Last summer, one or two guys messaged me with warnings galore about how I shouldn’t dare make any kind of political comment in my upcoming comic because all my fans would desert me and nobody would read my comics anymore, and I’d lose literally half of my readership. I mean clearly I ignored the warnings (for one or two WHOLE PAGES! Waaah!), and OHB 6 was by far the biggest OHB comic stats-wise, and then a few months later OHB 7 outperformed that by >10% across the board, so … yeah.
I do take feedback and ideas seriously, they’re wonderful and I’ll always learn, but when it comes to “Don’t go up against the mighty Tr*mp or you’ll loose all your followers!” kind of stuff, really you can only feel sorry for that fearful manipulative tactic.
This blog is not going to criticize those who are falling for hate/fascist philosophies though, so don’t worry if that’s you.
Threats …
I have noticed that the people I consider most inspiring, most wild, free, funny, glorious; those people don’t ever … ever use threats. Strange, that.
You see it in the news sometimes, people using threats, and it always seems to be threats like:
- We’ll leave / I’ll leave
- your followers won’t like you anymore
- nobody will read your next book/article/paper/whatever
- you’ll ruin your reputation
… those threats seem to come from people who consider those things their greatest fears. Know what I mean? You wouldn’t threaten leaving someone alone unless you knew how that felt. How abandonment felt. How afraid you are of it happening again. It’s an active, current fear in people.
… come from Fears …
So it seems our threats come from our fears. The Kraken; that unseen monster that lurks beneath the surface, generally it turns out to destroy the very thing that tries to control it ~ see monster metaphor in every book/story in human folklore history, and the very recent political example literally doesn’t bear mentioning because the hypocritical satire involved is too absurd.
… come from Traumas.
Really we’re witnessing unresolved traumas, unresolved shames, churning fears in the unseen depths, leading us to anger, desperation, separation. The mistake is to try and control the real Kraken. This is what the Lithium comic series is all about: Karen’s attempt to control her fears (ie her traumas), and the human fallout from that autocratic path. Control doesn’t work, just as threats … like all the other symptoms of anger … they just don’t work long-term, as any historian will tell you.
Sorry Rupert Murdoch, but it just doesn’t work old chap. You don’t get peace.
Free from fear.
If we were really without fear, we would then be without the need of threats, because we know them to be powerless, irrelevant. The most fantastic humans do not ever use threats to manipulate people. If someone you know is using threats, it is because they want to manipulate their world and the best weapons they can think of are the very fears they harbour within themselves. Their Krakens.
Those specific fears. Loneliness, reputation, shame, whatever.
If you are full of threats, if you have been using them a little more recently, if your consumption of content on closed Facebook groups or forums has led you into increasingly angry fits of hate and pains and anger and hate and hate and HATE, then hear this …
… I get it.
I do not think you are trash.
I have been there.
Turns out there is no ‘us’ vs ‘them’, there is only humans trying to do the right/best thing, and when we understand each others sometimes-horrific filters, when we really listen and understand, we begin to realise we are ALL truly trying, and we are all failing, at every conceivable hurdle.
The narrative of us-vs-them is levered by some very nasty media puppet masters, and the likelihood is that our fears and our hatred are not even slightly our own fault! Imagine! Free from even that shame. Free to even love our enemies?! Whaaaaaat????
So, all of this really means … fresh start mate.
Up to you now.
Every day.
Be careful what bollocks you fill your head with this time though, eh?
[Interesting that New Zealand actually outlawed Murdoch-owned media a while back, and their Covid death toll is … 25. And so their economy (you know, the thing that relies on human lives) has already recovered.]
[If you’re still with me on this longish blog, or recognise anger/hate within yourself (in either direction, left or right), I’d just like to conclude with some wise words from Rabbi Sharon Brous]:
(I was going to chop it down but it’s so clear and excellent I’ll leave it as is)
(PS. Joy comes in the morning)
(And comics)
(And Tiramisu)
