English lecturer Dr. Bhawani Shankar Adhikari ( Bhawani Adhikari) the one who finished his PhD in the 'portrayal of Punishment and Fear (Fearism) in Vedavyasa's The Garudamaha Puranam and in Dante Alighieri's Inferno'. He is an author of EcoFearism and Exotic Fearology. He is the first scholar who successfully applied Fearism (Philosophy of Fearism) in his research thesis in the world. In his thesis, he jointly mixed up Eastern and Western myths. I congratulate him on his innovative work.
As Senior Editor, IJFS, I'm now taking submissions for the next International Journal of Fear Studies: IJFS seventh call.docx
To see Back Issues since 2018 of the journal: https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/110103
NOTE: As of January 11, 2022, PRISM (Univ. of Calgary) library is no longer able to carry my work or house this journal on their digital archives and open access system. The major reason is that my interim tenure as an "affiliate faculty" with U of C is now over and not being renewed. So, IF you know of another digital home for the journal let me know. r.michaelfisher52@gmail.com
Hello, all Fearlessness Movement ning community members. I also sent a group email to all.
Currently, 116 FM ning members are signed up.
The FM ning costs $300 US /yr. I and other gifters have funded this project/and ning since I started it in 2015.
I cannot afford out of my pocket that much money each yr., as I am a senior with little gov't pension.
So, to keep the ning going, please consider a donation this 2022. Thanks to those who have contributed in other years.
Send, me an email: r.michaelfisher52@gmail.com (FM ning host)
We can arrange on email, a form for your donation by e-transfer, cheque, etc.
-Best to you all in the New Year! And, let's contribute to a lively community on the FM ning...
-Michael
Early 1991, Morocco, N. Africa - R. Michael Fisher in contemplation.
(photo by Barbara Bickel)
What Kind of Philosopher Am I?
I FOLLOW the trail(s) of words/concepts, like, fear, fearlessness--and, I end up in places to learn about it and have it change me, even if just a little. As cultural critic Sara Ahmed said in an interview, noting she is involved in philosophical inquiry and likes it, but it is questions and words/concepts that are her focus and guide--declaring herself not really a trained philosopher at all, nor motivated by philosophy in an academic disciplinary way: "I’m interested in the world making nature of words and concepts, philosophy becomes one of the places I go...among others...". [1]
Making of a Naturalist-Moral Philosopher (1952- )
Life vs. Death, Good vs. Evil, have long intrigued me; since 1989 I found another way to express this great archetypal Battle of opposites, and situated it as Love vs. Fear. The latter, has been by far the most fruitful investigation. The ethical implications of how we are motivated by deep forces as humans truly is my passionate inquiry—it is what I bring to the field of Education.
Although some have called me so, I have never really labeled myself a “philosopher,” never mind a moral philosopher. Firstly, my thoughts about calling myself a “moral philosopher” (wanna be), is that I had a fundamentalist Christian family system informing from my dad’s side, and I was raised implicitly in a Judeo-Christian (Abrahamic) culture, with insidious religious roots in the Middle-East and its grand sacred myths of divine leaders and newly emergent religious doctrines. My entire K-12 education in public secular schooling, was in fact, not so secular and not free of a controlling religious power regime in Canada. I had to stand and say the Lord’s Prayer (from the Bible) since I was very young until junior high school.
Secondly, I think of my deep dive into the Environmental Movement, and graduating from high school when the first Earth Day was announced and celebrated on this planet. The 1960s-70s consciousness transformation and (r)evolution was in the background of my “growing up.” Yet, one other thought, not so obvious to me is always likely shaping my philosophy. It is WW-II and the rise and fall of the Third Reich (Nazi Germany)—the invasion of fascism in modern times—leading to the Holocaust and a devastating assault on modern assumptions of rationality and human decency. What has civilization to offer, if it could not prevent Nazism? Another Reign of Terror, as in the eras across history that show “progress” and “democracy” come with a heavy price—and, a lot of fear (terror). With my mom being an immigrant (war bride) from Belgium to Canada, and a survivor of Nazi occupation for over three years when she was in her teens, it is not surprising I have a penchant to become a moral philosopher. Yet, we shall see here in this section just what kind of philosopher that is, in my own customized version.
From some autobiographical sketching it is obvious that some of my family influences were significant in my upbringing. I talked of three ‘best’ teachers, my dad, my older brother and Nature. It seems obvious to me that informally I was very much a naturalist philosopher budding, from the earliest days of my child-play and experimenting on the prairie escarpment of the Bow River valley, in Calgary, AB, Canada, of my most formative 2-8 years of life. I was a “nature boy” and grew to become a “nature lover.” With my love for and defense of the “Natural” world, it is not surprising that the first serious (mostly Western) philosophy I was attracted to in my spare-time, in my early-to-mid 20s, were biological philosophical writers (e.g., René Dubos, Lyall Watson, E. O. Wilson) and environmental/eco-philosophical writers (e.g., Albert Schweitzer, Arnie Naess, Gregory Bateson, Lynn White, Valerius Geist, etc.)—with roots in the American Transcendentalism philosophy stream (e.g. Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, etc.)—and, then specifically, E. F. Schumacher’s (practical-economic) Buddhist philosophy. Other Eastern philosophers and spiritual teachers (e.g., Alan Watts, Chöygam Trungpa, Ken Wilber, etc.) all had their early influence as I turned 28 years of age and started my Education career track....
[extract of draft for a chapter in my new book in progress, The Fear Problematique: Role of Philosophy of Education in Speaking Truths to Powers in a Culture of Fear ].
Notes
1. From "Sara Ahmed: Dresher Conversations" (Mar. 20, 2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zadqi8Pn0O0
Review: Desh Subba's Trans Philosophism by Nicola Tenerelli ForPsiCom - University of Bari -
It is Desh Subba's essay, Trans Philosophism, published in 2021 by Xlibris, English language, is a study that could initially appear as a philosophy of history: "What is presented herein: public made law, rule, constitution, state, court, and government to direct, control and conduct the societies that they developed via theism, the theory of evolution, political theory, Marxism, and now Fearism. Lineage, tribe, caste, and nationality were constituted later. Now, we are living within its periphery. " (p. 47)
Desh Subba's work takes on particular interest because it offers thinkers an unprecedented reinterpretation of the history of philosophy, made by a Nepalese thinker who passionately digs to verify the cornerstones of Western thought, making them his own and reinterpreting them. It often happens that they ask me for an interpretative judgment; I point out that my philosophical training is linked to Western culture; my mind and I are damned tied to a logical structure, a mindset, inescapably Western. It is impossible to take a further logical position, although the strength of philosophical thought is expressed primarily if it translates into freedom, intellectual autonomy. In fact, the goal of philosophy is achieved when the mind takes on a further point of view, knowing full well that it cannot transcend itself and its own essentiality. The substratum of the mind is the rootedness it possesses in nature - time and place - a kind of Aristotelian power (δύναμις) which produces its otherness while remaining linked to its life. Reading Desh Subba's essay first of all invites us to discover what Trans Philosophism is.
Nicola Tenerelli
Universita degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro
With narrative wisdom and philosophical competence, the Author guides the reader in the unprecedented analysis of thinkers such as Hobbes and Marx, Sartre and Foucault, Heidegger and Derrida.
The hidden purpose of the mighty volume is to show the contemporary subject how to understand its complexity in order to become master of himself: this result can only be achieved by seeking the anfang of human action, understanding what is the fulcrum that moves human life. The philosopher manages to Trans philosophism (sic!) By deconstructing history, creating a genealogy of humanity: he will thus discover that the principle from which historical existence moves is fear; the Author can therefore state, paraphrasing Existentialism is a humanism: "It is new path for a new century - 'Trans Philosophism - (existence of) fear precedes essence'." (p. xvii) Using the method of exploration typical of philosophy, Desh Subba produces a re-proposition of Being in an existent key, moving from the moment immediately following the Sartrian being-thrown, and reconstructs the history of humanity that slowly evolves, interacted by the ontic thrust of fear. The production of structure - in the Marxian sense - has always been moved by the constitutive fear with which man must coexist; the eternal inner conflict of the fearful self generates the facts, determining history as a result of the struggle between fear and its overcoming. The transphilosophist understands that fear is the lever with which the human has produced History, but fear increasingly gives way to the spirituality of human beings, producing survival and growth, from the cave to the spaceship: "Fear existed along with the existence of human beings. It encouraged us for further progress. This is a reality hidden behind the motion of civilization and the cyber globe. Tomorrow it will reach space and the galaxy. It is still going on and human existence remains continuous. The globe goes back to the void along with the end of fear. We are born as complementary. We act in different parts till our tasks remain significant. It's like a dream in a play. Our roles end with the end of the play. "(p. 78) we are not faced with the Feuerbachian materialist vision, in which the concept of fear would be considered the anthropological principle according to which every activity can only be called human, even the existence of God.
Desh Subba's Trans Philosophism intends to suggest a new path.
Although not mentioned in this demanding work, many of the principles of the New Science of Giambattista Vico echo, for which man must not delude himself into discovering the laws of nature, since this approach to the world would presuppose both the desire to be able to reconstruct it. Out of nowhere, let it be the arrogance of being able to discover the mystery of existence. Man can only know the only reality he has managed to produce, History, his history, but he must carry out this genealogical reconstruction by placing himself methodologically distant from the Western philosophical tradition: "[...] I utilize the basic reference from Viktor Afanasyev, Marxism Philosophy A Popular Outline. The origin of philosophy is the beginning of creation. It depends on how it has been narrated. A lot of philosophies have come into being while attempting to explore answers to questions. The planet we live in can be divided into material and spiritual. People with a material faith see everything material and the people with spiritual faith see everything spiritual. Yet, all theories developed to look at the world are incomplete. Similarly, the truth we believe in is typically mostly surficial. " (p. 62)
Desh Subba's wit invites reflection that takes into account the constant clash from which cultural achievements and changes, all forms of collectivism, life and relationships are born. The essay interprets the history of Western thought as the history of the contrast between materialism and spiritualism - Plato and Aristotle, which Raphael in the School of Athens depicts one pointing to the sky, the other to the earth -: this dichotomous vision must be overcome. To do this, the transphilosopher declares himself to be a Mateidealist, engaged in the simultaneous knowledge of his matter and his interiority, since both are part of the world, where everything is in everything, and in all things there is the intellect - The (things) that mix together and separate and disjoin, all the Intellect has known (Anaxagoras, DK 59 fr. 12) -. "Fearism is a Mateidealism. To understand, to make somebody understand and to feel frightened are related to Fearism. It originated in the ancient period. Socialism and capitalism remain meaningless unless each applies a theory of subsistence. So, philosophy should explore these issues to reach depth. We are working in a task force on the exploration and resolution of equivalent issues. It focuses on subsistence. " (p. 76)
Desh Subba's tension is all concentrated to demonstrate that there is inseparable unity between knowledge and life; understanding that everything is one - men and nature - represents the last form of awareness that can lead the subject back to greater moral solidity, being able to grasp being to free himself from fear: it is the attempt to reach the top of the mountain more unexplored to be able to look the other way, with the hope of freeing oneself from the torment of the unknown! "Why does it birth fear? And I found the nectar of fear in the mount Kumbhakarna Himal. There is a myth in my village, on the top of Kumbhakarna Himal, there is herbal plant of immortality. It is hard to climb and with a steep summit. Phoktanglungma (Phoktang means shoulder and lungma means Mountain) named in local Limbu Language. Originally it looks like one side of a broken soldier. Villagers maybe made the myth up because it is hard to climb. Many beautiful mountains of Nepal which are virgin are not open for climbing. I was looking for a metaphor of fear, and I found genesis of meaning. " (p. 423)
At the end of the reading of Trans Philosophism, agile thanks to clear writing, is it necessary to resist the usual Western temptation to deconstruct and decode Desh Subba's thought in order to attribute to it an ism - utopian? pantheist? -, making it immediately understandable, and then putting it aside. The Author's message is important with which he invites us to educate the intellectual capacity to understand a further project, because it is in the strength of human beings to be able to renew and grow, recognize themselves in others and overcome errors. The trans-philosopher Desh Subba suggests to human beings that the time has come to build a "fear-free-zone" (p. 438), a possible social place, a collective experience that makes history. The greatness of a man is to be a bridge and not a goal: in man, it is possible to love that he is a transition and a sunset (Prologue of Zarathustra, 4): only by getting rid of his own Icheit is it possible that every man learns to reduce at a minimum the ancestral coexisted fear to help create a more just and shared world.
Note: Originally it is written in the Italian Language. With the permission of the author Nicola Tenerelli, I have posted an English translation via Google, for English readers’. Original Italian text can be read at this link.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357240811_Recensione_Desh_Subba_Trans_Philosophism
IT IS NOT VERY OFTEN I come across a really interesting paper on "fear", and this one by Bogun (2016), is extra-ordinarily interesting to my fearologist-self.
I won't say more in this Intro blog, but will give you all a chance to look at it and chime in on Comments. Just to note: --scanning the paper, I see the major discouse (pattern, system) that is operating in Bogun as a philosopher very keen about fear and its role, is "FMS-5" (as "fearmap" or code-categorization of my schema)--and, to remind you there are 10 FMSs available to humans at this time, that I can identify categorically as an overall evolutionary theory of fear management systems (FMSs). But, I'll leave it there for now...
Hope you have a glance at this first page, and realize this author (seemingly from Ukraine) is quite a fascinating scholar. It's my first encounter with them in the fear literature.
The above excerpt is from first page of my latest book chapter in Ramala Sarma (Ed.) (2021) [1]. Sarma has put together an interesting mix (mostly Eastern writers) on philosophy and mind issues. I was pleased she asked me to contribute to this anthology. I recommend you check it out and if you want to read more of my chapter I can also post a few more excerpts, or you can order the book for my full essay.
Book Reference:
1. Fisher, R. Michael (2021), pp. 91-114. In R. Sarma (Ed.) (2021). Understanding mind, consciousness and person. New Delhi, India: Rawat Prakashan.
The eminent early 20th century
American philosopher John Dewey...
In this above quote, he is on his grand project (to restore "experience" to philosophy)--to debunk all binaries, so it seems. E.g., Life vs. Education, is a good place to start that deconstruction.
Then he goes on, in a passage analogously, where he critiques those that derogate the "lower" aspects of reality (so-called) vs. the "higher" aspects of reality (so-called) that have become so common by the 20 th century in philosophy, and education philosophy and psychology. He wrote of these sensory aspects:
"Since sense-organs with their connected apparatus are the means of participation [with reality, with Life, with living organisms], any and every derogation of them, whether practical or theoretical, is at once effect and cause of a narrowed and dulled life-experience. Oppositions [i.e., binaries] of mind and body, soul and matter, spirit and flesh all have their origin, fundamentally, in fear of what life may--bring forth. They are marks of contraction and withdrawal [i.e., fear-based]." (Dewey, 1934, pp. 22-3).
This is not the only passage I have been reading from Dewey, in my recent study of his writing, where I am reading into and between the lines, and sometimes reading explicit calling out of fear in our knowledge and knowing systems--like it is a massive weight on us and life-forces, it is like he is speaking a language of fearlessness. I'll be writing a chapter on his philosophy (fearlessness) and education for my new book The Fear Problematique (2022)... more to come.
[NOTE: for another of my FM blogs on Dewey and fear and fearlessness go to: https://fearlessnessmovement.ning.com/blog/holy-rant-john-s-dewey-s-fearlessness-project]
Reference
Dewey, J. (1934/2005). Art as Experience. Penguin Group.
I've just completed a short study and Tech Paper 125.pdf on Bonaro W. Overstreet, an American critical adult educator who wrote an amazing book on fear in 1951.
This 1960 classic free-school alternative book is about child-rearing and education. The organization begun by A. S. Neill and others in the UK was a "school" by definition and that was to serve a parent community who wanted their children to have an entirely different experience of learning in and as part of a living residential community. They remained a "school" in order to get some funding from the government, and to follow the curriculum requirements to some degree re: the State, because they still wanted to hire teachers and be able to mentor the students/learners to achieve what they wanted to achieve if they wanted to go on to access the channels of higher education, which some children chose, while many did not. There was no requirement ever that the child would be forced to attend lessons. It was their choice how they wanted to spend the day as long as they did not hurt themselves or others or damage the community's property. In that sense, Neill believed the only radical way to fully commit to building a new society not based on fear, was to build a community not based on fear.
Some of you may know that I have long studied the alternative education movements since my late 20s. I also was a public school teacher for two years. All these experiences have led me to now working in a burgeoning new school, Nanaimo Innovation Academy (NIA), which started as a daycare (for 4 years) and is now a kindergarten, with a proposed grade 1-2 class starting this next fall in 2022 if all permits are granted and the parents show up to support our non-profit private school operation. My role thus far is "policy consultant", albeit, I have also just completed a five months artist residency at NIA where I worked from an artist's point of view, which included working with all members of the community in some way--I was interested in the whole organization and larger community and "everything was my medium" for artistic expression and exchange with all involved. I'm doing upcoming artist talks and websites on this project which I shall let you know about later. I had some lovely and interesting and not so pleasant interactions at times with my "medium" as one would expect in any community. But one of the things in the back of my mind during the residency was "How do we all deal with fear?"
NIA founder and Director, Keely Freeman has been gracious in allowing me to slowly integrate and find my way into this new school community. She is someone very practical and in that sense not overly radical in her approach to a daycare/school culture, yet, at a recent staff meeting she held up this book by A. S. Neill, and said, with pride that this means a lot to her to be part of a legacy of trying to bring 'alternative education' to children and families in this world. I was touched. So, I'm starting to look at what might we at NIA glean from the "Summerhill" experiment in child-raising and education today. Note, several Summerhill-type schools have grown from the original movement started in the UK. A. S. Neill is no longer with us but has left a powerful message of possibilities and this book he wrote about his experiment in 1920s- onward is worth reading. I'm just allowing myself to dip into it and see what I think about it. As my first reading about Summerhill was back in the early 1980s and then late 1990s a bit but I didn't go further. I was aware of several educators as critics publishing about Summerhill and giving it a bad name in those years. I have not made up my own mind about that aspect of how good it was or bad it was empirically. That's really hard to assess.
As I turn to begin a brief fearanalysis of Neill's philosophy, I realize neither Neill and the faculty and parents may not have written and published or talked much about a "fearless school" that was their ideal for themselves, and as a model for the rest of society. I do sense they wanted to show society that it was possible and their school was an experimental case study. So, it was not perfect and they worked out a lot of the kinks in their system and culture by learning as they went. That is admirable. IF I was starting a school today, I would want to do the same. However, it is near impossible to find enough parents in the world where I live to be truly interested in entering into such a community and school experiment. People are way more freaked out these days, and thus more conformist, than the 1960s-70s, and maybe also compared to the 1920s when A. S. Neill began the Summerhill experiment.
I find parents and teachers and just about all leaders very much caught in the "culture of fear" overall. This is a global cultural phenomenon I have written about extensively for over 3 decades. Education if it is to remain in its integrity (and much in line with a free-schooling conception as A. S. Neill argued for), is going to have to confront its relationship (i.e., its collusion with) the growing insidious culture of fear.
Fearanalysis has many possible directions of starting to assess anyone or anything. For simplicity, I scanned the back chapters of the classic book by Neill (above), and saw on page after page of how he responds to many of the questions that came to him as founder of Summerhill, he often was talking in his answers to the issue of fear. In fact, I believe he was doing that because most of the questions he received, often had fear at their base of motivation for being asked. For example, the questions about the freedom of children and youth in the Summerhill community to have access to sex. Neill, answers, they are as an organization and school not telling kids not to have sex, not to masturbate. All humans have a right to enjoy the sexuality of their bodies alone or with others, and Neill is not at all interested in creating taboos and rules about that. He wanted to raise children who were not afraid of adults and/or the laws and authority of adultworld in general. What was truly educative for him, and I agree, is when educative experience transcends the dependency socialization of young people based on fear-induction-learning (or "shock learning" via punishment regimines). "Control" is such a tricky concept and Neill wanted as least amount of it as possible in regard to what children feel, think and do. Adults/parents/caregivers can be children's worst enemy, he would likely have argued, and I hear that as I scan the pages of his book and the answers to his questions. I and some others have called this adult-child relationship one that is riddled with adultism, oppression in one of its base forms, from the start--it is part of a culture of fear dynamic. I won't go into more details in this blogpost but if you are interested in more quotes and details from the book and want more discussion, I'll do so. Just post comments below, or sign-up or sign-in on the FM ning and write your own blogposts.
Bertrand Russell, the great UK philosopher, wrote a 1926 book "On Education" with implications for especially early childhood rearing, socialization and education (e.g., schooling). Interestingly, I am just reading this for the first time, and I see some really good signs that this will be a useful book in the history of Fear Studies, and especially the history of fear in educational philosophy.
Russell has evoked me several times to quote him (from this book), especially his line around wisdom and fear, and around fearless mothers and fearless children as well. For purposes of this blog, I want to focus on why he thought love and fear were so crucial to child rearing and society's health in general. He ends his book with "A thousand ancient fears obstruct the road to happiness and freedom." (p. 206) During the book he makes a distinction that irrational fears are the biggest problem, rational fears are important--albeit, a big problem can come when a child, for example, has not the adequate rational fears online and operative and that puts the child at risk to dangers it normally would rationally be afraid of. He talks about his wife and him trying out many of these things about fear management with their own two children in the earliest years 1-4 yr olds.
Again, on the final paragraph of the book he wrote, "But love can conquer fear, and if we love our children nothing can make us withold the great gift which is is in our power to bestow." (p. 206). One has to realize that Russell was a secularist-humanist philosopher, yet, here he is articulating what all the great spiritual/religious teachings also argue as a basic premise/theory about love and fear. That's a whole topic for study itself. Is this true, that love can conquer fear? What does conquer mean? On p. 71 he describes how an irrational fear in children (or anyone) ought to not be left alone to just disappear or skirt around too much. Russell says it "should be gradually overcome" as an important aspect of healthy developmental growth and learning. "Overcome" as a behavioral and emotional aspect, seems to be what Russell means by "conquer" in other parts of his text.
In helping his own children to overcome fear(s), Russell tells us at one point, controversial I am sure it will be: "A grown-up [e.g., parent, teacher] person in charge of a child should never feel fear" --meaning, express it it in front of a child and when trying to teach a child to have mild rational fear of a potential danger the child needs to learn about (e.g., like a sharp knife edge, or cliff edge). Now, if an adult around a child is to be fully responsible for the best interests and growth and learning for a child, and to make them feel loved and not afraid of the world around them too much, then Russell argues it is best to "never feel" or express fear in your teaching children lessons or warnings. I tend to agree with this because of the unpredictable (if not traumatic) ways a child may take in the concrete message from the adult but also the affect-tracing lingerings of the adult into their emotional (if not soul level) aspects of their being. Adults have that kind of powerful impact potential on children's psyche/soul, is my claim, and many others but here we see Russell the philosopher (and father) saying the same thing. His cautionary goes on to say: " That is one reason why courage should be cultivated in women just as much as in men." (p. 72). There's a few arguments he makes later in the book about the sexes and the dynamics of fear and timidity, etc. He wants both sexes to be hardy and courageous --and even fearless. Again, he focuses at times on women's major role here in child development of fearlessness:
"One generation of fearless women could transform the world...by bringing into it a generation of fearless children".... and "Education is the key" to this accomplishment. On my part, that is true and is exactly why I offer an upgraded theory and praxis called critical Fear Management/Education or simply Fear Education for the 21st century. Russell's philosophy of education, it turns out, is very supportive of my initiative.
Anyone have some thoughts about all this?
Reference
Russell, B. (1926/2003). On education. Routledge.
Abstract
The pandemic period has accelerated a cultural process that produces social fragmentation and a transformation of values. Fear pushes people to close in on themselves, to look after individual and group interests, driven by a misunderstanding of the meaning of freedom and democracy. It must be understood that one's own interest as an individual citizen is realised in the community: courageously accepting a social policy does not mean losing one's freedom - Life, sic! - but increasing the potential to achieve objectives that benefit everyone.
Abstract
Il periodo di pandemia ha accelerato un processo culturale che produce frammentazione sociale e trasformazione dei valori. La paura spinge i soggetti alla chiusura in sé, alla cura degli interessi individuali e di categoria, spinti da un’errata comprensione del senso di libertà e democrazia. Occorre comprendere che il proprio interesse di singolo cittadino si realizza nella collettività: accettare con coraggio una politica sociale non significa perdere la propria libertà – la Vita, sic! – ma aumentare le potenzialità per realizzare obbiettivi che favoriscano tutti.
A fine ottobre, a Novara in Piemonte, abbiamo assistito alla protesta di un gruppo di no-vax che si atteggiavano a deportati, indossavano divise a strisce con la stella, riproponendo nella memoria di tutti il genocidio degli ebrei.
Poche ore dopo, ad Anguillara in Veneto, l’amministrazione pubblica attribuiva al presidente brasiliano Bolsonaro, in visita in Italia per il G20, la cittadinanza onoraria.
I due avvenimenti sembrerebbero non avere nulla in comune, ma sono la rappresentazione plastica di come la politica, condivisione di pensieri e obbiettivi con la parola, stia determinando una divaricazione sempre più profonda tra i cittadini.
Dal dopoguerra alla caduta del muro di Berlino il mondo occidentale ha discusso generalmente sulla modalità di gestione degli interessi per definire quali fossero prioritari, pubblici o privati. Il confronto tra i modelli – liberista e comunista – si traduceva sostanzialmente nell’interpretazione economicistica del sistema sociale e sui limiti di azione dello Stato. Entrambi gli schieramenti presupponevano una base di condivisione etica quale il rispetto della vita, il pluralismo, l’eguaglianza e la tolleranza. La condanna universale della shoah rappresentava il presupposto dell’ecumenismo laico della nostra contemporaneità: dal rispetto della Vita si è poi sviluppata la comunicazione/comprensione/condivisione tra i popoli, da cui in seguito nasceva l’Unione Europea e globalizzazione.
Nell’occidente, in Italia, da più di un decennio stiamo assistendo a una divergenza che non investe più il piano economico-gestionale, discusso in prospettiva di interessi plausibili, ma che investe i valori – gli "eidos" in senso husserliano, la struttura invariante della realtà - sostrato dello stare insieme, i presupposti non solo della democrazia ma anche del dialogo. A parere di chi scrive, tali valori sono costantemente minati da una volontà di ridefinizione della cultura fondativa dell’occidente – forse Spengler parlerebbe di passaggio da Kultur a Zivilisation -.
Torniamo agli eventi di cronaca di questi giorni. Con le loro sfilate, i pochi contestatori del vaccino - in Italia l’85% è vaccinato - non solo mettono in subbuglio i centri cittadini con manifestazioni non autorizzate, ma pretendono di assurgere al ruolo di minoranza abusata da un governo liberticida. I no-vax al grido di "libertà, libertà" vogliono la propria indipendenza dalle regole, paventando che sia la minoranza a dettare le leggi come nel caso dei portuali triestini – eppure, anche la maggioranza deve assumere le norme in modo prudente, onde evirare di essere tacciata di dispotismo, di "dittatura della maggioranza" per dirla con De Tocqueville-. Parallelamente, il presidente Bolsonaro, sulla scia iperliberista impegnata a non far recedere l’economia a dispetto della pandemia, ha blaterato il suo negazionismo disattendendo all’impegno di salvaguardare la vita dei suoi cittadini, com’è proprio del suo ruolo. E mentre il senato brasiliano mette sotto accusa per crimini contro l’umanità il suo presidente, la solerzia partigiana della giunta di Anguillara ne fa il suo campione, consegnandogli le chiavi della città. In tale strano ribaltamento valoriale, Bolsonaro diventa la vittima, l’incompreso, il vate di una posizione culturale soverchiata, il dissidente che promuove la libertà a cui si vuole togliere la parola con una violenza mascherata da giustizia.
Il campionario di situazioni di cronaca per le quali assistiamo alla dismissione dell’etica contemporanea offre innumerevoli esempi: la mancanza di deontologia del medico antiscientista che dichiara in un comizio che il "vaccino è veleno"; la presunzione del collaboratore scolastico che, messo a discutere col virologo nel salotto televisivo, risulta portatore di sapere alternativo; l’ufficiale di polizia che, nelle ore libere dal lavoro, incita alla resistenza i manifestanti, contro i suoi colleghi; il politico, il generale, il giudice arruffapopoli contro lo Stato benché abbiano giurato sulla Costituzione; last but not least, c’è sempre quel presidente che esalta la piazza invitandola all’assalto del suo parlamento!
Tale modalità di vestire e comunicare la Libertà si nutre dell’arroganza dell’individualismo della morale, della presunzione di ognuno di essere portatore di valori assoluti che devono essere forzosamente consegnati alla gente; siccome sono verità, devono essere propagandati con ogni mezzo, affinché realizzino un proselitismo che costruisca una forza politica per sovvertire lo status quo normativo e promuova forzosamente un paradigma che fondi una nuova civiltà.
Tale comunicazione divisiva, protesa a definire nuovi modelli valoriali, non rinuncia all’utilizzo delle vecchie categorie, ammantandole di significato a sé conveniente: l’autorevolezza dei ruoli sociali, in quanto gerarchia sedimentata da una cultura classica, viene posta al servizio di una ideologia personalistica; la storia e i simboli consolidati sono revisionati per favorire interessi di parte; la fiducia – il valore più antico che l’uomo ha abbracciato – viene coartata per costruire un cieco e autolesionistico proselitismo.
Libertà "libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta" (Dante, Purgatorio, c. I, vv. 70-72).
A ben pensarci, è un po’ l’operazione che fece Goebbels il quale mosse le sue folle al grido 'libertà, libertà': intendeva però solo quella dei tedeschi, infischiandosene degli altri popoli europei.
Foto: la manifestazione no-vax di Novara, Piemonte, Italia, del 30 ottobre 2021 www.dire.it
Fearologist, RMF tells in his new video of "why" the concept of fearism likely evolved in the 1990s onward and is here to stay.
Dr. Darcia Narvaez, psychologist of child development, the evolutionary nest concept, and moral development. She comes at the ways to better understand what is human nature and healthy development from an evolutionary and neurobiological, psychological, anthropological and Indigenous worldview lens. This interdisciplinary thinker was recently giving a presentation and having a discussion with the gift economy (motherer) experts, and at one point she starts to talk about "fear" per se and how difficult it is to make the shift to a feminine-based gift economy and new paradigm of holistic health and sustainable sanity.
She says, "There's a lot of people who are afraid in the United States, and when you are afraid it can lead you into directions that are good or not so good...not so helpful. So, I think getting through the fear is something...the fear of pain I think...if we suffered as a young child our...it's in our body, our body remembers the trauma, the pain and we don't want to go back there, we have some resistance to it....we need ways to help people not be so afraid of feeling the pain, because once you feel the pain it's actually quite liberating...it wasn't so bad. People go to therapy for this." [she then says once we do this a few times] "a whole new life [is possible], it's like being reborn. [to help people through pain and fear we have a responsibility of] "reassuring people that you can pass through this...primal wounds...you pull them off, and its painful at the moment at the time, but then once you pull them off you can be yourself...unlock your heart." [I takes a lot of support from others too].
Then she concludes with a hope she has: "Hopefully, somebody out there is going to come up with...a great way to help people get through the fear."
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My quick comments are critiques of this explication and hope Dr. Narvaez offers, although, in basic idea and with experiences, she is talking of the truth, I have no doubt. It is just that her discourse on fear management here is so conformist and 'normal' as to be nothing outside of the domination worldview and paradigm basically. There are so many who have offered the same advice as she and the same hope as she. I was really looking for something more radical from her in this discussion especially in light of being in conversation on the radical shift of an exchange (capitalist) paradigm to a gifting paradigm that was the theme of the entire conversation. But what this shows me is that even the radical gift economy types have not yet got "fear" figured out or configured out is more accurate. They have no radical vision of a new paradigm of fear management/education. Sadly, I have seen this also in the feminist movement, and most spiritual movements, etc. over the decades. The thinking about fear is still back in the old paradigm (what Narvaez herself is concerned about and has critiqued in part as "colonized psychology") they wish to leave and transform and so on. The fear thinking hasn't changed and they don't seem to look at the literature that is out there on new 'Fear' Studies and Fearlessness Paradigm.
In particular, one can recognize the same "individualist" psychology and morality within Narvaez's discourse that she falls back on, basically a kind of existential modernist philosophy, and practicality, because she says we really need to deal with fear differently in our society--okay, that's great--and yet, her answer to that fear problem is her immediate default to talk about "fears" (i.e., she mentions the core "fear of pain" problem)--and she then proceeds her diagnostic and prescriptions from there. As I said, there is nothing new paradigm at all about that, even if she is offering a weak medicine better than not for fear management.
Narvaez, defaults into her trained psychological and rather individualistic mind re: fear discouse. Even though, all her research is on interdisciplinary studies and community and social relationality as so important in the healthy development of humans and ecosystems etc. Her actual knowledge and theorizing on fear is however individualistic and typical of the modernist paradigm and of patriarchy (more or less) itself. So, why(?), I ask, over all these years of her knowing my work on fear and fearlessness, and knowing I am a fearologist with a transdisciplinary lens I bring radically to the topic of fear management/education, has she not engaged directly with my work with any depth and understanding [1], if she is saying that "fear" is one of the most important factors in a human beings life and a society (e.g., the USA)? Why has she thrown out a hope that "somebody out there" is going to find a solution to the fear problem--and, she is like waiting or something(?). That amazes me she seems dissociated from the vast literature and my work (including Four Arrows' work) on fear ('fear'), fearism, fearlessness, etc. I have found that she is like so many. There is a denial/blindness still operating even in the most sophisticated and mature academics and professionals in general (Dr. Narvaez is top-notch and very wise in my opinion)--and, "psychologists" have continually shown to be in this state of learning and training that they cannot receive the vast wisdom out there on fear already available. There is no need to hope for someone to come along with a magic bullet, Dr. Narvaez, there is only an opportunity and willingness to actually engage and study what is available already and then apply it sincerely.
So, my first agenda as a fearologist has always been to question and critique the very way we (especially psychologists) frame the discourse on fear itself, never mind trying to figure out which fears are most important (e.g., fear of pain, or fear of death), etc. Dr. Narvaez, and the rest of you, still hoping... why don't you consult with a fearologist, for starters and go from there? The "why" they don't do this, is critically important. I have suggested in my latest book it is because of a "resistance to fearlessness" [2] built deeply into the self-social-political fabric of how people are perceiving the world's problems and the answers to its problems. I actually sent that new book to her upon her request so she might write a book review, of which she has not done so, nor shared anything with me about my book and her reading it. Instead, she "hopes" there is some one out there who will make a silver bullet. I think her troubling view expressed in the above discussion is that she herself in my opinion, is still caught in the "colonized psychology" she is critiquing. It is not anyone's fault per se that our fear management/education discourses (at least, in the W. world) are so unhelpful.
Endnote
1. Granted she did engage somewhat in a Psychology Today blog some years ago, supporting Four Arrows' and my work on fear and fearlessness; go to: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/moral-landscapes/201801/stories-heal-primal-wounds
2. Fisher, R. M., and Kumar, B. M. (2021). Resistances to fearlessness. Xlibris.
I think this is a powerful extract from the teaching of the cultural historical theorist, Jean Gebser, from a 1972 talk on "Primal Fear and Primal Trust" re: his asking humans to continue to pursue the answers to the origin questions like: 'Where do I come from?', 'Who am I?' and "Whither do I go?' (the full quotation from this talk is offered in Georg Feurstein's (1987) Structures of Consciousness p. 30, and in Johnson's book in a chapter on "The Integral A-Perspectival World" (Johnson, 2019, p. 168).
For those of you who know I am a critical integral theorist/philosopher, often following much of the integral philosophy of Ken Wilber, it is important to note that integralist philosophy is articulated by many other great minds of which Jean Gebser is one of them. Johnson names Gebser (1905-1973) "a German-Swiss cultural philosopher, intelectuall mystic, poet, and scholar of the evolution of consciousness." (p. 1).
See also https://prism.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/handle/1880/112698/Tech%20Paper%20114_rev.pdf?sequence=5 [my more in depth article on "Cultural Theorist Jean Gebser Meets a Fearologist").
References
Feurstein, G. (1987). Structures of consciousness. Lower Lake: Integral Publishing [translation].
Gebser, J. (1997 ed.). The ever-present origin [Trans. Noel Barstad with Algist Mickunas]. University of Ohio Press.
Johnson, J. (2019). Seeing through the world: Jean Gebser and integral consciousness. Revelore.
[art poster image by R. Michael Fisher]
Four Arrows (Wahinkpe Topa) aka Dr. Don T. Jacobs (a longtime member of FM ning and cultural warrior), gives a really useful interview (video) on his work, which I see as part of fearlessness path and its connection to re-visionist (corrective) Education today and the survival of this planet's ecosystems. He says, "I want to be human"... and he defines that in a very unique way in regard to the relationship with "hope" for change of this world and its hegemonic Dominant worldview--as he offers a 'reading' of a universal Indigenous worldview (sometimes called Kinship worldview)-- as a solution to our current crises on mass scales. The Indigenous worldview is based not on a fear-based cosmology and value-system--and, that's really important to note. He talks about decolonization and Indigenization as processes of re-socialization and re-education on a mass scale and how 'turning' things around from the current status quo is near impossible but that doesn't mean we ought not do what we can to "be human" in the midst of this tragedy and rather 'hope-less' situation in terms of actual outcomes of our work to liberate ourselves and come to our Natural-based (place-based) intelligence--or what he has called "primal awareness." He also says so interesting things on hypnosis and de-hypnosis in this regard of bringing change and transformation about.
Note: at the 1:04:00 mark in the interview. Four Arrows is talking about the "mysteriousing" of existence, rather than a noun for "god"--the former being the Indigenous way. He says, it is this in touchness with the mysteriousing that is "getting in touch with that fearlessness around death" and he concludes: "I have never met a traditional Indigenous person who has a fear of death...[or] fear of life."
For a concise write up on Four Arrows' Indigenous-based worldview on fear and fearlessness, go to:
https://coachesevolve.com/moving-from-fear-to-fearlessness-by-four-arrows/
I have just collected this data from PRISM (online library at The University of Calgary) where my many publications and unpublished works are held and freely available as open-access to the public. I just looked up the 2006 paper I wrote on what I founded as "In Search of Fearlessness Project" and to my surprise it has been downloaded in the past few years while put up online, near 900 times. How is that possible? Why have none of the download readers contacted me, contacted the FM ning... etc. (?) I am not seeing or hearing anyone writing about this historical phenomenon as Project. I'm puzzled. But it is interesting. To read my paper "Overview of the In Search of Fearlessness Project" (click here).
"The Uses of Beauty and Order" (a 13 pp booklet) by the founder of Re-evaluation Counseling (Harvey Jackins) came out in 1972 and talks of the "environmental crisis" facing human beings and that we are responsible to "clean up" [1] our messes... meaning, not only the physical 'garbage' we 'dump' but on the inside 'distress' ('garbage') we also hold inside our body/mind and social systems and institutions that function upon philosophical premises of oppression is 'normal' and that's the way it is. That's human nature for us to be violence, and dumping on each other, etc. Jackin's, peer-to-peer theory and praxis is a marvelous tool that I have used since the early 1980s, and am still using it as a way to not let my distress accumulate (as 'fear' patterning) in any ways, and mostly in ways that stop me from being a fully alive, creative being who is interested in beauty and order in the environment (inside and outside). That's why in this publication Jackin's argues:
"With discharge [via peer counseling sessions] we can begin not only to realize but to act on the truth that every human being is gifted artistically, in the visual arts and in all others. In the meantime, it is perfectly possible to take a length of wire and bend it into an interesting shape, then mount this piece of wire sculpture in a prominent position. It's possible to take some torn pieces of tinted or colored paper and move them about on a sheet of cardboard until the arrangement pleases the arranger, glue them in place and, with such an 'abstract collage' mounted on the wall, be continually reminded of one's own ability to create beauty. A poem or verse which one has composed belongs in plain sight to be read and looked at. This will be another signal that one is a creative human being in charge of the environment [as a steward, and co-maker, co-participant in evolution itself]." (p. 12)
I recently am working on an art project with stones (a 1/2 dump truck load of them) which most people use only to "decorate" their landscapes and keep down weeds and grass from growing (as a suppressant). I am working with the stones in an artist residency right now to make them interesting, beautiful and even sacred... I just am learning how to do that with children at the daycare center and kindergarten school where I am artist in residence, and of course, then there is the difficult challenge to get the staff and parents and other adults around the children to 'attune' and 'resonate' with the words and direction of Jackin's (above)--and to playfull engage as part of their day in making art, and connecting with the art of the stones I am working on their premise. Mostly, the adults are quite in a "rut" from what I can see, and they can hardly gaze to the environment around them. Often they are on cell phones when they leave their car and walk to work, and often they have a preoccupied (if not worrying) mind about what they are doing and what is happening and how this or that is going to coordinate. They are managing their lives. This management paradigm is quite working in the opposite direction of a creative-artistic-aethetic paradigm.
As a fearologist and artist, what I am interested in is the role of fear/anxiety and how it shapes one's creativity, aliveness, and everything else in the environments we make, the relationship we engage in any moment in time. Too often, most all people are living lives feeling a "victim" (prisoner) of some kind, and often they are not aware they feel this but are just on 'autopilot' doing things that are functional and help to manage their day. Jackins' experience is that human beings who have been hurt and not fully allowed to heal their hurts from birth onward, are carrying distress-based (fear-based) patterning in their nervous system and memory systems, and when that accumulates there is a sense after awhile of feeling like the environment is "hostile" (more or less) and one has to try to survive within it--but for Jackins, like myself, the hostile perception (as a fear projection and defense mechanism) can become quite distorted and totalizing of one's inherent being and destroys the best part of our human nature. This is, says Jackins, due to "past fears of isolated groups of human beings in danger from weather, disease or other hostile forces" but his point is, that within a healing culture (practices) such dangers/fears can be healed through adequately so that humans do not carry around trauma (unhealed painful memories) for any length of time beyond what is necessary. The past thus, when unhealed, turns to dominate our nervous systems and thinking patterns, we 'become our distress' (i.e., our fear patterning). We feel victimized. We then justify our behaviors that come from fear-based (distress-based) sourcing. We even justify that it is okay we oppress others and accept our social oppression because that's the way it is--the world is hostile, etc.
Fearlessness as a paradigm is quite in the opposite direction of this fear-based paradigm of victimization and oppressive patterning. Thus uses of beauty and order making (healthy creativity to enhance one's world individually and collectively) is a way to stay in "present time" reality (says Jackins), and that leads to a greater humanity and care for everything to follow from that. Arts and aesthetics, are critical to good fear management/education.
Your thoughts?
Notes
1. To be clear, I use "clean up" in this context within a sophisticated therapeutic philosophia (or therapia) based on many traditions but in particular I most recommend the theorizing of integral philosopher Ken Wilber on "Cleaning Up" as one of four calls to come to full consciousness and attention in the best way humans are potentially able--and, such a mode of "cleaning up" is not just some psychological clinical, homogenizing, white-washing, or purification schema of a germophobia, xenophobia, paranoia about Nature--no, I and Wilber are talking about something very different and you may wish to read his writing on "Cleaning Up" in this larger transpersonal and evolutionary perspective; see Wilber (2017), pp. 11, 75, 264-66, for e.g. (also see his writing on the analogous process of "shadow work"). Wilber, K. (2017). The religion of tomorrow: A vision for the future of the Great Traditions--more inclusive, more comprehensive, more complete. Shambhala.
