The answer is love, not fear
It's always troubling for me to read about a government ordering the assassination of political enemies – let alone a foreign government orchestrating it in my own country. Can any public figure truly feel safe any more? I am certainly not in the spotlight today, but I wonder if someday I will be at risk because I express some views that run counter to the views of some authoritarian government or corporate conglomerate. When will humanity move beyond this idea that it's okay to murder individuals who merely express views we disagree with?
The good news is that I truly believe someday we will. Popular movies and TV shows from Star Wars to Star Trek, Blade Runner and Alien, typically portray a bleak future for humans rife with endless class conflict and wars. Those portrayals might be fun for the big screen, but they are far from the likely future we face – they are simply reflections of the present day dramatized for the big screen. War is not inevitable.
Inequality, classism, bigotry, exploitation, etc. these are all by-products of a scarcity (fear-based) mentality that says there is not enough to go around so I must take what I can for me and my family and at best turn a blind eye to everyone else – or at worst, kill them if they even remotely threaten my wealth (power) as authoritarian governments so frequently do. This perspective, which lies at the heart of our individualist, capitalist culture – at the heart of all our wars, our social and political turmoil, and the destruction of the natural world – is slowly being understood to be flawed.
There is a change coming, slowly, inevitably in the global consciousness. People are waking up to the fact that if we want to have vibrant, flourishing societies, the answer isn't to enslave people – whether direct slavery or wage slavery – and the answer isn't to oppress them or exploit them or assassinate them. It's to enrich them. If you personally want to flourish – to truly, deeply thrive in ways few have ever experienced – everyone around you must also flourish, and to do that our perspective must be rooted not in individualism and competition and self-interest, but in collectivism and cooperation and sharing. In other words, it must be rooted not in fear, but love.
Stay strong, my friends – I'm confident we will get there someday. ❤