Blog

Historical Background for the Project(s)

For a few decades I've had an impulse and vision and budding passion to make a grand synthesis of all humankind's knowledge on Fear. After various fits and starts at different forms of research and writing, none ever published, I saw that I had not the resources or energy and time and space in my life to accomplish this. I sought out other's to help with this project and envisioned several volumes would be needed to cover the topic. 

By the time I had finished my graduate school years (1998-2003), it struck me that I just had to publish a compendium of (at least) all the theories on Fear, and make some kind of classification of them, if not some critique. I began that research and building more forms for arranging this material but quickly, again, I realized it would be an exhaustive project to do alone and I even wondered at that point, with less enthusiasm than when I was younger, IF such a project would even been read or appreciated by the readers of the day. I concluded also that it would end up being quite a "negative" sounding set of volumes--as Fear is still perceived mostly negatively by humanity. So, I put the idea away and after several experiences working with a shawoman in Vancouver, doing healing work, a vision came to me. It would be better to research and write a compendium on what the world teachings are on FEARLESSNESS. Thus, a few years later, I published an ambitious (albeit, not exhaustive) volume, The World's Fearlessness Teachings [1]. 

That was 13 years ago. It's the best resource available for humanity on Fearlessness as a topic but also on my theorizing. I was less negative in outlook with addressing the Fear Problem humanity is facing and not well dealing with. The book title itself seemed more positive--fearlessness. All those things led to my great expectation for a great book to be recognized and utilized by humankind. This did not happen. No one has ever done a systematic in depth book review. And, the disappointments go on and on since it was published. I was not working in an academic institution, so as an independent scholar with no extra money to mass advertise this, and the publisher did little in distribution, I was left with a book that sold few copies and was 'dead in the water'. Which, didn't mean I was completely dispirited. Always, in the back of my mind, and I mention it in the Preface of The World's Fearlessness Teachings, that someday, I will write a companion two-set volumes on (a) The World's Fear Teachings -- a version of a kind of Summa Fearolgical (playing off the grand project of St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century with his Summa Theologica) and, (b) a friendly smaller popular version of both the essence findings of The World's Fearlessness Teachings and The World's Fear Teachings. 

Books of World Great Ideas

The World's Fear Teachings, encyclopedic kind of enterprise I initiated, soon ended, re-started [2] ...and again ran out of 'gas' at several points over these years. And still it is not near able to hobble out of my old files and basement and see the light of day. I realized I would need several assistant researchers and secretaries to help with this project and preferrably some big publisher interested too, whom would provide the pre-publication funding and support to make this come about. Of course, I dream of some angel donor coming along and paying for such a massive project. I have not found any of these supports yet. 

It was only this past month that I found a good book to read, which is an intellectual autobiography by Adler, entitled Mortimer J. Adler: Philosopher At Large, by Mortimer Adler (1902-1976) [3]. Adler inspired me and he shared about St. Thomas Aquinas's massive project to summarize all the great knowledge on certain topics in the 13th century work, Summa Theologica. Adler had an encyclopedic mind for collecting and organizing, classifying and analyzing human knowledge. It made me think more vividly that I have in my own humble way being trying to construct a Summa Fearologica (a term that I just coined while thinking of writing this blog). The essence of Aquinas, and then the modern Adler, was to validate there are great ideas of universal interest and wisdom to pass on from generations, knowledge from grand scope and depth, and summarized for others to read and study and apply to their current times. I definitely have always wanted to do that with the Great Idea: Fear (and Fearlessness). 

Back in 2004 when Corey Robin, a political historian at NYU, published his book Fear: The History of an Idea [4], this notion of "fear" being cast as an "idea" and not merely as an emotion, feeling (as psychology and philosophy and theology have done for centuries)--was very radical and I attempted to have conversations with Robin over emails but soon that was not mutually fruitful and my ambitions to be supported by someone in academia fell off again. I yet, knew that there was something there to continue to promote and re-think about. So, in the end, that is what I am putting forth to the world once again. Writing this blog to let you all know. The Summa Fearologica is real in my imaginary and I'd like to pass that on to others. Someday, maybe this will manifest, before I die or after. 

Addendum 1: 

In my current research/writing with Prof. Arie Kizel (Univ. of Haifa, Israel), we are going to attempt to write on the topic of "pedagogy of fear" as a concept (big idea) and analyze it. I have proposed to him, with his agreement to pursue it, that we include a section of that book on pedagothealogy. This large awkward sounding term is my formation of a pedagogy + theology perspective toward the nature and role of fear. Stayed tuned for more on that venture. 

Addendum 2: 

Do we need a 'Fear' Bible? [go to my article several years ago: https://fearlessnessmovement.ning.com/blog/big-d-discourse-do-we-need-a-fear-bible

Endnotes

1. Fisher, R. M. (2010). The world's fearlessness teachings: A critical integral approach to fear management/education for the 21st century. Lanham, MD: University Press of American/Rowman & Littlefied. 

2. I have never, since late 1989 found any publisher in the wide-world interested in publishing my "fear" books until 2022. However, when I found a publisher for my book The Fear Problematique--a book specifically dedicated to philosophy of education in a culture of fear today, it was a first of such sincere interest.. Thanks to Information Age Publishing, this book ought to come out on the shelves in the end of 2023 if all goes well. As far as the world's fear teachings, the most I got done was the rudimentary beginning of what I was calling The 'Fear' Encyclopedia. And it stalled; but I did publish in 1998 very small version of a 'Fear' Encyclopedia, which I self-published just as photocopied text and a cheap spiral bound booklet. This latter book really should have been entitled a 'Fear' Vocabulary. It has a good amount of research on words modifying "fear" and words "analogous" to fear that exist in English language. And, I explain each of them as part of humanity better understanding the "Kinds of Fear" that exist and with the aim of establishing a "Fear Nomenclature" as part of "Establishing a Common Language" for humanity (at least in English language). It was my fascination with taxonomies that led this book to be of some value. Again, I could not promote this book well and it went no where in public circulation; albeit, I have 14 copies of it in my library at home. All these self-published efforts are published by the Canadian publishing house, In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute (owned by R. M. Fisher and B. Bickel, registered since c. 1991). 

3. Adler, M. J. (1977/92). Mortimer J. Adler: Philosopher at large: An intellectual autobiography. NY: Collier Books. 

4. Robin, C. (2004). Fear: The history of an idea. NY: Oxford University Press. 

For my latest (over an hour long) intense 2023 interview by John Coleman, founder of Apocatastasis Institute : 

go to: 

https://www.bitchute.com/video/BRKDoZLiHri8/?comment=gATYD3m8fRasUFVN9c8bHHYdIpm05XtWYCKq

Any philosophical inquiry into "fear" (with as diverse of meanings that it has)--has to include a historical and philosophical look at what people (e.g., like Hobbes) have done with the notion of "fear." In modern W. thought/philosophy, Thomas Hobbes (18th century) is a leading figure in this reconstruction. Today, there are a few thinkers, like myself, also involved in deconstructions and reconstructions of "fear." I just found this Abstract of a paper in Russian, that I wish was in English, because it looks fascinating, so I thought I would share the Abstract here (published in 2017 in Journal of Philosophy 21(4), 602-11. 

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Certainly this raises interesting questions, as part of a discourse and set of debates (mostly in social philosophy) as to what is the nature and role of "fear" in human societies and what should it be for optimal and healthy functioning? I think Hobbes, amongst others, was trying to make a more positive association for fear and even for adopting a fear-based positioning in terms of motivational priorities in the ways to construct a so-called rational (modern state)--society. There are lots of problems in my way of thinking about this strategy on his part, and it seems this Russian academic also has his problems with Hobbes. 

In my own Fear Management Systems theory (FMST), I have classified this fear-positivism manouever as 'common' for the last few hundred years, and especially common in the late 20th century into the 21st century. But I have also noted, both its valuable contribution and its potential pathological shadow dimension, based on FMST. Hobbesian thinking is a means of fear management itself--that is, a system of understanding and managing fear--with a particular agenda, in a particular historical and ideological context. Thus, it is not so simple to just say, oh, now we have not just irrational fear (the common view)--but there is a rational fear too. Not so simple, and that move of Hobbes and many others who follow this fear-positivism ideology do not even realize they are using an ideology to construct within, in order to rationalize "fear" and that itself can be very problematic for a lot of reasons, beyond the scope of my short blogpost here. I classify Hobbesian fear-thinking (philosophy) as FMS-4 --based on a spectrum of FMSs (i.e., fear management systems evolved from the beginning of human consciousness, history and before)--whereby, I see the spectrum having 10 identifiable FMSs 0-9. For more on my classification system, you can go to Fisher (2010). 

Reference

Fisher, R. M. (2010). The world's fearlessness teachings: A critical integral approach to fear management/education for the 21st century. Lanham, MD.: University Press of America/Rowman & Littlefield.

Latest Youtube channel video"Fearlessness Path (2023): Role of Napping"

Dr. Fisher explores his newest discovery contemplating on his disciplined napping practice. He shares his first encounter with "Fear and Fearlessness" teaching in the Shambhala ancient wisdom tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and how over the years he has come to understand it, let go of tradition and modify it. He offers a small piece of his path of fearlessness work--his own approach to re-educating the Western public on this essential knowledge and guidance. He has been napping regularly in late afternoons, for the past 20 years. The question is: what is their to learn (soulfully) from doing it? Welcome to 2023...

Not that I have been overly keen ever on how clinical psychology has constructed an approach to fear study and research, nonetheless, this field of inquiry cannot be dismissed easily, nor should its findings be ignored. However, they ought to be critiqued, and from many perspectives. 

"Fear" is hard enough to define, and even the psychologists have debated its definition over the decades if not longer. "Fear" for clinical psychology has always been divided into "normal fear" and "abnormal fear." Typically, the measures of such a distinction (categorization) is based on empirical easy to see parameters, like physiology and behaviors. The latter are analyzed as fitting a 'normal' pattern or not. Anything not 'normal' is considered a pathology, basically. 

But as reasonable and practical as that kind of binary distinction may appear on first sight, it raised the issue of what is "normal" and how would one actually know that "normal" at one time of history is truly "healthy" --as it seems to be assumed in clinical psychology discourse? Surely, "normal fears" are somehow developmentally, evolutionarily, and culturally normal because that's what most people go through. They are assumed as universal developmental stages of fears showing up and predominating at one point, then shifting to other fears at another developmental stage for humans. 

Now, the problem for me and many other critics of the psychology of fear (especially, the clinical biomedical schools of thought)--is that it is still not clear that normal fears are healthy and natural? What is the difference between "natural" and "normal"? And, typically, clinical psychology does not make that distinction and conflates those two concepts. Which I think is a deadly mistake, to put it bluntly. But, here in this blog I'll not cover my arguments for this problem and one can read my views on this elsewhere in my articles and books and videos over the years. I merely thought I would put up an article published in 2000, interestingly, which does a 100 years synopsis review of the literature on "normal fear" (meaning, normal fears people have developmentally). I'll let you decide for yourself the value of this, the good and the not so good uses of this kind of knowledge about fear. [my curiousity: how is "fearlessness" part of this clinical review? because, how can one look at fear without looking at fearlessness?] 

gullonenormalfear2000.pdf is by Gullone, E. (2000). The development of normal fear: A century of research. Clinical Psychology Review, 20(4), 429-51.

I am pleased to announce today is the release of our new book "Art-Care Practices for Restoring the Communal"

Barbara (my life-partner) and I have undertaken a study of how people responded to COVID-19 "lock down" experience for a year; our main methodology was the use of Spontaneous Creation Making (SCM) as an arts-based and aesthetic practice, of which we have used since the late 1980s and it has been called a "fear vaccine". We've created this book for people to understand how art and ritual and community-building are all part of how one builds a resilient self/other relationship, especially arts are well-suited to this when under duress and extreme fearful and terrifying conditons (e.g., the trauma of COVID-19 lock down in 2020-21). 

Please share this post and help this book get out there in the world. It documents the process, the impacts of online teaching and nourishing a group as well as it offers a guide of how to do this process of SCM in your own relationships and communities and groups--any time. 

Professor Arie Kizel, Ph.D., Vice-Dean for Teaching, Head, Pedagogical Development of Educational Systems MA Program
Dept. of Learning and Instructional Sciences, University of Haifa, Israel and 
Co-founder and President, Mediterranean Association for Philosophy with Children; current Editor, Studies in Education: J. of Study and Research in Education [Hebrew] and he serves on the Board of Reviewers of International Journal of Fear Studies. 

Dr. Kizel and I have been connecting for the last few years around the importance of teaching about the nature and role of fear in education generally, philosophy of education, and more recently in teacher education specifically.

He and I have both utilized the concept of "pedagogy of fear" in which we use the term as a negative form of pedagogy that is not liberational. I wanted to introduce him and his work to the FM ning community because it is rare in my experience to find any professional educator (especially, in a mainstream university) who has taught about the pedagogy of fear and the difficulties in changing it. Kizel, is rare in the field, in having written three+ articles on "fear" directly and being committed to advancing the profile of this problem and approach to education. I so appreciate that effort. Recently, we have decided to co-author a book on this topic (in progress). 

I am also excited to work with him because of his past 15 years or so researching and publishing on important topics in the field of Education, as he has developed expertise in the history of Israeli education (e.g., textbook analysis and revision), and he studies problems of totalitarianism, the Holocaust, monologizm and how to bring about pluralistic humanizing narratives back into education; he has become a world-recognized leader in dialogical pedagogy and ethical issues regarding philosophy and children; he explores how to better respect children (e.g., critiquing adult fear-projection of shadow conflicts and overall pathologizing of children) and their rights--and, how to teach philosophy with children, alternative education and mainstream education borders of exchanges, philosophical inquiry generally, Jewish-Arab affairs from an educational (historical, political) perspective and how to make education more inclusive, including those with special needs. I am most interested in his work to build a healthy sense of meaning and concomitant responsibility in teachers and learners across the board.

I appreciate his engagement at times with "counter-education" philosophies as in with his colleague Ilan Gur-Ze'ev and others. These have been issues that have long interested me as a critical, creative and caring educator going back into the late 1970s onward. As being someone who teaches teachers how to think better, it is inspiring to know he is out there and influencing teachers who will go out into the school systems and beyond schools, influencing democratic and civic society. Kizel is an eclectic educator to watch in the future and learn from and I am curious how his views of "fear" (and fearlessness) will grow over the years. 

For those interested go to his blog for a listing of all his publications: https://ariekizel.blogspot.com/

References re: explicit Pedagogy of Fear topic by Arie Kizel 

__2015. Pedagogy of fear as paralyzing men's questions. In Yesiayahu Tadmor and Amir Frayman (eds.), Education--Men's Questions (pp. 214-23). Tel Aviv: Mofet [Hebrew]

__2016. Pedagogy out of fear of philosophy as a way of pathologizing children. J. of Unschooling and Alternative Learning, 10(20), 28-47.

__2021. Philosophy w/ children as a way of overcoming the 'shadow adults cast over childhood' and the 'pedagogy of fear.' International Journal of Fear Studies, 3(2), 13-24.

__(Ed.) 2023. Philosophy with children and teacher education: Global perspectives on critical, creative and caring thinking. Routledge. [see specifically his "Pedagogy of Fear" (pp. xii-xxv) and "The Fear at the Heart of the Pedagogy of Fear" (pp. xxvi-xxix) in Editor Introduction.] 

***

Here is a good article of practical application of how to teach basic fear management (emotional regulation) utilizing Nature (e.g., a bee colony in the classroom)

go to: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2022/12/16/holiday-fund-bee-brave-program-teaches-kids-to-manage-fear?mc_cid=cfbb324ec1&mc_eid=67ddc82fe6

A Review of Mr. Desh Subba's work by Abdullateef Sadiq, Theoretician and Generalist Writer, Nigeria

Let's begin with a story.

A king sent for a Man who he heard feared no one. Well, the king hearing that, although he has won many battles and made waste to land inhumanly, killed people and slaves and closed ones without second thought. The king summoned him immediately. Having on the top of his fence, heads of conquered kings and great rebels as trophies, with their wives as his concubines. Firstly, the king tries to confirm if the man knew what he has done by asking the man that fears nothing (let's call him F) if he knew him, the terrible king and all the stories of his ruthless and blood thirsty nature.

Mr F said, 'yes of course, I know you and heard all about you, and so what? You only conquered lands for fear that other kings might dominate you, or we might see you as inferior, or that according to the tradition of kingship and it's mythology, a display of brutality and war must satisfy the myth and unconscious forces of our custom and traditions. Also my lord, your imagination also is your master, and if it means by filling up a large field with human heads to prove over your inferiority complex of your personality type, you would do so. My lord, all these, you do, because of the system and instincts of fear revolving around your present life progress and spiritual station. If your position torments you, then your fears and it's expression by the super ego or ambition are your persona in this throne which it might not be your cosmic harmony.'

But the king, fearing more that someone knew something he never wished anyone knew. That someone knew his fear. A personal issue and subjective. But not yet. An objective and social issue lies also. " If People knew that the King wasn't feared, so they too were afraid that if that is so, their whole world view was a lie".

But the king, must satisfy his inner peace to still be the king. He had to prove to himself that all creatures feared him. He inquired if Mr F had a family or friend or loved one. They said no. So next was torture and starvation. But the man proved to enjoy pain, and welcomed the will to death, so even hunger was something he welcomed. His hands were cut, but he had nothing to lose. He had a disorder which made him feel no pain. The king was in fear, for even if he banished him out of existence the fact already existed that someone never feared him. The king committed suicide, because he was afraid to live life as such with such a fact. The king wasn't FEARLESS.

Here below are some remarks I made.

Now, I Present my Reflections on Mr Desh Subba's book on the 'Philosophy of Fearism" (Abdullateef Sadiq, Theoretician and Generalist Writer, Nigeria)

1. It's is, to use an institutional metaphor, an anthropology of the various human conditions and how they act and react to them that arouse fear. Sure, I skipped other early chapters because I belief we know the basics. The hierarchy and systems of schema such as an organization, the relationship of the mind to objects and realities that have an affect hold on him resulting to fear. They having the "appearance" based in the evolutionary epoch, mode of living (or production in Marxist terms) and culture of religion, philosophy, civilization (science, art and technology).......all masking the various modes of fear. But at the end, you tend to make a classification of fear. The dispensable, the gradation (minimum or maximum) and the one that perhaps seems to be innate (such as sickness, death, overwhelming of cosmic force and uncertainty of time).

"if you really want to make a field or a discipline of "Fearism" you would need to systematize the whole discourse"

2. On your use of concept and categories. You take the unconscious as an existing and autonomous realm. Although, with your use of some "Asian or Eastern" (I don't clearly agree with such demarcation as the history of thought has led me to believe) philosophies that unconscious is put in relation with some mysteries hidden as forces yet conceptualized but intuited by feeling of cosmic/material rhythm and sensual mastery of the body and environment (hence the "Asian"). This step, if I am correct in reading you is accepted to me as far as it remains open as a conjecture and to be tested by experience. There are many mysteries which I am sincere not to deny.

But the "idea" of post modernism and postmodern thinkers at least I might accept that Derrida took such a pledge, but not with Foucault whose text you lodge into such matrix. If you read his "Archaeology of knowledge" and also his "The Order of Things" (where he made some empirical analysis of the instability of "isms" and the arbitrariness of sciences and programs as "Modes of Discourse" each with its strategy of "Formation of Objects" you would see that by inference he would not be classified as such or even imply any post modernism). To confirm this, just see the second chapter of the "Archaeology of Knowledge". Perhaps the best way to put this is Foucault reply to Derrida critique of his 'History of Madness', this was imposed in his other edition as a reply to Derrida letter. It shows the difference and also that foucault doesn't practice philosophy neither sees it as a foundation neccessary for knowledge;

"What I have tried to show (but it was probably not clear to my own eyes when I was writing the History of Madness) is that philosophy is neither historically nor logically a foundation of knowledge; but that there are conditions and rules for the formation of knowledge to which philosophical discourse is subject, in any given period, in the samemanner as any other form of discourse with rational pretension." APPENDIX III Page 578. Routledge Publisher. Ed. By Jean Khalfa.

Also on your use of categories, perhaps, if you really want to make a field or a discipline of "Fearism" you would need to systematize the whole discourse, but I understand why the text is like that, with its literary structure still leaving windows here and there, because as you made clear in the beginning that other works and findings in different areas and by different people are making progress towards that "ism". That means they are under the research program of "Fearism". Well, the only addition I might say is that, it should be open to criticism and falsification of the concept any time, experience is the only thing that contradicts it's own results. This would help to keep an attitude of objectivity and awareness of bias.

3. On findings, you made (especially at your ending notes), an elaborate clinical and medical collections of observations, studies and professional reports of the conditions of life which fear is actualized either from a psychic, bodily, environmental (or "natural") and institutional source. That agreed and it is corroborated by many psychological, sociological and philosophical (beyond, Jasper, existentialist, Nietzsche and psychoanalysis schools) works I have tried to read to the best of my time.

COMMENTS

1. Your work helps to bring to Man the unconscious (which in strict psychological epistemology is just the mental process, habits and the contemporary and historical institutions known and unknown that have a grip on our social fabric of culture and life, hence the mystical feeling of it) workings and it's varieties to the consciousness of Man. By making it clearly, showing its various historical forms and also how even in the superstructure maintained by various elites and ruling class whatever their realm (science, legality, spirituality or politics and art) the idea of fear is almost innate and might (and is used) for the betterment of society or to its detriment or exploitation. I applaud this remarkable achievement. This step I believe, in your own version is quite novel and made apparent for those who wish to know and take life serious.

2. Another progress is it's collection of wealth of facts and making notifications here and there in different fields of discourse how "fear" relates them together. Also, I would add that a progress was made (also, as far as I have seen, a novel one indeed,) is the skill of making an elaborate classification of various feilds of human experience and also animal experience (for example on your analysis of fear in organism from micro to others as they adapt, feed and react to environment, but, whatever the notion or "nature" of animal mind might be still remains a mystery.) This was done at the beginning of your book which from there you took on the life or nature of consciousness basing it not on discourse or "knowledge" or "experience" but on what I might surely go with George Santayana as "Animal Faith". An elaborate philosophical discourse of the fact of consciousness playing a minute role and only called upon in the existence of animal life for survival and purposive (problem solving sure, a sign of "fear" also I think) reason can be found elsewhere. For example, to be found in the first two chapter of Alfred North Whitehead's "The Function of Reason" and also the second section of his cosmology of "Process of Reality".

Again in the work of that forgotten sociologist and philosopher L.T. Hobhouse's first part of "Development and Purpose: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Evolution". Where we see on "conation" as the organic reaction and action towards an impulse but through adaptation it gets purposive (hence the adventure of conscious life beginning, for consciousness even in everyday experience is aroused to respond with the power of language for 'higher animals' like us, it deals with the discourse of essence related to the aim). See William Mcdoughal's "Social Psychology" to see how this description finds its form into the matrix of the whole social fabric.

"A work like Mr Desh Subba's, is surely deserving our serious attention especially if we choose to deal with it without the tradition of verbal magic and the cult of terminologies which are a true hindrance to fruiltful intellectual progress Indeed, a work to be revered."

Dr. Isaac Madok

To great extent, fear can be attributed to all sectors of development in human and in a civilization of humanity as large. It can be said rightly that majority of people are driven by fear in their lives. However, a section of people who matured rationally are not driven by fear rather than by knowledge, curiosity and these are philosophers and scientists. The driving factor if I can express in this way, is knowledge, to know and that the true aspect of humanity not fear.

I disagree with you (Subba) in page 21 where you mentioned that knowledge is a production of fear. Deep inside man, there is a drive of knowledge.

Kant argues, “human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer”.

It is specifically for those who are conscious of their consciousness. Very few people are conscious of their consciousness. Every human has this reason but some suppress it for they are frightened of the unknown. Those who are courageous they accept reason and continue to answer questions which are challenging them.

I agree with you in the aspect that consciousness colliding with object produce knowledge. Most of the development in this world is a result of collision of objects with man. However, there is some questions or curiosity that are invisible which take place in human mind and seeking answer to those concerns and curiosities drive man to know why are they existing. This part is not driven by fear.

Knowledge does not generate fear rather it generates confidence and satisfaction.

Again, I strongly disagree with your claim that philosophy is not possible without fear in page 23.

It is not truthful, philosophy exists and it is possible without fear. Philosophy is love of wisdom and knowledge. For sake of philosophy, philosophers do choose philosophy and that is the reason very view people do study philosophy. It is the same that very view peoples are philosophers.

I admire the work and I support most of the statements that people without fear they cannot develop and cannot discover the goodness in them. Fear is needed to free some people from themselves to discover how great they are and to giver chance to others to grow.

Dr. Isaac Madok

Associate Professor of philosophy

South Sudan Christian University

St. Paul Major Seminary

Juba-South Sudan

Email: isaacmadok@gmail.com

WhatsApp: +211915914982

1. Immanuel Kant, "Critigue of Pure Reason", editors, PaulGuyer, & Allen W. Wood, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013}.

Famous social critic, prof. Noam Chomsky, in his 90s, has seen a lot of the world and studied carefully its current trajectory. In his latest interview the other day, 

he notes, in regard to how elites are making decisions around profit, war and the future: "If you think about the likely future [for humans], what will happen is we're finihsed; this is going on all over; it's beyond belief." -N. Chomsky (Dec. 12, 2022)

Barbara S. Stengel, professor of philosophy of education 

It's rare to get a philosopher of any kind to talk about fear in any depth, and even rarer to find a philosopher of education (a John Dewey pragmatist scholar) to engage in depth in the study of fear. I was glad to find Dr. Stengel's work a few years ago and noted that in the field of Education she is one of the key thinkers on the topic. So, I had a dialogue with her today in FearTalk 18A on my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QPH28Gfvzo

In particular, this talk is about how we both would approach pre-service teachers who are at university getting their teacher's degrees. So, I think it is very inspiring that her work with teachers, e.g., what she calls "Facing Fear" and "Fearless Teachers" is out there to learn from. Check her work out, and this talk, of which her and I have agreed to do a second one soon (FearTalk 18B). 

For details of Stengel's professional website and CV go to: https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/bio/barbara-stengel

https://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/docs/pdf/faculty/vita/2017/Stengel-Barbara-CV.pdf

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This is an excerpt of a very good article to study... for full length, go to: https://ecbuddhism.blogspot.com/2009/04/fear-fearlessness-what-buddhists-teach.html

Any sincere history of the Fearlessness Movement, will be international and diverse in its tracking down those thinkers across cultures and time who valued and acted upon the critical importance of fear shaping the direction of humanity and civilization itself. Equally, such a central valuation of fear leads to those thinking about the appropriate solution to the Fear Problem we all face. Fearlessness is one of the obvious routes to such a solution and remaking of civilization upon a new order of principles and practices of liberation as opposed to oppression. 

The phote above from 1920s is of Alice A. Bailey and her husband Foster Bailey, and their role in not only the advancement of theosophy, an esoteric philosophy of life, but also their role in The League for Fearlessness (founded in 1931). I have studied this document of the founders and founding of The League and have written about its importance elsewhere on this blogsite ning and in many published articles and in my books. Because of a request from a colleague today online, I decided it is time that I finally put up (and make public) the entirety of the rare League for Fearlessness original brochure.docx that was my big discovery during doctoral research on the relationship of fear and fearlessness.  

Also, I recommend readers interested in this League and the theosophical connections to the Fearlessness Movement and my own thinking, go to an interview I did with Steve Nation, of Lucis Trust, a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Id7lI6rM0

At the conclusion of the talk with Steve Nation he says, "Fearlessness as a real cosmic energy....Fearlessness is without a doubt, one of the higher archetypes for all traditions, all professions." 

FEARIATRY, is a play from the book of "psychiatry"--as an overt word-game and conceptual connection between the two. "Feariatry" first coined by Desh Subba, the founder of philosophy of Fearism (see his 2014 classic book), knew on the one hand exactly what he was expressing with this 'call' to begin a new theory, study and practice of feariatry that would complement, if not some day replace, psychiatry as we know it. On the other hand, he did not know what feariatry would actually shape out like, and he wasn't going to lead that formation.

Subba is no psychiatrist or psychologist, and this raises the question: Who is he to be so rebelliously confident that the entire domain of psychology and psychiatry need to change?--and more so, need to transform their very identity and ways. It's a grand sweeping gesture for anyone to make. I loved it when I read it and had already intuited in my own work on fear and fearlessness that, indeed, there was something fundamentally wrong with these two fields and the BioMedical Paradigm they rely on, that is, if we ever want to truly have liberated humans and societies on this planet. Like Subba (and others), I was a quiet advocate for years to revision psychiatry and psychology--as they are accepted legitimate in the mainstream and by the State. In fact, they are 'the State' and its long-arm of intervention into how human beings 'should be' and how they should be fixed when they are no longer 'normal' (i.e., how they should be). This for me, is a very contested territory, and reaks with ideologies of "normal" and the control systems to maintain such. Yes, a politics of psychiatry and psychology cannot be ignored, in our search to better understand human behavior, etc. 

I encourage people to read the reasons for Subba (2014) making the claim for a lot of changes in concepts, fields of inquiry and disciplines because of his discovery of the core nature and role of fear in life and human life in particular. Philosophy of Fearism was his beginning articulation of that primacy of "fear" and the valuation imperative that discovering fear as such one ought to revise everything--even change our language which has gone away from acknowledging this primacy of fear (e.g., see also the fearist Samuel Gillian's (2002, 2005) work on this loss of fear from the English language as a cover-up of distortion due to mind conditioning, propaganda and ideologies). The primacy of fear is the central philosophical and theoretical driver behind Subba, and myself, and our work in fear management/education. 

BACK TO SUBBA and a fearism perspective (a fearist lens)--and, one now is reconfiguring psychiatry and psychology--based on the fear findings. It is a new awareness, a new paradigm of fear, that is being 'called' to bring about a better (hypothetically) psychiatry and psychology to the 21st century. I have totally got on board with this project too. FEARIATRY is particularly intriguing to me. You may search that term in the upper right box of the FM ning and you'll see some of my posts on feariatry over the years. 

BACK TO PSYCHOANALYSIS--AND OTTO RANK (a post-Freudian psychoanalyst and theorist)-- as I have always liked Otto Rank since my reading of his work in the early 1980s, and off and on, I am now reading his 1941 book "Beyond Psychology" (also once named, in the text "beyond individual psychology"--but he also meant beyond social psychology as well)-- the Preface and first chapter pages of this book are intriguing. I kept writing in the margins just tonight that "this sounds like a good place to start a theory of feariatry" --and so on. Indeed, I find a good deal of his thought, experience and theorizing fascinating as grounds for a fearist-revisionist accounting of what psychiatry and psychology need to change. I will do another blogpost on this soon, but just wanted to give you all a heads-up, and to get you maybe starting to think about Feariatry with some seriousness--as it is one of the least developed paths/areas/pillars under the Philosophy of Fearism and Fearology trajectory (i.e., Subba-Fisher's work)...

A small hint: Rank is very big on bringing back to center (or at least to 'balance') "irrational" [1] along with "rational"--and, he believes that is the only way to human health, sanity and a good life worth living. He is a psychoanalyst who actually undermines psychoanalysis (and psychology generally) by the time he wrote this last very honest and penetrating critique in 1941--his last book before he died. For me, I see his 'call' for "beyond psychology" as exactly a route to foreshadowing a "feariatry" (and fearanalysis), etc. But Rank saw through this problem, and named "fear" and "fearless" as key players in his revisioning--so that very much excites me. Again, I'll write out more and cite his work in another blog soon. 

 End Note

1. By "irrational" he means just the same as "the natural" (e.g., "natural self"); in my theorizing, with my partner Dr. Barbara Bickel, we often call this "arational." 

i, would simply like to know the pratical applications of the Fearlessness Movement. Yes, i, am reading and researching, but i, must admit the practicality has eluded me. A little help please.

I'm so glad Dr. Mate' has his priorities right! He has seen "fearless" self-inquiry, individually and collectively as essential to overcoming the massive distortions of reality going on that are costing us our existence here on planet earth. If so many millions continue to buy his books and listen to his talks, as he is a 'guru' today in popular media and talk shows... may they all take a listen to this quote he ends his book with--as he sets out a vision for positive change. The "fearless" propositionhe calls for in this book is of course 'not normal' at all--not when we are talking about an authentic fearless self-inquiry not some superficial or romantic, bravado or be courageous or let's all just love each other and things will be better. Mate' is pointing towards so much more--and wiser truths. Yet, unfortunately, he doesn't philosophize on fear itself, a common error of teachers of all kinds. How will we understand fearless(ness) if we don't fully understand fear? 

BTW, those who, like Mate' are very familiar with AA's 12 Steps, will note that the "fearless self-inquiry" above spoken by Mate' is an echo of AA's Step 4: 

Step 4 of Alcoholics Anonymous encourages one to make, “A searching and fearless moral inventory” of themselves. In effect, this step is designed to help those struggling with addiction examine their character and behaviors. Through the process of discovering the true nature of personal character, a participant learns to understand identify the weaknesses that may have helped contribute to alcohol addiction. When one identifies these weaknesses, it allows them to begin to formulate plans to overcome them and changes their habits in the future. As one might expect, searching yourself so intimately can be a deeply uncomfortable and challenging endeavor. Luckily, there are processes for practicing Step 4 of AA.

His new book "The Myth of Normal" published in 2022 with his son Daniel Mate' as secondary author [erratum: not "2020 New Book" in the poster above, it is 2022]

Experience has shown that many of the strong men who have fallen, were as the results of love and not fear.

It is only love that can conquer fear. The Fear-force is strong, but the Love -force is stronger.

For a short summary of my FEAR MANAGEMENT THEORY (FMT) see my youtube video just published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Na-4iuR7w

Dr. R. Michael Fisher, fearologist-educator-researcher, is a Canadian independent scholar since 1989. He has constructed in this video the Presuppositions and Theory aspects for what he calls Fear Management Theory and spins it in and out of some aspects of Terror Management Theory (based on other researchers and theorists in social psychology). For those keen on theory, and implications for policy, philosophy, and other aspects of a good social life, this is a great short summary of Fisher's theory (still in progress and still requiring a lot more "testing" for validity). Fisher ultimately wishes to work with TMT researchers/theorists and combine the theories to create a potent re-education of human beings. No small task.

1. 1. The only true religion is love for all beings. – Michael Eneyo.

2. Religion doesn’t necessarily make somebody a good person. It only makes you to be committed to what you believe in. What makes you a good person is being a good moral agent. Being a good moral being is more honorable than being a religious . – Michael Eneyo.

3 If you kill or fight a fellow human being because he is not of your religion, then religion has become the reason for division instead of unity. The aim of religion is to unite and not to divide. – Michael Eneyo.

4. If religion should make you hate your fellow human being, then staying without a religion will be a true religion. – Michael Eneyo.

5. If all religion worshippers are sincere and also respect the tenet of religion, they will adopt only one doctrine; the doctrine of love for all. Then a Muslim will freely worship in a Christian church and a Christian in the Hindu temple in their own unique way without conflict, since they are practicing the same doctrine of love. – Michael Eneyo.

6. Wearing of suit or jacket is not a criterion to becoming a true pastor or a born again. Even Jesus Christ didn’t abandon his native way of dressing. Our traditional wears are good enough for preaching. It’s high time we stop acting the western script of dressing in the name of religion. Be a true African even on pulpit. – Michael Eneyo.

7. When you go for offering in the church, you search for the lowest denomination of money as offering to the Lord, but when you pray for money from God, you ask him to surprise you with millions in dollar. Let your conscience be a judge between you and God. – Michael Eneyo.