The fear of difference, ancient and recurring, rarely stems from real harm but from paranoid suspicion, according to a new opinion piece by Argentine writer Hernando Maria Linari published Sunday.
Linari opens by evoking Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, who lived from 1899 to 1986, and his literary image of invisible knives: weapons that are never shown but are sensed in the gaze of someone who arouses suspicion, ready to be drawn at the slightest gesture. For Linari, this image serves as a portrait of an everyday condition in which people live, as he puts it, with weapons loaded.
The piece traces this logic through history. Linari draws a parallel to the myth of Cronus, the Titan who devoured his own children at birth for fear one might challenge his throne. He argues the same reasoning drove the expansion of empires such as Rome, whose wars were justified under the premise of preventive defense: attacking a neighbor not for what that neighbor had done, but out of fear of what they might do if allowed to grow.
Linari argues this paranoia carries an even more destructive risk: contempt for the vulnerable. He writes that fearing the different leads people to reject whatever disrupts their comfort, and that the foreigner, the disabled person, and the dispossessed provoke aversion because they serve as reminders of one's own vulnerability. Rather than taking on the pain of others, people construct what French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, who lived from 1913 to 2005, called screen motivations to justify discarding them.
The same dynamic plays out in everyday relationships, Linari argues, where the instinct becomes to neutralize or eliminate the other before being eliminated oneself. In this logic, the dissident or the fragile person is seen not as a peer to engage with but as a threat to eradicate.
Linari concludes that overcoming what he calls the trap of invisible knives requires the courage to dismantle paranoia, and that genuine ethical strength lies not in exterminating the fragility of others but in refusing to let fear destroy the capacity to receive it.
