Hope vs. Fear – Motivation for Change – Anjali Appadurai
I am an activist and that’s why I’ve been called to speak to you here today I’ve been an activist since I was 15 years old I started working with the Canadian Red Cross focusing on global issues and after that I moved on to international activism and that’s what I do now I focus on international climate change negotiations and I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to travel the world and have worked with amazing youth and NGOs and basically my whole life has been a whirlwind the main thing I’d like to talk to you about today is the notion of fear and to me fear has been a big part of my journey as an activist in the last few years because I’ve noticed that it’s actually the biggest thing stopping us from achieving the world we want to achieve fear has become a motivator for activism we’re told to be terrified of the future we’re told to be terrified of the people around us doing bad things and that is the fear that’s supposed to drive us to action I was at the UN last year and I was writing a speech or something a policy brief and I was trying to talk about the world I wanted to live in and the policies I wanted to see passed so that I could live in that world for myself and my children and a fellow activist came up to me and said hey we need some stronger language in there and I was like what kind of stronger language and they’re like you know right something like climate change will burn your children to a crisp and in 20 years you will probably be dead and I thought okay that’s interesting because it’s true that’s climate change is a huge issue and I would notice that my work has been centered around it for years now but why do we have a vision of the future something terrifying why don’t we have a vision of the future is something positive that we want to move towards and actually be motivated to work towards fear when it’s presented to us like that breaks the connection between natural human compassion when we connect to an issue and what we actually do about that issue it forces us to move forward based on a negative view rather than a positive one it works as blackmail rather than incentive and becomes a club I’ve had so much discourse and the climate change work I’ve done where if you don’t show terror and if you don’t show a sort of doomsday scenario for your future you don’t belong in the club you don’t really care about the issue and I’d really like to fight against that because I think that undermines the entire notion of activists and of justice the bottom line justice so fear in addition to being a divider actually do actually serves to flatten the individual this is not to undermine the really heavy and weighty issues that we’re facing in our future where youth and we’re gonna see a bunch of really really big changes in our world in the next twenty thirty years and our lifetimes and those are heavy often crippling things but I would argue that those are things not to be approached with fear but rather with motivation and compassion so I would ask you if you see the future as something like this if you want to see the future something like this or if you’d rather view to something like this and work towards this are you running away from this or are you running towards this and I think that’s a very key distinction to make so if there’s a message I’d like you to take away it’s that you know do not be afraid stay true to yourself don’t let fear bog you down and don’t be scared yes we’re in a lot of trouble in the next few years there’s a lot of work cut out for us but you are a complex and diverse individual you have a lot to offer and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise you
