Vulnerability

 

“To be vulnerable, in this sense, does not mean to be weak, nor to be a victim or a prey, but to be open to communication in the depths of human exchange. Real courage, advocates the embodied partisan of the argue approach, is the willingness to expose ourselves - with our flaws and everything else - to another person. To put in his or her hands the most intimate details of our life. To be vulnerable is to trust our fellow human beings. Trust is the belief that others will treat us as an end and not as a means, that they will not use or manipulate us for their convenience, but will see us as a being of value. When we are treated by others as an end, not as a means, we really become free. No one can be truly free in a world where everyone is suspicious of everyone. It is a world where freedom is immediately reduced has a negative meaning:  the possibility of being cut off from others and being an island. Authoritarian societies that spread paranoia and mistrust and put people against each other crush the very spirit of freedom.”

Jeremy Rifkin

American economic and social theorist, writer, and activist