Predators and Other Lessons for Living in Uncertain Times
The world is spinning faster than an unsupervised student in a science classroom holding a pedestal globe. I’m having a hard time keeping up, but let me try to search for words to make sense of it.
People are using big, heavy terms — fascism, authoritarianism, nazism — words that carry history and pain. But sometimes those words only overwhelm. They don’t help us know what to do in the present moment.
I want to offer you another lens, one that comes not from politics, but from biology. You don’t know this about me, but I have hobbies, and one of them is named after a sassy predator. The way predators hunt and the way living beings adapt to survive them provided me with a foundation for what I’m about to say to you. This isn’t about labeling anyone as prey or declaring that we live in a jungle. It’s about recognizing patterns that have existed for millennia and seeing that humans, unlike animals, can choose new responses.
Predators in nature have a few recognizable strategies. Some pursue, exhausting their target over time until the chase itself wears them down. Others ambush, waiting for the shock and surprise to paralyze their victim before they even realize what’s happening. Still others are opportunistic, taking advantage of distraction, division, or weakness. You can already see where I’m going. When I look at our political landscape, I see those same patterns: relentless pursuit of opponents, dramatic ambushes designed to shock and destabilize, and opportunistic targeting of those who are already vulnerable.
If that were the end of the story, it would be frightening. But the truth is, prey in the wild are never helpless. They develop warning calls, protective herds, camouflage, and escape strategies. And we, as human beings, have even greater gifts: empathy, creativity, solidarity, and imagination. Our work is to practice our own “antipredator” adaptations so we are not left frozen in fear.
One of the most insidious dangers is what historians call obedience in advance. You may know the Biblical story of the Israelites painting lamb’s blood on the doorframe so the danger would pass by. The instinct is the same today: if I shrink myself, if I stay silent, maybe the predator will not notice me. Many of my trans and nonbinary clients know this feeling well. They hide their truth, they dim their light, they lose opportunities not because of their abilities, but because employers are afraid of being associated with diversity (equity, inclusion) itself. The cruelty is that the predator doesn’t need to attack. Fear makes people police themselves.
But as the fable of the frog and scorpion reminds us, predators act according to their nature. Compliance does not guarantee safety. Silence does not guarantee survival. What does help is courage, and courage rarely appears in grand gestures. It shows up in small acts: documenting harm when it happens, telling the truth in trusted spaces, supporting one another so that no one is isolated in their fear. Courage grows stronger when it is shared.
Predators also train us to accept scraps. In the wild, scavengers feed off the leftovers of a kill. In our human systems, those leftovers are privileges framed as if they are gifts rather than rights. Over time, we learn to live off crumbs and call it normal. We forget what it means to feed ourselves. And when someone suggests that we begin again — to build our own systems of support, to create our own ways of caring for one another — it can feel insurmountable. Dependency has been engineered to feel permanent.
But we are not condemned to scraps. I’ve just returned from a trip to my adopted city Chicago where I was reminded that mutual aid funds, co-operatives, neighborhood food shares, peer support groups, even the small act of lending or borrowing are all ways of relearning how to feed ourselves. It is slow work. It is unglamorous work. But every act of self-sustenance takes power away from predators who rely on our dependency.
I want to pause here to say this clearly: this is not about Darwinism. This is not “survival of the fittest” and it is not about labeling you as prey. Humans are not trapped in the food chain. Predators in politics are not apex animals; they are people using strategies that are old and recognizable. Which is frustrating, boring, and exhausting. But we are not powerless victims. Our nature includes empathy, language, culture, and cooperation. Those gifts allow us to step outside the predator–prey binary entirely.
Still, it is tempting to think of ourselves as prey, defenseless against bullets, teargas, and SCOTUS. To say, the world is too strong, I cannot win, so what is the point? That temptation is dangerous because it leads to nihilism and I’ll disclose that I was in this space for about a month myself before reminding myself that predators thrive on apathy. That is why we must hold fast to the truth: we are not prey. We are part of a community. And together, communities are not weak. Communities are the strongest form of defense life has ever known.
There is a big difference between survival and courage. Survival is instinctive. It says: freeze, appease, keep your head down. In the short term, survival keeps you alive. But survival alone is not enough, not in the long run. Predatory systems thrive when people live only to survive.
Courage, on the other hand, is intentional. It means choosing to live by your values even while you are afraid. Courage does not mean recklessness or martyrdom. It means speaking when silence would be easier, showing up when hiding would be safer, feeding yourself when scraps are offered. Liberation takes time and effort. Courage does not erase fear; it simply refuses to let fear make every decision. And courage is contagious. One act inspires another, until the herd no longer scatters, but turns together.
Predators count on isolation, exhaustion, and dependency. Our answer is connection, rest, truth-telling, mutual care, and courage. You are not condemned to the role of prey. You are a living part of a community that can resist, endure, and even flourish.
We do not have to settle for mere survival. Our goal is uplifted preservation: preserving who we are, together, in ways that uphold dignity, courage, and life itself.
