant outrage have left people reactive. In that state, enemies feel necessary. Control feels moral. Inner work feels indulgent.

But without inner work, no outer change holds.

This is not a call to softness. It is not a plea for endless tolerance. It is not an argument that harm should be excused or accountability abandoned.

It is a call to maturity.

Mature leadership—personal or institutional—does not need enemies to function. It does not withhold love to force outcomes. It does not confuse control with care or fear with wisdom.

It begins where all lasting change begins:

with the courage to govern oneself.

That work is harder than blaming.
Slower than punishing.
Far less satisfying to the ego.

But it is the only path that leads out of the breach.

— From the Breach

The Middle Way

The Middle Way is not neutrality or indifference.
It is the discipline of clarity without extremism.

It rejects false binaries and the hunger for enemies, asking instead what leads to wisdom, restraint, and shared human flourishing. Rooted in ancient wisdom traditions, it holds a hard truth: power without restraint corrodes, and compassion without discernment collapses.

The Middle Way insists on both.

It is not an ideology or a political program.
It is a practice of self-governance that scales outward.

In a world pulled apart by fear and extremes, the Middle Way stands in the breach—not to shout, punish, or control—but to steady. It begins with inner responsibility and extends outward, restoring trust and re-centering power around wisdom rather than ego.

There is another way.