Here is the book review I just posted on amazon books:

"Huge Circle of Fear": How Shadow Walks With Us For Liberation By R. Michael Fisher on December 5, 2016

Figure 1  Basic Curriculum Design (Map) for a Philosophy of Fearism

[Note: I have attached a curiculum%20fearlessness.mp3 sound file of myself reading this blog]

The above Figure 1 is my first attempt to take a piece of philosophy of fearism text (e.g., Desh Subba's recent novel; see Photo as well) and put it into a practical curriculum application that could be used by teachers, or anyone else wanting to actualize the philosophy of fearism teachings and ways of thinking  (i.e., in regard, to a new way to enact fear management/education for the 21st century). 

Mostly Desh Subba and I have been articulating the philosophy and theory behind a philosophy of fearism (also, philosophy of fearlessness, in my earlier work). More and more people are asking us how to "apply" it to usefulness in diverse settings with real people and groups, organizations or even nations. We are excited by that challenge, and it will slowly unfold. Others like Rana Kafle in Nepal and N.E. India are likely already doing this, however, that applied work has not been translated in to English. I personally am not sure what their applied education in the field has been for the past several years as they teach aspects of a philosophy of fearism. 

So, the skeleton outline (a working draft in progress) in Figure 1 gives a critical integral approach to the curriculum design for philosophy of fearism. I will actually spend time trying to apply this outline to Desh's new novel per se. Then, that ought to be interesting and lead to writing something like a "curriculum guide" to The Tribesman's Journey to Fearless. 

Now, I'll give you the basic orienting reference points you'll need to know to be able to understand how this design/map (Figure 1) works. Also, anyone can apply this as well, not just me or Desh. First, notice the quadrant design template I use, with four "directions" on the map, by which the four double-arrows are pointing toward INDIVIDUAL and COMMUNAL on the vertical axis, and toward SUBJECTIVE and OBJECTIVE on the horizontal axis. This comes fundamentally from the meta-mapping of knowledge work of the integral philosopher Ken Wilber (see AQAL Matrix), who was searching for a simple template in which to organize (map) all knowledge so as to be attentive to its variation spectrum of how knowledge is gathered and classified by these four quadrants (at least, that begins a holistic-integral approach to knowledge). The integral theory behind the quadrants suggests that information and/or knowledge and knowing ought to be arrived at from all four quadrants (if ideally possible) before we can make strong claims about the "truth" of anything. Our methodologies, and epistemologies, likewise ought to come from all four quadrants, to make sure we have a holistic diversity of ways of knowing. There are many complications about this theory and use of quadrant analysis that I won't go into here, unless you ask me about more. This will serve the purpose for then arranging the 10 Components of the Curriculum that fit into the quadrants. One would now have to use these 10 Components as "themes" on which to focus on when reading Desh's novel, for example. Then, there are the META-SKILLS and SKILLS Elements which generally are of interest in a practical curriculum of any kind. So, a combination of looking for the 10 Components and the 2 Elements will produce a cross-hybridization of interesting lens to bring to analyze Desh's book and teachings on a philosophy of fearism. 

There are other lenses of course that one can bring to a book like Desh's, and that would be a "fearist" lens, a fearanalysis methodology, and so on. There is no limit of lens and methods to bring to analyze a text and then bring that out to help construct an application as a workable curriculum guide, for example. 

Okay, that's lots for this introduction to the next evolution of the philosophy of fearism practices. I look forward to anyone interested to dialogue with me on the ning and/or on email (r.michaelfisher52@gmail.com). 

Four Arrows, a colleague and friend, and sacred warrior, sent me this link to an article where he talks about the Indigenous way of courage and fearlessness, and its relevance to an upcoming resistance action at Standing Rock, ND, where Veterans for Peace and other activists are standing with the Indigenous people who are challenging the Dakota Pipeline transgressions on their territory.

See http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38558-the-loving-contagion-of-courage-veterans-standing-for-standing-rock

The following reflections come from my recent experience living with the Bhutanese community in Dallas/Forth Worth, TX for the 2.5 days (Nov. 24-26, 2016). Upon an invitation to speak as a guest about the philosophy of fearism and its implications for their diasporic community development, art and literature and general literary criticism in regard to the Oriental (East) and Occidental (West) complementarity and contestations, I immersed myself by living with some of the organizers and learned much that I wish to share in this blogpost of their good work and my interests therein. 

Their theme for the event this year was “Peace, Progress and Prosperity,” their 3rd time holding this yearly event called Grand International Creative Ceremony-III, in Forth Worth, co-sponsored by The Global Bhutanese Literary Organization (Dallas/Fort Worth) and Bhutanese Legacy Youth Club-Fort Worth. This conference is put on every two years.

            LARGER CONTEXT: POLITICAL CASCADE OF CRISES

All of us, the Bhutanese community living in the US diaspora, or whomever, are facing what blog writer Charles Einstein put so well in reflecting critically upon the post-2016 US election atmosphere:

Anything becomes possible with the collapse of dominant institutions. When the animating force behind these new ideas is hate or fear, all manner of fascistic and totalitarian nightmares can ensue, whether enacted by existing powers or those that arise in revolution against them.

That is why, as we enter a period of intensifying disorder, it is important to introduce a different kind of force to animate the structures that might appear after the old ones crumble. I would call it love if it weren’t for the risk of triggering your New Age bullshit detector, and besides, how does one practically bring love into the world in the realm of politics? So let’s start with empathy. Politically, empathy is akin to solidarity, born of the understanding that we are all in this together. In what together? For starters, we are in the uncertainty together.

We are exiting an old story that explained to us the way of the world and our place in it. Some may cling to it all the more desperately as it dissolves, looking perhaps to Donald Trump to restore it, but their savior has not the power to bring back the dead. Neither would Clinton have been able to preserve America as we’d known it for too much longer. We as a society are entering a space between stories, in which everything that had seemed so real, true, right, and permanent comes into doubt. For a while, segments of society have remained insulated from this breakdown (whether by fortune, talent, or privilege), living in a bubble as the containing economic and ecological systems deteriorate. But not for much longer. Not even the elites are immune to this doubt.[1]

Yes, we live in very challenging, if not dangerous times now and soon to come, especially as global warming extremes put enormous pressure on human survival. At the same time, this larger context of crises on planet earth is going to bring us all to better see that we are all on the ‘same boat’ and we can work together to help each other, or fight to try to dominate. No doubt there will be a bit of both tendencies, and yet, the great opportunity is before us to cooperate and operate beyond fear, domination and oppression. I do think our collective fear and uncertainty can be managed and transformed to create a much better world. We’ll see.

            FEARISM BACKGROUND: MEETING of EAST and WEST

A brief background before I offer some detailed reflections on this amazing experience I had with this American-based Bhutanese community:

(1) my first meeting online with Desh Subba in late 2014 has led to a collaboration, and this conference (creative ceremony) was planned (in part) so Desh and I could meet and present in person for the first time. Subba is a well-respected philosopher-writer from Nepal (now living in Hong Kong). He is currently touring the USA speaking to universities and various Nepalese groups on philosophy of fearism. He is the first to have coined the term “philosophy of fearism” as a new philosophy and wrote the first substantive text (Subba, 2014) outlining his approach to such a philosophy, where “fear” is given central conceptual and real importance as the major historical and evolutionary shaping force. His work on this topic came from a broad curiosity about the human condition and how we can help humanity move forward, with less suffering, to a better human potential.

(2) various communities in Nepal, Bhutan and especially N. E. India, have been picking up on Subba’s work and enriching it, especially the literary communities of these areas. It seems the arts in general are very open-minded to adding a new “ism” of thought in the 21^st century to other isms that have been influential in shaping literature and art and have also grown out of art movements to some extent. Subba was positing that fearism, like other movements of philosophical thought (e.g., spiritualism, rationalism, existentialism, surrealism, idealism, etc.) has its place in history. These communities are, in some areas, at least beginning to explore how fearism may benefit the development of their nations, culture, communities, youth and the world.

(3) although Subba and I have communicated by email for two years, it was great to come together with the support of the Bhutanese diasporic community in Texas at this event. This allowed us to converse despite the language and cultural barriers (I am an English-only Westerner from Canada, living in the USA for the past 9 years). We gained a great deal from this time in Texas of which I’ll share some of our insights here. For those interested in our first writing collaboration see Philosophy of Fearism: A First East-West Dialogue (Fisher and Subba, 2016).

          GUEST: BHUTANESE STYLE

The Bhutanese at this event really know how to celebrate and treat people well. Before I return to that experience, let me say a few opening remarks of relevance to my being a “special guest” as it said in the letter of invitation I received on Sept., 17, 2016. I was addressed in the letter as “American Writer and Philosopher” and on the plague I received on the last day of the event as “a special guest and presenting on FEARISM, representing CANADA/USA.” So far in my career, being asked to present on my own work on the topic fear(ism) and fearlessness is extremely rare. I started this specialty of research and education in 1989, some 10 years before Subba began his work on fear(ism). I shared with the Bhutanese audience, in a dialogue format with Subba up on stage with me, that Westerners are heavily embedded, if not invested and addicted, to carrying on a fairly dysfunctional relationship with fear that is causing major local, national and global problems. They typically like to avoid talking about fear together as communities, societies, and as an Occidental civilization. At least, that is my experience. I’ve tried a long time to engage them. So, to be welcomed as a special guest to speak on the topic was overwhelmingly joyful and still is a surprise and bit of a shock.

However, I quickly learned that the Nepali-Bhutanese culture has a long tradition of treating the “guest, as god” as one young couple expressed to me in a half-joking way, but they really meant that, not literally, but sincerely. When these people meet each other for the first time in the day, or met with me, it was always “namaste” with hands palm-to-palm in front of their heart (namaste, more or less translated into English is ‘the divine in me greets and respects the divine in you’).[2] I felt highly valued and included from the beginning moment of my arrival at the airport. The young men in the car, who picked me up, treated me so graciously and respectfully and some said they had either read about my work on fearism or heard of me and the work and they felt very honored to be able to share time with me and my thoughts at this event. Again, like with Desh, despite the language and cultural barriers of communicating, what mattered most to me was the non-verbal communication of real action of caring for the other—in this case, the guest. I never forgot I was a welcomed and honored guest from beginning to end. I have never in my own country or in the Western world where I live and work, experienced anything remotely close to this respect and dignity of a people for each other, and for their guests. Although, I have noticed this is often the case in some Indigenous peoples’ communities as well that I have visited.

Because of this communicating at the deeper level of the “heart,” which several of them told me about as part of their tradition and culture, I never felt much of an alienated feeling being the ‘outsider’ (white person, English-speaking only). Truly, I will be thinking and reflecting on this experience for a very long time. The entire conference was held in the language of their own country of origin, Nepalese. I never expected what it would be like to immerse oneself in a community like this, where only minor bits of English translations were given for mostly my benefit. I respected that they honored their own language when they came together as a community. I was the guest, but in reality I was the visitor and observer too. It is not my community by geographic or cultural origin. Yet, by the last day of events, with various speakers and poetry readings, dance and singing, I noticed myself in a light semi-trance state, my heart-overflowing and emotions of empathy, sadness, and joy and respect flowing. I could have cried but I held back the tears. In the words of the Bhutanese poet, who was at the event, Narad Pokhrel a former refugee now living in the USA: “Tears drop, Tears flow; Tears remain within for long.”[3]

Again, I didn’t understand a word they said most of the time. It didn’t matter to me as a human being connecting authentically and spiritually with other human beings. Culture is not the most important thing for this greater connection in spirit. I did not feel greater or lesser than anyone. I felt a balance. I was in a mindset where mind no longer allowed divisions. I felt I was channeling much of their emotions and thoughts through me, cleansing me of my Western life experience and identity dysfunctions, privilege, and ignore-ance. I was being educating and I loved it. I sat. I sat. I sat. There were even moments I wanted to get up and dance with them.

        HEALTH & DEVELOPMENT THROUGH FEARISM

When I first talked with Denzome Sappang, the primary organizer and community leader of the Bhutanese in Dallas/Fort Worth, he was looking at what kind of accommodation could be provided for me. I mentioned that he need not bother with anything fancy, “I am a philosopher, and those things are of little matter. So, keep it simple. I don’t need much.” As it turned out, I stayed at the Bhutanese Community Center, a small half-sized unit at the same townhouse complex where Denzome and his family live. It is a lower-working class, multi-ethnic, gated community. I never learned the details of exactly what this housing complex was or who designed it but I had a sense it was for the more vulnerable and likely many were refugees. It was not the most well-managed environment and at times I wanted to go around and lure the children playing there to perhaps help to pick up the garbage litter.

The United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN Habitat) estimates that nearly one billion, or one-third, of urban dwellers in the world live in slums or near slum-like conditions or informal settlements or camps in 2007. I can imagine that rate is much higher since that survey especially with the ongoing waves of migration and refugees from war-torn and food-short environments around the world, often linked to global climate change and political instability. Housing adequacy and health environments are going to be a huge pressure humanity must face head-on in the coming decades to prevent escalating cascades of other problems, of which health issues is no. 1. I want to come back to this issue in regard to diasporic and vulnerable communities settling in North America, and especially in the USA recently and how a philosophy of fearism may play an important role.

In principle, I personally have always been against the trend of gated communities in North America especially. The main reason is because the rich people who build them and want to live in them keep themselves, more or less, isolated from the rest of the community. Many critics are pointing out that this trend is producing a class of citizens who do not have any sense of obligation to the larger civic mandates of all-taking-care- of-all, as an ethic of social justice. No, they live in a bubble and do not even care much about politics and voting. They like their segregation, their elite schools and privatized clinics and hospitals, and their own security forces, etc. I critique this because I see that all as fear-based by design; urban planners called it “white flight” for many years but it is moving beyond merely a racially-signified exodus from civic participation—it is very unhealthy and a way that continues the great divide of communities and cities by class status. Many gated communities build high walls between themselves and others. Now, the USA under a Trump leadership has a goal of building a great wall between Mexico and the USA. The wealthy can afford to live on the ‘right side’ of the security systems, which keep the growing numbers of poor and vulnerable away from them, unseen, uncared for by the wealthy. As I mentioned, racism traditionally is a significant part of the gated community phenomenon as “white” people take flight to the suburbs, leaving a type of inner city ghettoization encompassing many people of color and the vulnerable and poor in the USA.

My point is to say that I stayed with the way reality was during my short visit. If this is where Denzome and his family live and where they operate their community organization to teach ESL and Civics and yoga to new refugees and immigrants—then, I wanted to experience however briefly, the struggling to make it in America. I don’t care if it is uncomfortable and even a little scary as I was the only white person I saw the whole time there in that gated community.

I’m glad I was raised poor working class and was son of a mother who was an uneducated immigrant to Canada in the 1940s onward. I knew what my mom suffered in not speaking English and having to take jobs where she was given little respect. I saw the tears from her, and the anguish and anger. I know the shame I experienced when my friends and others made fun of our old run-down house, a lower-class neighborhood, and a car that was old and cheap and they’d stare at the patches in my clothes at times. Of course, as a young child, I never understood what was going on. I never understood the reason my mom was so unhappy and became alcoholic. Later, I put the puzzle together and realized how classism, racism, ethnocentrism, and sexism all intersect to create social problems that individuals suffer from. I learned that most everyone wants to blame to victim, the vulnerable person for their fate in life. I see the error of that kind of thinking now. I also see the error of treating people in the margins of society, like the refugees, as only “victims” because they certainly are not that alone. If you spend time with them, as I did, as a privileged white person, I could see a creative vibrancy and drive to be much more than a victim of circumstances.

So, I am now accepting of my lower-class background and my own struggles with poverty as an artist and as an independent scholar and philosopher. I guess, what I am saying is that I really ‘felt at home’ with these people I met at this event. I don’t mean to claim they felt ‘at home’ and comfortable with me, necessarily. I do not know for sure what everyone felt. What’s more important however, from the larger cultural, political context of contemporary America, is that the general public is still largely fear-filled when it comes to the concept of “refugee.” Call it xenophobia (fear of the stranger; the Other) or just call it simply fear of refugees and immigrants and anyone else who, in some people’s minds, “don’t belong here and are up to no good.” I don’t take that stance. But unfortunately, fear is still central in the lives of the diasporic communities in America because they feel often that negative association from the larger society. The recent racist-based headlines of the news reports “OSU attacker Identified Somali Refugee” and one could go on and on with the cases of how targeted populations are named in extreme violence cases like this one, rather than merely reporting a name of a criminal. If the attacker was white and “American-looking” (so-called) would anyone giving such a report in headlines say “Identified Irish-American” or such? Of course not! Targeting “refugee” in the headlines, in this case, easily generalizes peoples’ fear to include all refugees as dangerous like this one individual, who drove down and knifed several students on OSU campus. And this is what Trump’s agenda is all about, always was in the election campaign, fearmongering and xenophobia. I feel for my diasporic brothers and sisters who have to live with this kind of climate of fear, culture of fear, and its relentless unnecessary attacks on “the Other.”

       FEARISM AS POTENTIAL ‘CORRECTIVE’ TO FEARMONGERING

This leads to my last short discussion on how fearism is potentially important. Desh and I shared some of our thoughts in our dialogue at the event, but it was much too short, as many other people came up and told me. I agree, we had great questions from the audience[4] and we have a lot more to say in trying to answer them. But that will all come in time. What I realized from this event and in talking with Desh and so many others, is that fearism is still relatively hard to understand in all its implications and all its liminal and unknown mysteries. Much of it is still intuitive thought that makes up the philosophy and thus, more systematic writing is yet to come. It is often poetically described and speculatively derived. Desh and I plan to write a short Manifesto on Philosophy of Fearism to help readers and students of our work. Some people told us, especially a few young people, it would be great to have an online course on this topic taught by Desh and I. Yes, that would be great. I’d like to see the Bhutanese diasporic communities or any communities take on studying the nature and management, and transformation of fear, just like a basic “fear education” (analogous, to say, a basic “sex education or "moral education").

The one thing that kept coming out in my mind about this experience was how powerfully important the diasporic communities are to the rest of the world and global change processes. I will be only brief in sharing my thoughts here. It seems that the places of change and transformation of human beings and their societies always function best under difficult challenging and even oppressive and “crisis” conditions. There is no comfort and stability much in these sites generally nor in the diasporic communities—especially, when they are refugee-based and/or poor. How to keep these communities healthy and developing forward, rather than falling into fear-based patterns of apathy and despair and pessimism—loss of culture and dignity, etc.—this, is a great challenge. I saw how Denzome and so many others worked tirelessly for this conference to be a success. I also stayed in their little community center and saw how it is a place of adult education and development for their Bhutanese community members and others who wish to participate in some way. Volunteers. There is minimal resources available at this time to them, and they do so much good work for what they have. I felt greatly inspired.

I kept thinking that fearism, if they continue to study it and apply it, with my help and with Desh’s help if they want it, has so much to offer to the health and development of the diaspora. The Nepal-Bhutan connection to fearism and fearlessness, all the way into the USA, is a great site, in the margins of the greater USA society, for learning, restoration, transformation and liberation. These big types of change rarely are instigated from within the ‘center’ of a society of the so-called “normal” people. I for one want to offer my allyship to this movement along with my heart-felt thanks for all you did for me at this event. I feel I was transformed and helped to see the world-reality in a more realistic way, than before when I had not had such an enriching experience in Bhutanese-Nepali culture and creative thoughts. I wished there was more time to talk with people, but that’s okay because the event was for their community to celebrate their achievements and enjoy connections with each other.

At one point on the last day, three white Americans showed up, two of whom presented on their work with the Nepalese in Nepal. They were speech instructor specialists and philanthropists. As much as I was interested to see the good they were doing, I was also disturbed at times personally by their attitudes toward refugees and immigrants. I noticed how different the American attitude is re: “melting pot” approach and how the one speaker literally gave a lecture to the Bhutan community on how they ought to “assimilate” and then Americans will be more kind to them. More or less, that was what was implied. In Canada, this is not, generally, the way we look at “the Other” but rather we see they have gifts to teach us about being human in a globalizing world. This is a much larger topic I don’t have space for in this blog. I will say, I perceived a lot of fear from these Americans, and I’m sure they are not even conscious of it, when they are in the presence of people of color, difference, and who aren't speaking in English, and they are not in control of them and the situation.

My hypothesis, after talking with Desh and having this experience, has led me to thinking there is a particular diasporic learning site of change that could be a great model for others in diasporas but also beyond that. For example, the Bhutanese diasporic, say in America, could be leaders of human change and global transformation, showing alternatives of love and care for “the Other” and of better ways humans could do things—the latter, which are turning out to be very destructive to humanity and the environment we depend on—that is, how to do them without pathological and neurotic and despairing fear and terror motivating change, perceptions, thoughts, actions. But rather to make the creative changes based on a new relationship to fear and fearlessness—one that is healthy and constructive not destructive. This is the lesson the rest of the world needs to learn, in Desh’s and my opinion. Philosophy of fearism is based on this basic assumption.

I look forward to my ongoing connections with these communities. There is a lot of work to do. I am full of renewed energy to be part of the solutions. I also learned in my experience at this event to be a good listener, no matter what, even if I don’t understand all the language and some of the behaviors and cultural traditions and rituals. That is not so important, as to listen-to-connect, then we’ll be human together without fear getting in between our differences. That’s the future I want to live and pass on to the children for generations to come.  

****

I am not prematurely judging, but only taken caution as facilitator and manager of FMning, but it may be that some members at times sign-up for reasons not in synch with the FM mission, but more want to advertise their businesses. This is a common problem I have been told on all social media. So, in the next few weeks if I have no substantive evidence from these three new members of their larger interest in the FMning mission, I'll block them out from further membership privileges. 

The following interview I undertook with Barbara Bickel, my life-partner, as an after-effect of witnessing nearly two years of political campaigning in the US 2016 presidential election. We both feel we’ve watched an enormous “shake-up” in the consciousness of American society and culture, and it ain’t pretty. There’s a lot of fear and terror, and a lot of elation (depends who you talk to on either side of the political divide, the Culture Wars) with more than a little hate being propagated in virulent fashion. With Trump’s victory this unrest we both had, albeit, in our different ways, led to Barbara waking up early the morning after the election, and without knowing the results exactly, asking me to write down notes. That very morning she drafted her “Reality and Recovery” speech/letter, as I call it [1] and it sets the stage for the dialogue below which I had with her nearly a week after. In her speech, a letter to her faculty colleagues and students, she wrote

I begin to ask myself questions:

How can I step out of this rampant political binary and step into what can be clearly seen as fearism [2] now that all political correct hiding strategies have been blown up? How can I model something else more unifying with diversity for those who are part of my professional and personal life?  

M: Barbara, there has been a lot of talk about the 2016 US election with Trump’s victory especially, I also know that you are talking with a lot of people in your professional life especially as a Director of Women, Gender and Sexualities Studies at your university. There is also more than talk going on in response to what is for sure a turn away, a blow-back, from the progressive democratic agenda of the USA since Obama’s presidency, of which you are a citizen, as well as a Canadian citizen. There are actions being taken by you and your colleagues and others in America that are in resistance and pro-action in order to protect some of those gained progressive moves. Besides this activism you are involved in there is the equally important interior dimension of it all. You have been feeling a lot of deep emotions, like so many others. So, in this context, could you speak to some of these impacts current American politics is having, and respond to President Trump’s first big message to the nation since winning: “Don’t be afraid. Stop the hate crimes.” So, to start, how are you doing?

 B: I’m okay. Adjusting. Well, the responsibility I am fully taking in my newly acquired American citizenship, it is just not the same as when I lived in Canada as a Canadian. The choice to become an American, because my dad was, at first was merely convenience for reasons to work here and have two passports. However, since then, it is actually a huge responsibility that little did I know was going to change my life when I moved here in 2008 to work at university. You don’t have this same political and historical activating consciousness in Canada. I sure didn’t. In America, I choose very selectively when to attend to news. I don’t want to be overwhelmed by it. But, living here I can’t avoid it like I could in Canada. More citizens in America are politically conscious than in Canada, I think. And the media loves to blow up any piece of news that comes out. It also is a responsibility due to my work in a state institute, whereby I began to realize and feel the impacts of being an employee of the US government, at the state level but also highly impacted by the federal level. I’ve been feeling the bruising impact for basically 8 years. I feel the direness of it all. First, the state had the Rod Blagojevich fiasco in IL as he was finally impeached as governor and serves a long prison sentence for state corruption all part of a leadership in the state going back for years that has bankrupt the state. Then Obama was elected when we first arrived and colleagues were telling me, to my surprise, they were so glad to no longer be embarrassed because of being Americans under the Bush regime for so long and having caused so much destruction. Gosh, now I am American and feel some of that feeling but I am not embarrassed as such, more disheartened. I’m not angry, like many of my friends and colleagues, I’m just like overwhelmed by how much the whole system is fucked… and the lack of responsibility of so many leaders in this country in regards to Education… I really see how education is at the core of the stupidity of people being bamboosled by the media and these political games going on.

M: I know you are not in your angry phase right now, Barbara. Though, I will remind you just how angry you have been for quite awhile at the politics of this nation and especially since Trump was going to be the Republican nominee. I guess, you’re getting used to the reality and other than anger, sorrow is more the emotion arising. So, I get that it becomes hard to trust anything anymore with leaders. The social contract of care and responsibility from state to citizens and university leadership to students and faculty and the community—all these become more in question with time.

B: It’s a pathetic leadership, with no vision. They’re holding on hard to the same old… old boys club… which includes women supporting that same club. It’s making me realize how incompetent adults are in this country, in general, very incompetent, and sadly the truth is it rises to the top, as I witness in the university system, the political and economic system and so on.

M: It looks and feels like a circus or theatrical drama to me. Yeah, we came in 2008 with amazing corruption and incompetency, lack of sincerity and breach of public and mutual trust. I’ve never quite felt this in my life before either. What we are witnessing is the serious deterioration of the moral and social fabric of trust and security that any healthy state or nation requires for sustainability and sanity. I know I hear many critics calling out “neo-facism” as the shift that is going on. It’s a strong critique but I definitely can see elements of it. No wonder people are scared, that is, if they really admit what they feel below the surface of carrying on daily routines of life here. The reason security vs insecurity is so important is because it breeds fear and terror at all levels all across the board; no body escapes. It is not by chance that I have been studying the American “culture of fear” phenomenon since before 9/11. I say no one escapes this toxic fearism-t running, though, like all throughout history, some people, the elites with extraordinary power and those with lots of money can buy their security to buffer themselves from the declining sociality of mutual regard. This new ‘class’ of elites have become quite a concern for political analysts of the left, because they are basically a class that is choosing to live without a place in the public sphere. They live in gated communities and abandon the public sphere, public education, public health care. They live in a bubble. It’s very dangerous to see this in any society. The public sphere is being threatened by the bottom end, of excess poverty, ghettoization and crime taking over public spaces, there is more privatization of public spaces, and the upper class trend of abandonment to their bubbles. So, Barbara, tell me what kinds of fear have you been witnessing in your circles here and in Canada in post-election ‘wake-up.’

B: I get most upset by how it is impacting young people, the students mostly and especially the WGSS students. I was meeting with terrified students before the election. Trump and his rhetoric re: the LGBTQL and Hispanic/Latino, (not so much) African American is scaring a lot of people. The biggest impact and fear is from women and LGBTQ communities. They don’t feel safe, generally. And with sexual assault issues bad enough in the community and on campus, since the election they going to get worse, I predict. With the severe budget cuts and failure of the state of IL to protect higher education and diversity awareness there is already lack of real support for women. It has deteriorated badly. I’m continually working on that with a few others on campus but is going nowhere fast because of so many other issues that are grabbing attention of university administration, like whether the university is going to make payroll in the next 6 months. The immigrant DACA issue is arising rapidly as a crisis in that students born in the USA from undocumented immigrants could be deported immediately without a trial. California has implemented some good sanctuary statements, and I heard in Arizona university faculty are also trying to. They’ve at least sent petitions to get faculty to sign. I’ve taken initiatives to encourage the same here at my university. Though, I am not hopeful this administration and leadership will take this on, they tend to want to be nice and not disturb the status quo.

M: They seem so fear-based to me, ever since we got here in 2008. I’ve not been impressed. So, how do you keep going without getting discouraged? I really get that you care for the students you serve. It’s a big responsibility, I know. I too was a school teacher many years ago. It’s an all-consuming responsibility.

B: I’m just doing things because it’s right. I have no idea if it will go anywhere. Otherwise, I don’t know how I’d go into work everyday, and feel in integrity, if I didn’t act as an advocate on behalf of students rights, and for the sake of a healthy faculty and university organization that is supposed to be guiding young people.

M: So taking action on this sense of righteousness indignation is a type of healthy anger, a healing anger, and seems to be a way of dealing with fear and terror?

B: Yes, and then there’s my grief. I don’t feel like I’m in terror, I feel more grief. I was talking to a Latino professor the other day and he’s having panic attacks and can’t work as well as he’d like, he is not able to focus. I have had a few recent melt downs and get very emotional and want to just cry and cry and cry. I can’t at work too much because I have an open door policy. I’m available all the time to be there for others. It’s not the space for all my emotional reactions. I’m there to do work and take action not to cry.

M: Why not do both?

B: I do at times. I can’t succumb to it, I have to be there for others. As you know, I phone you to get unconditional attention in between the worst challenging times so that my feelings don’t overwhelm my effective functioning in the workplace. Young students and faculty don’t need to see all my despair and negativity.

M: And what about having them see your politics? I mean do you actively show your political stances to them? Could you be accused of using your state-employee-tax-payer-paid position, privilege and power to try to influence youth to side with your point of view? Perhaps, you could be accused by some conservatives at least, of doing this. How do you not affect your students that way? I know some professors you work with, are likely vigorous in recruiting students for political agendas, that the professors are dedicated to.  What’s your ethical view on this touchy topic and its relationship to the battle of faculty to secure intellectual freedom?

B: I approach the political situations by asking them questions, how are they being impacted in their lives and listening more than I tell them about mine. When they ask me questions then I answer them honestly with what my stance is. A few times a week I have to pass a very load broadcasting fundamentalist Christian preacher who sets up his platform outside the library. I hear his loud preaching when I am working in my WGSS office. He stands there projecting his well-trained preacher voice telling the students not to commit adultery and only god can forgive you or numerous other high ground preaching statements meant to guilt these young people into submission. Most students pass him by without seemingly noticing him as do I. Although sometimes he has Christian students join him and they work more to engage the passing students in conversation. I find this deeply disturbing on many levels. It shocks me how this invasion of ideology blasting is allowed week after week in a public educational setting. I know he has found his legal location to preach but I find is so invasive and condemning of these young people. Who are not the source of the moral crisis in this country or world.

M: So, do you think Trump’s first big message to the nation “Don’t be afraid. Stop the hate” is going do anything useful?

B: No. Because he just says things reactively. He always has, in the election campaigning, he just says what he needs to in order to get votes from a lot of pissed-off people; and now, he says things like that to just placate the nation. He’ll say what ever. He’s just a player in a big game, there’s no substance. He’s just now being politically correct. Paradoxically, and ironically, by not being pc in his campaigning, he actually won the election. But it may still turn around that many who voted for Hillary are protesting all over the country as she won the popular vote. Anyways, this is the first time I have been learning just how fucked up the US election process is. It’s all connected historically as this system emerged after the Civil War. It didn’t work well back then. It has not worked since. The same sex, racial and class conflicts. Nothing has really changed. The angry poor whites end up fighting with the angry poor African Americans and so on. They won’t unite. Hate spreads. We’re still in the mess.

M: So here you are a state-employee. And you could have this interview picked-up by some surveillance security folks, and you and I could get in trouble. You know we are risking to speak out regardless of this? I say, we have to be following a fearlessness ethical criteria for free-speech, regardless of what positions we hold. I know you are not here speaking for your university or the state or anyone officially. You are speaking as an American citizen, and you just happen to be a state-employee at the same time. You ought to have the right to speak out in this country or anywhere. Are you afraid of surveillance of this dialogue and how it may affect your travel at the US border going in or out of this country. I know you are going to Egypt soon?

B: Not really, I have come to a place of not caring any more. Ethics and care comes first.

M: So what transformation is going on, for you personally and collectively?

B: Really getting how I am privileged in a leadership role and stepping into that fully; and, unfortunately, realizing few others are within my university. Obama didn’t get to the core of this countries issues to help the reform and transformation of education, nor did he reform Wall Street and big money-power that limits healthy government in this nation. There were some good things with Obama but more symbolic only, in regard to benefitting women and African Americans. Nothing fundamentally has changed.

M: It’s like the repressed shadow-side of the progressives, since the great victory of Obama, kind of got hidden for eight years and now. It is really coming out with shocking vehemence to the Left, but a lot of people in general. There’s a lot of disillusionment in progress overall. I see this especially for young people, many who are protesting on the streets across this nation right now, who are not so used to the long history and inevitability of swings of political and cultural wars, especially in the USA’s history. We never seem to just progress in a straight line, there’s always regressions, don’t you think?

B: Symbols of progress and surface gestures of change are not enough. You can’t be a progressive country when you are in continual war; it’s like an oxymoron because you are still as a nation putting nearly all your money into the military. Is that progressive? Because you still have the country with the most child poverty of developed nations and your school systems are atrocious, is that progressive, and the horrible health care system? Look, the lack of love for Americans worldwide has not decreased under Obama. A year and a half ago, when traveling overseas, I still wasn’t telling anyone on my trip I was an American. The stalemate has flipped, that’s all; from one corrupt government party to the other—all of them still war-mongers. I don’t know, I don’t know… I don’t understand it. Trump proves how Americans operate in a game of delusions and images. It’s too much power in the hands of people who just won’t grow up. I guess all empire nations are like that.

M: Yes, I agree. The level of maturity, due to woundedness and fear, is astoundingly low overall here. Violence is the food they eat and, well, you can expect what will come out of the other end. It’s not like I blame any individual. It’s a collective pathology, with a long history. I don’t feel that same pathology in Canada but Canadians do collude, often blindly, with American society, culture, economics and politics way more than I like. Immaturity is everywhere in the adult populations in North America. Barbara, I know in the past you have not necessarily seen yourself as an educator, activist or academic per se, especially so politically engaged as now, can you comment on that, what you think about activism in terms of your professional identity?

B: No, I prefer to be an artist. That identity can incorporate all those pieces and yet keep them integrated in some sane fashion. Part of it is, I don’t really like overload of information as activists seem to thrive on information. I’ve been forced to pay more attention to information in my work here. It’s not where I like to live and dwell, details aren’t that important at some level. I’m more interested in what quality of relationships are happening; like how are we treating each other, everywhere? I don’t care all that much about statistics and all the information and I know so much of it is heavily skewed with political agendas. So those labels don’t feel like me. I feel the tragedy of future of generations. I grieve over the mess adults have created. I want to do something about it.

M: And, indeed you are doing something. It’s impressive. I know it is painful too. So, you’ve been part of the Fearlessness Movement, more or less, since you met me in the late 1980s, and I’m curious what you think fearlessness, my leadership, has to offer in these current times and the near future?

B: I think people need to come to a place of respecting wisdom not just information or knowledge about this and that. And knowledge about what oppresses us all, as in your emancipatory research and your teaching is more interested in drawing out wisdom than drawing out and blasting people with information and statistics. At another level, you’re not a good activist. You talk about it and claim you are an activist; but you really don’t do a lot of action out there for the amount of time you have available. Instead, you’re gathering threads of knowledge and trying to formulate it within theories, models and patterns, for critical praxis.

M: Since coming to the US, it is not like I haven’t tried to join up and collaborate with all the Left groups, and I’ve attended many meetings and workshops of various sorts to help out. It seems that I come from way too strong of a radical position. These people here won’t take me serious, or they are too threatened by what I teach and represent. I have had some really candid discussions with great people, and they are even anti-American themselves here, and yet, when it came right down to them and I working more closely, no way! I find them all quite coward-like and they just can’t get over their Americanism. They’ve been conditioned to not reach out to other nations for advice. I was willing to give it all. They couldn’t take me openly and learn from my Canadian perspective, let alone learn from my unique research on fear and fearlessness to help them climb out of the chronic culture of fear which they were born and raised in, and which they seem still to deny its full impact on them. What more can I do? They’re addicted to oil and gas, their fierce individualism and independence, their need to be exceptional and superior—and, their deep chronic fear, individually and collectively. That’s not easy to overcome and it affects all colors of people, sex, gender, class and religions. One needs a lot of resources to help an addict, never mind a nation of them.

B: On one level, Michael, you are out of the world and can observe it; at another level you are in the world and pissed off at it. That conflict gives you an edge when you approach people out in the world.

M: I suppose. Doesn’t that go with being someone who’s a prophetic-type of character, an artist, radical, liberational leader? They are not generally, all that loved. But, I hear ya.

 B.  It’s a disadvantage, let’s put it that way. Likely, you’d go farther to have other people put your work into action. That may not come in your life time, I don’t know. It might have to be someone else finding it and recognizing it and not having you personally attached to it with the edge. I don’t know.

M: Me either. I have been noticing in the last couple years more up-take of my work and the Fearlessness Movement is resonating with more people than In Search of Fearlessness. It’s a long-haul, no matter which way you look at it. I have to not blame myself for it not taking off 25 years ago as I had wished and had so much enthusiasm back then. Now, I am still strong on the mission, just haven’t the same enthusiasm. Hey, maybe that’s a good thing. Who knows. Thanks for this interview. I know your post-election speech/letter has had a lot of great responses. What have people been saying since reading it? What has been the best part of hearing those responses for you?

B: A reminder that I/we are not alone in our pain and grief and we can turn to each other and not get stuck in isolation and our own despair. Acknowledging that, we are in a huge crisis but that we can still take steps with each other to get out of it. Another was the reminder that it is okay to take care of ourselves and not to lose sight of the beauty of each day in the midst of the grief.  Most were grateful responses. I did have 2 people ask to be taken off the list-serv after this post. Surprisingly one was a law professor and the other a pre-law student. Not sure what this says about those who uphold the law and want to uphold the law in America.

M: In America, or any place of contested views, this is to be expected. I'm glad to see so many were inspired by your speech/letter.

End Notes

1. Dear WGSS Students and Faculty, (Nov. 9/16), 

I will be sharing the regular newsletter later today but felt the need to share these early morning thoughts in the aftermath of the election. I am a Canadian who chose to become an American 7 years ago after coming to teach at SIU. I have found it hard to understand American thinking and ways of being on so many levels. As a new American I have experienced the significance and responsibility of voting that I never felt as a Canadian.  There are many gifts to be found in America. May the peoples of American now become leaders in the recovery and healing of deep systemic institutionalized oppressions that perpetuate hatred and fear. May Canada and all the world allies come forward to join in. The presence of WGSS in institutions of education is an essential part of that recovery. The work is undeniable and we have the knowledge and tools. We teach them in our classes, share them our research. I echo many of my WGSS colleague words on FB. It is time to get to work. 

Reality and Recovery

Accepting reality is the first step in recovery. Last night I chose to go to bed before the final election results were known. Awakening this morning at 5am my thought was “Trump has attained the Presidency of the United States of American. This is a reality.” Immediately I moved into thoughts of what I would share in my weekly newsletter to the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies community in which I am the Director of at SIU. I realized what I do know is that a number of disenfranchised groups in America have risen and won over other disenfranchised groups in this current political system. The familiar win-lose binary that keeps racism, sexism, homophobia and every other oppression in place is alive and well. The backlash for the losers is excruciating, full of pain and horror. I feel overwhelmed and ill-prepared for what is to come. I wake my partner up in bed as I weep and shake and ask him for attention. Attention is what we can give each other as we do the conscious work needed to release the collective trauma that has surfaced so blatantly in this 2016 election. It is a trauma that invokes with its worst side the use of intimidation to silence us and keep us isolated and in fear. On its better side is asks us to keep moving from crying to singing. I know from my experience that it is crucial to not silence the voice even when words feel impossible and/or inadequate. As I sing, thoughts of how oppressed groups utilize singing in times of political, cultural and religious oppressions arise in my memory, both in mind and body.

I begin to ask myself questions:

How can I step out of this rampant political binary and step into what can be clearly seen as fearism now that all political correct hiding strategies have been blown up? How can I model something else more unifying with diversity for those who are part of my professional and personal life? The WGSS conference that I am in the midst of planning with students and faculty is entitled “Allies Across Differences.” We have been preparing to address the binary of win vs. lose, us vs. them. We have an opportunity to offer a hospitable space on campus for the collective trauma that this political election has brought to the world’s attention. The fall out from the election results calls for attention and healing. We have the opportunity to keep teaching truth to power in hospitable ways, and yet, not be cooperative with oppression.

I am grateful for my wise colleague Cade Bursell’s FB post in the hours prior to the final election results. Reminding us/me to continue the work; to not return hate that we feel directed at us as women, people of color and diverse sexual and diverse gender identities. Instead let us stay connected, give attention to each other’s fear but do not succumb to projecting it back out as attacks. Stand up for each other. Gather allies, strategize and continue to use your voice and gifts to build allyships across differences. I grieve for and with the young especially as they have been born into this legacy of fear.

I begin this day with a simple commitment to remind people to sing. To keep walking the path with allies and those not yet allies with love and compassion. From chaos and destruction eventually comes new order. Keep teaching and speaking truth to power in your classes. And remember that the formal political realm is one of at least three realms that make up our world. The others being equally important, the natural and the spiritual realms. Take time for recovery. Spend some time outside today and remember the unconditional life giving forces that sustain us as humans on this planet. 

Please contact me if you would like to set up spaces for dialogue. WGSS will do what it can to support initiatives and gatherings for recovering and generating creative and critical ideas and initiatives for the future. 

2. She is borrowing one of my own terms and how I have used fearism as far back as 1997 to refer to the form of ideological oppression beneath all terrorism (and other ‘ism’ dis-eases); and now, since 2014 and meeting Desh Subba’s work on fearism, Barbara is referring implicitly to the more technically precise term fearism-t (toxic form). For Subba and myself we are promoting in our collaborations a philosophy of fearism, where the term is used like existentialism, or rationalism, which by itself is not toxic per se but such terms can be twisted and become toxic and dominating violent ideologies.

Find attached here the newest technical paper No. 63, "TRANSFORMATION OF FEAR: A Critical Look in Educational Philosophy & Contexts"... hot off the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute (press)... "Tech%20paper%2063.pdf by yours truly... it takes a close examination at some of the leading-edge work on "transformation of fear" and reviews a lot of literature, and includes my critiques and recommendations for improvements toward a future pedagogy of fearlessness. Note: It specifically focuses on Four Arrows' CAT-FAWN connection theory and Elisebeth VanderWeil's Trickster Fear theory, comparing and contrasting them. -enjoy, RMF

Responding to the 2016 US election results is the thing tens of thousands of people are doing already. I don’t want to write a response trying to repeat what they are saying, more or less—which, boils down to how much fear they have because of the winner “Donald Trump” ('the man,' 'the beast').

No, as a fearologist researcher-writer-teacher I am thinking in the imaginary of what I have lately been calling the Anthropocene Fear (21^st century context). From that perspective, I don’t want to be petty and underplay the importance of this election, nor over-exaggerate its importance on a global-geological scale. That said, the ‘ripples’ of fear in the world, which for Trump supporters is elation, are worthy of responses. My first response was prior to election day; see “Love, Fear, and the US Election 2016” (FMning Oct. 20, 2016).

Instead, I’ll pick-up on the concept of Trumpism as the topic, which sort of makes Donald Trump a “symptom” not the “disease.” By which I mean to use Trumpism as a playful, trickster like way to signify a form of oppression, a guise, a mask, a character(istic) of which ‘the man’ embodies. I’m imagining, if this concept takes off with some acceptance (which I doubt it will), people will add this to the long list of ‘ism’ dis-eases in the world, like racism, sexism, classism (and, for some, Marxism, Freudianism, Stalinism, etc.). And, before long, people will be accusing other people of being not merely a racist, sexist—but, they’ll have another label to lay onto someone they disagree with and judge as Trumpist. If only ‘the man’ could play such an instrument (ha!).

My ploy is to displace the obvious energies arising in and around our dramatic reactions to ‘the man’—most all of which the media has constructed-- and potentially feel and see the energies transforming; as at one level we are ‘forced’ to come face-to-face into the energy field of fear of Donald Trump (i.e., Trumpism). I suggest we can avoid having to actually make up another “fear of Donald Trump” to add to the multiple growing lists of fears that people are already talking about in mass numbers since he (for some shockingly) won the election [1]. What the world needs now, to grow, heal and change for the better, is not a bigger list of fears or even mental disorders like Trumpophobia. I think you get what I mean. Don’t feed it! (gosh, I hope that advice doesn’t sound too new-agey spiritual). Attune to something that most of the media and the fearmongers are not attuning to... and, see what can happen. Let me explain.

So, a good friend and ally (a Canadian) asked me the other day to write more about Trumpism, and so that’s the purpose of this blogpost. I asked her why she wanted me to talk more about the concept. Here’s what she responded:

“When you mentioned that ‘Trumpism’ won’t go away [no matter what the election results], I wonder if yet another version or expression of fear has presented itself to the researcher [fearologist] in you. What do you know that the average person doesn’t that makes you think it won’t go away—and does it need to?”

The fear that motivates so much of the political field of interactions, especially in the USA (called a “culture of fear” by many experts), is what makes Trumpism work effectively. Fear motivates. It can do that in good ways and not so good ways. Trumpism is another form of fearism-t (toxic form)—which underlies all terrorism. That’s what I know that most people may not know. I was, it appears, first to coin the word “fearism” decades ago. Trumpism is closest to Triumphalism (very close to Chauvinism)—on and on I could associate terms that resonate around the fear-field of Trumpism, which makes itself look bravado-fearless but it is collecting nearly everyone’s fears at the same time to blow itself into this elite wealthy corporate charismatic leader—greater than life—blond Hero that speaks from impulse and will save the world (well, at least, “Make America Great Again” was his campaign slogan).

Does Trumpism need to go away? Does racism need to go away? Does fearism-t need to go away? I don’t think so. The question left lingering is what will replace it? Who has that magic filler for the gap it leaves? And, like waste products—once created—they don’t really go away anywhere that is really away—there is in the connectedness of all relations—“no away” anymore (and there never was, as my Indigenous brothers and sisters are teaching us today in the Anthropocene crisis). I guess we are left with transforming the energies of Trumpism, like any dis-ease. Of course, someone may take ‘the man’ out with a weapon but that won’t make Trumpism go away—because it is supported and fed and cookin’ in well nearly ½ of the voting public or more in the USA. It belongs. That’s the first rule of acceptance if one follows the path of fearlessness, as I promote and practice. It belongs because there is “no away” anymore—it is here! If it disappears then that will be—also here! My point is, don’t try and get rid of it—that’s like fear trying to get rid of fear(ism). It don’t work so well. Human history has tried this. Look at how fear of the nasty kind is still well with us and has us by the throat! (to be dramatic) We have a lot of fear management/education, I argue, to build and learn about before we ought to be trying to eliminate anything that reminds us of our fear—collectively, and individually. Yes, Trumphism is in you, and you dreamt it—that’s why it appeared in the running for the 2016 US Presidential Election. It’s yours and my Shadow, in otherwords.

My friend also said she looked up trump in a dictionary to learn it means “ranking above others” and “a valuable resource to be used to gain advantage”—she wrote, “How interesting that this descriptor energy seems embedded in our new ‘apprentice’s’ language and actions [yes, I call Triumphalism].... I’d like to know your thinking on how energy manifests in various ways it’s wonders to perform?”

Shadow energy from the unconscious (especially the collective) cycles and recycles, and then if we ignore it long enough—it “pops” out and bites us in the ass. That’s Trumpism. The 'bite' is an attempt to remind us we are "connected" --to everything! I realize that is intellectually easier to think about than to really 'get' fully and embody in practice.

We ought to say, “Hey, thank you Trumpism for the bite in the ass—I really need that!” We need it to accept it consciously—all healing, more or less, involves unconscious repressed arising and returning (and destroying) until we accept it consciously and then process it—and sure, by just working with the energy, even by doing so in playing with words, making up words, like Trumpism—is, in my view a better way to create a performance with the energies—rather, than getting all caught up in the symptom’s performance (of which ‘the man’ is so expert, apparently—he’s a TV star, isn’t he). So, get out of the box, out of the TV screen, or computer Internet screen—and design your own ‘energy’ transformations and performances to work through what is arising at this ‘crazy’ time. As many have said, “fear” (Fear) is just energy, at one level. However, don’t make the mistake of thinking your individual energy work is adequate alone to the collective reality of a “culture of fear” (or fearism-t, or Trumpism)—I’ve seen this reductionistic error (if not narcissism) way too much in the healing communities I’ve been part of. So, my long experience tells me we have to be more holistic-integral, and creative as hell as “communities” as well to do the energy transformative work.

End Notes

1. According to B. Kamal (2016) who wrote: “The electoral victory of U.S. Republican Donald Trump — many have said — is an alarming signal that heralds new, difficult times. Maybe. Anyway, this victory could –and should-be seen as a symptom not as a disease.

Such disease consists of a widespread malaise, the feeling of frustration and even oppression that the majority of citizens shelter in their hearts and minds worldwide. Let alone the syndrome of unrestricted fear of everything, which has been imposed on everyone.

Fear of the so-called economic crisis that the private banking and financial sectors have created in 2007.

Fear of lay people to lose their jobs and thus accepting unacceptable working conditions.

Fear of losing their houses, new cars, latest model smartphones, which they still owe to the banks.

Fear of migrants taking their jobs and leaving them in misery.

Fear of Muslim refugees coming to destroy their Western Christian “civilisation”.

Fear of cold wars promoted by the weapons business.

Fear, fear, fear.”

(excerpt from “Trump the Symptom” @http://www.other-news.info/2016/11/trump-the-symptom/#more-12655)

The above book cover from Jon Young’s (2013) recent writing on what he calls “deep bird language” is an excellent read if you want to attune to what I mean by ecology of fear. Equally, and with the same implicit application, is the “philosophy of fearism” by Subba (2014). At least, that’s the hypothesis and interpretation I will present in this blogpost as it unfolds. As I have already spoken about Subba’s work here on the FM ning, where he says it in his book’s subtitle which gives away an entry point into understanding the meaning of ecology of fear: “Life is Conducted, Directed and Controlled by the Fear.” Another universal way of saying how important this subject matter is: Fear is the most powerful motivating force in Creation and especially human society. The incorporation of fear into the scholarly work on ecology is a relatively new and exciting concept, that I for one am studying.

I’ll focus on Young’s work. Herein, I both embrace the work of Young (an expert, Indigenous-based tracker and thinker, naturalist, birder, author and educator—and, a student of the internationally recognized Tom Brown Jr. tracking school) and I’ll critique it for what it neglects to say explicitly about the nature and role of fear in ecology and in the world of birds and Nature itself.

To give you a quick sample, let’s take how Young markets his book and the value of learning “deep bird language” based on bird’s behavior in the wilds and our backyards. He argues that if we attend carefully to the entire field of bird sounds and behaviors in any environment, we’ll learn more what is going on ecologically—from the very moment we step outside our house door. We won’t learn everything ecological there is to know from the birds. No, that would be foolish to assume. He’s more measured in his claim and says we’ll access a good deal of the major things happening with birds and mammals behaviorally. He says the benefits of this attunement to deep bird language involves developing our own primal animal-part of our brains, allowing a cross-species communication to give us cues and truths we ordinarily miss-- bringing that back to life to better work for us day to day; secondly, and the benefit will be “How can we access that [bird ecology] world through our awareness of deep bird language so that we can also see more wildlife?” (p. xix)

To attune to birds, Young suggests (and I believe he is right on, as I am a long-time birder), is the best thing we can do in any environment if we want to “see more wildlife.” And have a more enjoyable and intimate experience in Nature. Because? Birds are incredibly aware of what is happening because they have the best vantage point of view of any environment—equally, they are very vocal and relatively easy to watch and hear. They are the sentinels, the news-reporters and monitors of the goings-on in an environment. You pay attention to the birds and you’ll gain a tonne of information to what they are paying attention to that you likely cannot see nor even notice. To put it simply, as the Indigenous peoples know, they are your guides to the outdoors. Bird spirits and feathers are often used in Indigenous rituals.

Most people haven’t a clue that this is so and wouldn’t believe it. Young writes that we humans today, for the most part, “Have lost much of our sensory keenness [survival instincts], we are at a great disadvantage, but we can do much better” (p. xvii). We have an adaptive ecological-sensory system to maintain a healthy and quality relationship with environments. It keeps us “real” and “connected.” Walking the streets or driving a car, especially with an ipod or any electronic music or phone plugged into your ears is not the way to Natural attunement and connection. It is a Cultural connection but that’s all. The Natural world is ultimately the foundational one if you are about Life—it is more important to be connected to than anything else, Young, and Four Arrows and I would argue. The latter, is how all individuals and species “make it.” But, from all signs of our species great destruction of the environment and ecological system fragilities in so many parts of the earth, it seems we have lost our attunement and direction and need to pay careful attention to that instinctive living wisdom inside us. The birds can help us, says Young.

I’ll leave this sample clue to what I am going to talk about now, and have you sit with this notion of the importance of birds (and Young positions the common American Robin as the most important sentinel in most cases; although I won’t focus on that). I’ll let you also sit with thinking through why is it that we can “see more wildlife” when we pay attention to the birds. Clue: Because, Young is really saying that the problem of not seeing more wildlife comes about because we are frightening wildlife away from us way before we get to within visibility of them. He hit the nail on the hammer: “We are often (usually, to be honest) a jarring, unaware presence in the world beyond the front door” (p. xvii). Yes, “frightening” them with our “bird plow” effect as he calls it. I’ll return to this all later after I give more context to the ecology of fear notion.

Yet, let me quickly say what questions are driving this interest in studying birds (Nature) in order to be a better fearologist. A fearologist is someone, as I defined the term many years ago, who studies the nature of fear in relationship to life. The fearologist, following many psychologies [1] wants to know the best truth about fear that is possible so we can have the best fear management/ education. With that, we ought to then be best attuned to truth and reality, rather than letting excess fear lead us away from truth and reality and that creates disastrous problems. Now, the trick is to access that best information on fear and its management. How do we? What methodology? Where do we look to learn that? What might get in the way of us finding that best information?

So, after reading Four Arrows' work, whom you’ll see mentioned on this FMning several times, I thought to follow his basic premise in how to best understand fear in becoming what he called (as did Sam Keen) a “connoisseur of fear.” He wrote: “To survive and thrive, wild animals must be experts in Fear. Humans who wish to express their positive potentiality must also be connoisseurs of this great motivator [Fear]” (Jacobs, 1998, p. 156). Both Four Arrows (aka Don T. Jacobs) and I use a very broad definition of Fear, just to keep that in mind throughout this blogpost. Ha hah! There it was. The poignant claim from this Indigenous educator guiding us humans (i.e., primarily, he was writing to the urbanized non-Indigenous modern Westerners)—the claim that if we humans want to know best about the nature and role of fear (he capitalized Fear) then we ought to listen to “wild animals” as our teachers, and to Nature in general. I’m all for that because that is actually where I learned the most wisdom in my life since I was a very young child. My first career was a naturalist, both as hobby and as a professional Park Interpreter, albeit, the latter was only for a few summers. I learned to carefully and quietly observe Nature very carefully as a hunter/tracker—in the form of a fisherman, ever since my dad taught me to hold a fishing rod at about four years old.

It is my work on fearlessness since 1989 that has led to me expanding my own consciousness and exploring Fear (and fear management) along a spectrum of evolutionary spheres from Natural to Cultural to Spiritual—each distinct but overlapping and evolving in that order (at least, that’s a theory). If you are interested in that theory you may want to look at the first piece of writing I have done on ecology of fear (Fisher, 2012). I map out the Ecology of Fear components as part of Defense Intelligence systems universal in living organisms (p. 8). I won’t get that technical and philosophical in this blogpost. Also, one ought to note that there is a new postmodern poststructuralist discourse and philosophy around “ecologies” that is being applied from the original science meaning into the humanities and social sciences (a la Deleuze and Guattari), but that is all too complex to enter into here. Okay, time for more context.

In the early years of 2000, when I posited that we need a new ‘Fear’ Studies program in all schools (K-16) and societies in general, I was foregrounding the necessity to study fear (‘fear’ and Fear) from many perspectives, multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary. I noted there was a new movement being recognized in the study of affect, emotions and fear specifically that could be termed “a new scholarship on fear.” This historical and postmodern context is essential to understanding how I think about Fear and how I think we all ought to start thinking about Fear in new ways if we are to find better solutions to the Fear Problem. [okay, at this point, you can see I talk about fear, ‘fear,’ and Fear etc. Each distinct but interrelated. I don’t want to get into all that technical definition material that the fearologist has to consider; so for ease of reading I’ll use fear mostly unless I want to emphasize something beyond that normal configuration]

To write about the ecology of fear, say, rather than the psychology of fear is to raise the question of why most people have never heard of the former and would have no problem recognizing and understanding what the latter means. One is a weird term and the other is normal. Just right there begins the context for my critique of the dominating discourses of fear in our societies and the ruling disciplines (e.g., Psychology) that have controlled how we define, make meaning of, make normal, and develop rhetorics around fear and its management and education. I am convinced that the world will not make much progress in bringing the out-of-control fear cycle under some healthy management until we expand our critical literacy and vocabulary, and enlighten our imaginary for what fear (‘fear’) and the human relationship are all about.

Thus, ecology of fear is one of many other[2] recently coined phrases, from the late 1990s (e.g., Brown, Laundŕe and Gurung, 1999; Davis, 1999), which begins to unravel the hegemony of the disciplinary fields of Biology, Psychology, Biomedicine and Psychiatry when it comes to understanding the nature and role of fear. These fields have notoriously kept “fear” located in the body and individual, in the Cultural sphere, usually restricted to the brain/mind as the primary source and place of meaning-making. There are many critiques one could raise, and I have along with others for decades. Yet, that is far beyond the scope of this blogpost. What is worth remembering is that a notion like ecology of fear immediately invokes a relational ontology, epistemology and understanding of fear dynamics in both the human world and also the non-human world and their environments.

Jon Young’s Contribution to the Ecology of Fear

My life-partner and I were at an Indigenous Wisdom and Sustainability conference recently where she purchased Young’s book. We were both interested in birds, albeit, I have taught her most everything she knows, not to be a smart ass about it, it is just a fact. My deep desire to know everything about birds grew out of my brother and I noticing birds while fishing, especially when we weren’t catching fish. My brother bought a cheap Radio Shack spotting scope and a bird guidebook when we were in our late teens. It was so cool being able to watch a bird so close-up and you didn’t have to scare the bird away by trying to get close to it and identify it. This was the opening into a whole new world for both of us, although he quickly faded in interest and I kept it going, to the point where it became part of my profession as a wildlife technician and naturalist. To this day, I still bird watch everyday, usually out the front window of our living room or from the back porch patio space.

When I read Young’s book in bits, it quickly attuned me that he was talking about a whole new way of seeing the Robin, and other small “dickie birds” as some would call them who were less appreciative of the small birds and who liked to focus on the big masculine birds of prey and game birds. I liked dickie birds from the start. They come in such a variety of colors and shapes and make amazing music. Anyways, Young’s book about “deep bird language” was somewhat familiar to me but not quite anything I had thought about consciously nor trained my ears for specifically. He had studied this way since a small boy. He mastered bird behavior and sounds. He could ‘read’ what they were saying, as best a human can interpret things like that. So, I was intrigued. I began practicing listening and looking in different ways when I was outside. I would attune, as he suggests, to what the birds are 'saying' and how their emotional state is, and whether or not anything is in their environment that they are going to signal you about its presence (e.g., a predator)--that is if you are attending carefully. Yes, birds are the best sentinels and some of the smartest of creatures in Nature. He wrote, “There’s nothing random about birds’ awareness and behavior. They have too much at stake—life and death [survival]” (p. xvii). Birds give you a quick monitoring index of the “state” or emotional “ecology” of an area, at least in a certain way. Ah ha! I thought, they are the Fear signalers in the ecology of an area.

It would take a lot words to articulate all of Young’s theory of “deep bird language” and so I’ll suggest you read his book or go online and read his writing or watch his Youtube presentations, etc. But, let me focus in on the jist of how I interpret Young’s work on “deep bird language.” He does not focus on Fear and an ecology of fear, but he does actually know about it and mentions it per se in an end note. Yet, everything I was reading (mostly) is that birds, when they aren’t making noises feeding and communicating to their mates, singing for pleasure, and/or singing to warn competitors (e.g., male birds on territories)—they are keen observers of potential risks/dangers in their field of perceptions. They cooperate with one another to notice and warn. They are the “siren” of the woods. That’s what Young was continually talking about from the first page of his book. He was talking about bird  “alarm signals” to use proper bird behavior terminology.

By studying these alarm signals and picking them up in vocalization changes in a field of ecology, Young said you can then quickly know (or guess) where there are other animals you may want to watch as well as birds—for your pleasure. And, he teaches course on doing this. He teaches people how not to frighten and alarm birds when walking outside. He says that will stop the “bird plow” effect. This is the effect of one bird being alarmed and that signals a chain reaction because most of the birds are listening to each other. Even mammals are listening to the birds as well for this early-sounding alarm system they offer in the ecology of the field. In front of the bird plow effect all the mammals and other birds are running away from you long before you arrive close enough to see them. They don’t have to wait to see you; they are guided by the birds’ vision and awareness and alarm calls. I read this and said, yes, I know that is true from my experience and I know it is important to not frighten any creature if you can help it, or at least minimize it and that way they don’t signal other creatures to also run away from you. It’s so much fun to see animals without them being frightened of you. Their behavior is more “natural” in that sense, “calm” and if feels like you are part of nature and their lives and not upsetting it and causing them to act in ways that are different and overly influenced by you.

So, when I or anyone walks out into the environment in a certain way—as Young say, in a stressed way, with a body language of anxiety or anger (i.e., fear)—the creatures mostly pick it up immediately—the birds being the first to spread the ‘word’ to the rest of the ecology of creatures that are listening and watching the birds. It’s all a matter of survival. Birds know you—a human being—is a potential threat. Humans are top predators and we have as a species evolved with birds for millions of years preying on them for food and feathers for hats and collections—and putting them in prisons so we can have them in our houses as pets. Yes, they have a good right to fear us. Now, I won’t say that a bird like a Robin who gives a mild alarm call when I go out to the garbage can is freaking out and in fear immediately. No, they are in cautionary mode—alert. That’s their evolutionary Defense Intelligence System kicking-in, mildly, unless they are further disturbed by seeing me carrying a rifle and pointing it at them, etc . Anyways, you get the general jist of what I am talking about no doubt.

Fear, and alarm behaviors, mild and/or intense, is such a primary functioning of the ecology of fear dynamics. If it was a cat walking out to the garbage bin area, the birds would likely even give a bigger more dramatic set of codes in their behaviors (like tail bobbing) and sharp alarm calls that are very loud. The whole ecology of the area in terms of behavior and emotional tone is affected by one species (a predator) moving through the territory. Note, I don’t want to overly project how humans’ experience fear (especially today, living in a culture of fear) onto animals that are non-human. Unfortunately, as I’ll show below, Young does this. However, at the same time, one has to imagine it is very likely that as humans are growing more and more anxious and afraid, as the clinical and research studies show, then we are also affecting the wild creatures (i.e., various ecologies), not to forget to include domestic creatures. Arguably, the fear-base-line is increasing and affecting everything—it is also called distress and trauma effects. I think of all the wars and what that does to animals. I think of the booming base weekend music and loud cars and trucks with loud stereos meant to ‘kill’ and mufflers meant to make more noise, and so on. What impact is that having on the ecology of fear of environments and ecologies? Is it not scaring us all to death, human and non-human?

Now, if you use the analogy of the “bird plow” effect where fear is spread so quickly from the detection of a predator and/or threat of some kind in a field of relations (i.e., an ecology), then imagine what an event like 9/11 produces, and/or any such other terrifying and traumatic dramatization. Even what happens in a household ecology with the contagion of a parent’s fear plowing through the environment, upsetting the ecology of cooperation, trust and harmony into an ecology of distress and conflict, competition in its worse ways of domination, etc. Social pschologists and others are writing about this contagion of fear effect, but they have not got down to usually talking about and conceptualizing an ecology of fear (like Davis, 1999 does for a whole city and region). There are more complexities of how to define and make meaning of the ecology of fear (i.e., very similar in my mind to the construct of culture of fear, or climate of fear). I will be working on better describing this rather nebulous notion of ecology of fear for many years, I have no doubt. Similarly, the architecture of fear, and geography of fear, and so on... as the new postmodern fear scholarship is expanding beyond the psychology of fear.

Now to the crux of this blogpost. Four Arrows, and others have been long suggesting that modern day humans need to learn from Nature as its best teacher on survival, on living with the laws of Nature, and causing the least harm in our thoughts and actions. I agree in general, that we ought to look to Nature, birds in the case of Young’s arguments, for expertise on safety/security, risk, threat, alarms—all of which are part of an ecology of fear, and all of which compose our Defense Intelligence System. I have argued in Fisher (2012) that the ecology of fear layer of our meta-motivational template is designed by evolution as the foundation for a healthy and sustainable existence. It is foundational, or a first principle of value if you want to stay alive and healthy, and once you accomplish the learning needed for a robust and mature ecology of fear, then you can reproduce and do the ecology of love well, and if that is done well developmentally, then you can access an ecology of freedom. All of that path of meta-motivational layers in human development and evolution are motivated by fearlessness. That’s my nutshell theory of motivation.

So, the crux of argument is that we ought to learn about fear and fear management best from birds, as Young doesn’t say in his book. I critique his work in many areas of sort of coming close to saying this but then he gets distracted and talks about other things, like how we can start to see more animals if we pay attention to birds and not scare them. He doesn’t seem to get it that what a human is dealing with in nature all the time is an ecology of fear (it is not the only ecology). But Fear is a major foundation for all the other ecologies, if you define it as Defense Intelligence System. Also, could be called the Safety and Security System (which, Maslow sort of places as foundational on his hierarchy of needs model). Young doesn’t catch the importance of how Fear is the primary factor of his entire book and what he writes about and gets excited to learn about and teach about.

Young’s book cover is a clue to why I am saying his book is a great study in the ecology of fear (with birds as focal point in how that system operates in nature). If you look back at the cover illustration which I posted to start this blog, you’ll see the Robin in the middle of the ecological field, as the sentinel. You’ll see the connecting threads around it to other creatures, and notice, all of them are predators, other than the deer. Why is it? Because, his whole book revolves around predator-prey relations and how that is part and parcel of an ecology of fear.

My other critique of Young’s philosophy and writing in this book is that he imposes in several places the concept of “fear” or “anxiety” onto birds and the Natural domain, not realizing he is a highly Cultural domain being brought up in the modern cultural world—which, I and others argue, is actually a culture of fear. This latter context of human development is a powerful shaper of human identity, behaviors, thinking. Young ignores all that, and goes about saying things like:

“Of course, the Robin advises me about what seems to be its greatest fear: the deadly accipiters ... [i.e., bird hawks]” (p. xiv) or “After the Sharpie or Coopers [hawks] has left the stage, the terrorized birds act as if they are numb with shock (though considering how frequently this happens, they cannot possibly be in shock).” (p. 157) or “A nervous wolf—a nervous anything—radiates waves of tension that every other creature in the wild senses” (p. 163)

Exactly, my point: how could wolves be nervous when they live in the Natural world? They might only be nervous of humans who have systematically hunted and slaughtered them more or less in genocidal campaigns for a long long time. That’s another story. How can Robins be terrorized and in shock because of an attempt by a natural predator upon then in a Natural world—where, these species have co-evolved for millions of years in a healthy and sustainable ecology—an ecology of fear? No problem. No bird has to be terrorized, so why mention it? Because it is a projection of the human’s experience of being preyed upon—and, I mean, experience of contemporary life, albeit, there are likely traces of old memories from when we lived naturally as a species in the savannahs of Africa. Note, Young takes the comment about terrorized back in parentheses—perhaps, he unconsciously and subconsciously knew his statement was false or doubtful?

Humans are terrified because of living in a culture of fear that has systematically taught us to be terrified and to lose touch with our natural regulation processes of when stressed out (e.g., after a chase by a hawk that may be a jet bombing your village); naturally, you go into your natural de-stressing behaviors to calm down because the danger is not there, or is reduced. Every Robin knows this instinctively. It is all about de-stressing (what I have called the basic “spirit of fearlessness”)—and even healing if necessary. I won’t go into my long theory of healing and hurting, and coping and oppression—the latter, which is what has invaded and made up the Cultural sphere for a very long time—from a “departure point” as Four Arrows (2016) calls it. As a fearologist, I think Young is right to say we can learn so much about predator-prey relations from watching and listening to Nature (birds, especially). I think he is mistaken to call wild animals of any kind “terrorized” in their Natural interactions with other animals, even humans.

So, to end this sketchy blogpost of exploring thoughts... I want to say that I have found myself really enjoying thinking about environments everywhere, in terms of how there is an ecology of fear going on which is partly visible and detectable, and is also invisible largely and requires attunement and requires a new vocabulary to allows us to think about fear and its dynamics in environments differently. After what I have been critiquing in Young’s presentation (projections of human fear onto Nature), there is the inevitable critique that could be thrown at me and my writing here. Why am I calling this all an “ecology of fear”—is that not a projection of how humans and I experience fear? It may be. I am only using the expression “ecology of fear” because it is being used by many across different disciplines and it seems to have some value of expanding our imaginary in how we think about ecological relations in wild areas, domesticated areas, and so on. I applaud that work. In the end, it may be a misnomer. If we are aware of this, and make note of it in our writing on the concept of ecology of fear, then readers will know we are aware and it will make us be a little more cautious about our claims. Which is a good thing. Other than that, I’m curious to see where this whole sub-field of work on the ecology of fear goes.

I look forward to talking with anyone more on all this. We need better theory and then applications of theory in different environments to see if we can intervene in them and help produce less fearful environments everywhere, from the psychiatric hospital to our homes and schools, etc.

What can the plants and animals of this world teach us, foundationally, about fear (Fear) and courage and fearlessness, that may be very useful and relatively “cleaner” (free of fear-based distortions) from a lot of what human beings, who live in a culture of fear, are currently teaching about fear? Who can I trust most to be a teacher on fear management/ education? Who are the experts? How will we decide? This is a question not usually asked in the circles of those in the West (at least) who write about fear and courage, for example. So, let me end with a validating quote of my position in this blogpost. It comes from Four Arrows’ (2016) latest book:

“Socrates, like most philosophers who have shaped, rationalized, or been influenced themselves by the dominant [W.] worldview [3] did not rely upon other-than-human wisdom. Indigenous worldview sees courage [and fearlessness] as inseparable from a deep sense of relationship and reciprocity to all of life. ‘Other-than-humans’ represent the ultimate teachers of courage.... or fearlessness” (p. 56).

Young’s book is all about this, as I interpret it beneath the surface. The front cover of Young’s book reminds me of how it is all (or nearly all) about predatory-prey relational ecologies which are so Natural and important to learn about and attune to. They are foundational to any healthy and quality life that is connected. Four Arrows (2016) asks us to question our current ways of living, “... might we give more credit to other-than-humans for their displays of courage and fearlessness as a learned phenomenon...? (p. 57). Young and I say “yes,” indeed we must learn what the birds know and observe how they learn what they know in regard to predator-prey relationships[4] especially, because that is where we learn about the ecology of fear wisdom so critical to survival.

Notes

1. I want to be as transparent as possible as to my own biased approach to Psychology and psychologies. I am heavily critical of Psychology per se. I love the field too, but I am more of the camp called “Critical Psychology.” Yet, more deeply profound is my commitment to what I call the “Healing School of Psychology” (i.e., psychologies). This School parallels all the other five major schools (or waves) of psychology (e.g., psychoanalysis, behaviorism/cognitivism, humanistic-existential, transpersonal and integral). The Healing School parallels the Coping School (psychologies), sort of analogous to how I see the Indigenous Worldview parallels the Western Worldview—acknowledging both exists, and both have a purpose and value, yet, the Healing School (like Indigenous Worldview) are the only truly healthy and whole schools of thought. Very briefly, let me say that The Healing School is a large amalgam of many ways of thinking that put priority on fearlessness, more or less. They ask us as a coping society to face into the truth of what has happened over the millenium whereby we departed from being a healing society and adopted being a coping society. This has been a deadly replacement/displacement (as Freud’s defense mechanism theory would inform this). I call it the Blue Pill replaced the Red Pill, if you are someone who watched The Wachowski Brother’s blockbuster sci-fi trilogy films (1999-2003). I am not going to go into this in detail. I will say only that we overall, especially in modern societies, have ‘bought in’ and been ‘tricked in’ to buying that coping is better than healing when we look at how to exist in everyday society. This is a Lie of the greatest proportions but it feeds a lot of industries (e.g., drugs, pharmaceuticals, safety and security businesses, police and military, etc.). Coping will keep you in fear-based distress, more or less, with bits of relief based on what someone sells to you, or some relaxation technique that softens the symptoms of pain arising from hurts unhealed. This is the great chronic problem at the core of the Fear Problem—now, we are even afraid of healing—and have forgotten it is completely naturally built-in by evolution. We pay people to ‘heal us’ and so on. The coping industries, are the fearmongering industries. Now, that’s what we really need to change and disengage our many forms of psychologies that support coping over healing. 

2. There are other phrases being used as units of study and sub-disciplines, like architecture of fear, anthropology of fear, geography of fear, economy of fear, history of fear, sociology of fear, philosophy of fear, theology of fear and so on.

3. Western here, for Four Arrows is also much of the Eastern philosophies as he argues in his book—it seems the Western hegemony of thought has infected the entire world for the most part. He is referring to the time 9-10,000 years ago at least when the Western or Dominant worldview began to arise and over-take other worldviews to a large extent. Indigenous worldview for Four Arrows is the worldview of pre-contact days (before, Western colonization of Indigenous cultures and lands).

4. I realize for many readers of this, they may think that the reduction of Life to predator-prey relationships is a gross, harsh and overly competitive and nasty bruttish framing of Nature and Life. That’s a long argument. I merely want to say, that it seems so true that Life consists of co-evolutionary relationships, organisms with environments, organisms with organisms, etc. I have no doubt that cooperation and harmony in that sense is profound and core to how existence takes place. Yet, equally (at least) is competition for survival, which much of evolutionary theory has already well spoken to and it has been documented empirically. What I know, a prior (fact) is that when you really examine what is going on in the world of existence, it is everybody eating everybody, more or less. That’s a predatory prey ecology, and what a large number of researchers are doing today, across fields from bioecology to social sciences, are only recently investigating (which they have not really done so in the past) is “how the fear a prey has of being killed by its predator may affect the basic predator-prey interactions [behaviorally] as we understand them and how the resulting interplay in this two player game can cascade to other ecological effects. The incorporation of fear into ecology is a relatively new concept and is just now being explored more fully” (Laundré, Hernández and Ripple, 2010, p. 1). I am intrigued by the notion of what are called crises of “trophic cascades” in ecological literature. Someday, I’ll write out my own theory of how such cascades can come about when say the “ecology of fear” reaches such toxicity in an area or domain of existence, it can bring down all the gains of an “ecology of love” and “ecology of freedom” to their lowest common denominator of basically self-destruction based on toxic fear/distress. Then a whole system is in ‘big trouble.’ I think we are well heading into such a crises of cascading effects, and I am not the only one suggesting this is the case. The next 10-15 years will prove this out I predict. So, I say, lets really understand how this plays out, and do so by refining our meta-motivational theory of what drives human behavior via four basic ecologies (see Fisher, 2012).

References

Brown, J. S., Laundŕe, J. W., and Gurung, M. (1999). The ecology of fear: Optimal foraging game theory, and trophic interactions. Journal of Mammology, 80(2), 385-99.

Davis, M. (1999). Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster. NY: Vintage Books.

Fisher, R. M. (2012). Steps to an ecology of fear: Advanced curriculum for fearlessness.  Technical Paper No. 38. Carbondale, IL: In Search of Fearlessness Research          Institute.

Four Arrows (aka Jacobs, D. T.) (2016). Point of departure: Returning to a more authentic worldview for education and survival. Charlotte, NC: Information Age          Publishing.

Jacobs, D. T. (1998). Primal awareness: A true story of survival, transformation, and awakening with the Rarámuri shamans of Mexico. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions.

Laundré, J. W., Hernández, L., and Ripple, W. J. (2010). The landscape of fear: Ecological implications of being afraid. The Open Ecology Journal, 3, 1-7.

Subba, D. (2014). Philosophy of fearism: Life is conducted, directed and controlled by the fear. Australia: Xlibris.

Young, J. (2013). What the robin knows: How birds reveal the secrets of the natural world. NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Anyone who attempts to publish truths that are unspeakable to most of the population, and especially to publish in Education journals, magazines, newsletters, blogs and books that active educators of the mainstream will likely read, knows the frustration of being exiled from discursive communities that are supposed to be professional communities (among others) who care about young learners and the future.

Since 1989 I have been attempting to get published in such places and typically my manuscripts and proposals are exiled from publication and even worse from merely having a dialogue with an educator 'in the system.' There have been a small handful of rare moments where this was not the case and I am grateful, yet, those exceptions ran dry very quickly. It seems educators, in my experience (and, I'll keep this critique aimed at my own Western companions and colleagues), are simply not wanting to talk about fear and its negative impacts--that is, they avoid my distinction as center to my research of labeling the Fear Problem exactly as best I can for all to then do their own research and make up their own damn minds. I could be wrong or exaggerative--then, dialogue with me, let me publish, and we can go from there as any healthy democracy would. Or, am I too idealistic? Well, if I am idealistic in my expectations for educators then I am not alone. Recently, because of my dialogue with Rafiq (aka Robert Lewis) on the FM ning, I went back to search the article out that he and Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs) wrote and published on "Classroom Silence About September 11: A Failure of Education" [1].

I had read their co-authored article in 2011, long before I had heard of Rafiq. It was a time when Four Arrows had approached me in an email about his frustration of being unable to publish this piece. It so happened that I had just had my ms. for an article on pedagogy of fearlessness [2] accepted by a Pakistani journal sort of in Education (on the literary end). Not only was I amazed my article, really a first likely ever on "pedagogy of fearlessness" that I knew of, and certainly the first to get into an education mainstream peer-reviewed international journal--then, I told Four Arrows to perhaps contact the editor [3] which he proceeded to and was successful. I did not know at the time he co-wrote this with Rafiq. Rafiq (2016), in his book writes of his first encounters with Four Arrows in a remote village in Mexico and when reading his book recently I found his story about this episode of being rejected and then finally finding a publisher:

"Between editing jobs I tried to get back to work on this book. But when I looked at the pages I'd written seven months earlier, I didn't like what I read.... I stuck it back in the drawer. Instead I got talked into writing about the attack of 2001 [i.e., 9/11] Four Arrows wanted me to co-author an article with him about the complicity of educators in [not] spreading the official lie about what happened that day. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want the attack inside my head... [all over again]."

"I had no excuse. So I started outline the simple holes in the story that educators refused to look at. I discussed what it meant to have an education system that wouldn't challenge fascist authority. Like the one in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. We finished the paper at the end of December and Four Arrows sent it off to a critical education journal...". (p. 115)

Rafiq (2016) tells more on this story of the paper's destiny and the kinds of (mostly inane) types of criticism they received from reviewers and editors. Then he (again, not knowing me and my role in Four Arrows' career at this time) wrote, 

"So it went. Our article was rejected four times by journals in Canada and the United States. [hmm... is it any surprise Four Arrows and Rafiq both have left the USA and Canada, respectively, to live in Mexico] We wouldn't find a publisher until the end of 2011. The Journal of Critical Inquiry at the National University of Modern Languages in Islamabad. One of Pakistan's biggest universities with more than ten thousand students. [and, you may take a moment to reflect on the 'problems' that country has with terrorist regimes, and questionable governments, etc.] Its motto? 'We are taught how to think, not what to think.' [gotta luv that, and wish that was the motto of every classroom in North America, at least] [while Rafiq was teaching writing in Montreal at a college night class] It was my student from Pakistan who'd tipped me off about Osama bin Laden's ties to the CIA. It was fitting that a journal out of Pakistan should publish our paper." (p. 116)

I find this web of interconnections to be a-buzz with aliveness and vigor for searching for the truth... as best we can know it. It is a-buzz with the energy of Four Arrows, Rafiq and many others in the 9/11 "truth movement" and that's partly why I am featuring it in my blog here. I feel deeply connected to this whole thing around 9/11, albeit, my trajectory and focus was somewhat different than most of these critics's voices, because at the time of 9/11, 2001, I was living in Vancouver with my two teenage girls and my life-partner and trying to work on my dissertation research which was all about the "culture of fear" and its negative impacts on education, leadership and everything else--which, no one (more or less) wanted to talk about before 9/11. Then came the great North American (world) extreme dramatization of just how the culture of fear dynamic works (i.e., repression-oppression) in a so-called democratic continent, of the so-called highly developed First World. Hmmm... That's another story I'll leave for some other time, in terms of the reactions of people, within and beyond the academy, to my dissertation work and the consequences of me never getting short-listed for the many jobs I applied for in academia in North America after 2003 when I was ready to find paid work and a career.

Now, the the crux of this blogpost. As I said, I recently re-read the article by Four Arrows and Rafiq (2011) and didn't get passed the Abstract before it struck me that, OMG, I could easily hi-jack the exact words and intent behind these guy's opening words and insert my own (which I have done in square brackets below):

Abstract

“[U]ncritical belief in the official story” [of Fear’s out-of-control domination] “in light of the many substantiated contradictions to it, makes education’s silence about” [The Fear Problem] “one of its greatest failings for future generations. Educators are responsible to help students do independent research and dialogue about the validity of the official account across many academic disciplines [and beyond them too]”

“This silence does not stem from direct attacks on academic freedom but relates more to a perceived need for self-censorship” [as part of an individual-collective and, respective chronic repression-oppression dynamic, otherwise called a propagandist meta-taboo] 

“This paper is perhaps the first published appeal for more [honest and] courageous engagement with this topic in schools, especially in higher education. This purpose reflects a concern for the state-of-the-world and for future generations, and should not be interpreted as being ‘political’ beyond the fact that any study of this topic would naturally include an analysis of governments and their affairs and motives.” (p. 43)

I hi-jacked their text because it is so intimately intertwined with my own text(s) and 'narrative in the wilderness' over the years since 1989. To see it up there and published in the way they did brought up so much of my own struggles I share in common. There's not more I want to say on this. It speaks for itself, NOT IN SILENCE... and, that's the beauty of being able to write and publish on the Internet--even though, it is disappointing and sometimes frustrating how I can only do this it seems with very small marginal groups and websites (like FMning)--yet, that's no reason not to speak out! As Four Arrows and Rafiq (2016) begin their article's Introduction, how appropriately with an artist in history, they quote Leonardo da Vinci: "Nothing strengthens authority as much as silence" --by which, I know they mean, "authority" that propagandizes, entrances and oppresses.

I also noticed my red ink marks on the front page of their article from when I first read it back in 2011. I was starting to do a basic textual fearanalysis of their piece, and I noted that, they only used the term "fear" 2 times, never mentioned the "culture of fear" nor "climate of fear" etc .[4] And no mention of "fearlessness" or "fearless" and, that got me thinking how strange that was when 9/11 is the archetype of archetypes for the human Fear Problem, if I have ever seen it!

End Notes

1. Four Arrows (aka Jacobs, D. T.) (2011). Classroom silence about September 11: A failure of education? NUML: Journal of Critical Inquiry 9(1), 43-58. 

2. Fisher, R. M. (2011). A critique of critical thinking: Towards a critical integral pedagogy of fearlessness. NUML: Journal of Critical Inquiry, 9(1), 59-104.

3. The editor Sohaila Javed (for only a very short time; one issue, I believe) for this journal was one of my doctoral candidate colleagues at The University of British Columbia. We had not been close friends, and even had our conflicts around the role of religion in higher education as I recall one time--but, we always kept in touch, and gratitude to her for doing so. And, she invited me and Barbara (my life-partner) to submit articles for this issue she was putting together in Pakistan, a few years after she had graduated from UBC.

4. Four Arrows wrote to me, during the process of trying to find a publisher: "I sent the article off to another magazine in Pakistan as you suggested and have a U.S. author who has read it who says he will publish. But he would be happy [happier] I'm sure to publish a different [watered-down] version. It might get tricky though with Robert [Lewis, aka Rafiq] since he is traveling and not accessible usualy. If Pakistan does not publish it as is, then I'm sure both Robert and I would be very happy for you to take it and play with it any way you want, adding material about fear, etc. We could always resubmit a new version to anyone. I think you could be a player somehow in the project and I'll keep you posted.... I have a vision for a conference on our spirit of fearlessness, CAT-FAWN stuff somehow. More later." (pers. comm., Oct. 28, 2011)

Living in America the past 8.5 yrs, and the tumultuous presidential elections, has been an eye opener for Barbara and myself. Not that we both follow the official party politics and debates that much--though, in the last years we have been watching Democracy Now program to get our "news" in very small doses I may add. Years ago I predicted Hilary Clinton would run and win the next presidency in the country (USA) and I wish her the best to do a good job. I'd help her in any way she needs. I also know she is not perfect, and the Clinton legacy going a long way back in this country has left a lot of scars and problems in policies. I'm not hear writing about all that. I also see that as Trump self-destructs in terms of legitimacy as a president, as I also predicted he would because the American civil society is still strong and healthy in many areas and will not allow him to win--and, civil society also is unraveling quickly or so it seems--but I think many radicals are fear-mongering about this collapse way more than they need to in order just to make a point of the great reform and transformation required in the entire American system.

One really, likely, is not going to be "helped" to negotiate these very troubling times, of which the US election of 2016 is bringing from the shadows to the surface--it's like the unconscious repression is being released, and a neurotic state is moving at times in and out of a psychotic state--that is, a culture of fear, where as I listened to the last debate session between Trump and Clinton, and it's clearly disturbing--almost, no matter what candidate you support--the disturbance of psychic material they are moving within and speaking about--all shows the precarity of this country's democracy, social fabric, and social contract. You can feel the rip... and that word 'rip' is being used and is accurate. The terror underneath all this is so palpable amongst virtually everyone I watch on these 'political' broadcasts... and, so, as I say, I watch it rarely as it is so toxic to my system and living systems unless there is equal time for healing the fear-based rhetorics (of course, there is no such equal time provided on news media). 

That said, I feel a political, cultural and social obligation to help work on the social fabric, and guide in any way I can (and, that people will accept) to ensure the neurotic and psychotic are understood for what they are, not demonized, not pathologized to the point of hyper-reactive animosity. I treat the 'patient' as the entire nation, while I am living here, and in the not too distant future I'll be back in Canada and working with that nation. Of course, I have always been one that felt drawn to examine critically the love and fear dynamics of any system, from individual to collective, from visible to invisible--that's what I care about as the deepest source of all our worst problems as humanity.

I won't say more that this unless people want to talk about it here. I close with one of the brighter minds of the 20th century on the love and fear dynamic, and that comes from someone you have likely never heard of (as I had not until only a few weeks ago), Oscar Pfister, theologian, pastor, and psychoanalyst from the early 20th century [1]. Writing in his book (Christianity and Fear, 1948) that I am reading, there's a passage that stood out today, I'll pass on as a gift to all Americans in this very difficult and dark times. Albeit, in this crisis of leadership in the US election, the Green Party is finally having a good chance in this country so all is not 'bad.' Pfister writes about a theme that has always been close to my heart, and his whole book over 500 pp. is more or less devoted to the love and fear dynamic--and, its deep motivational and shaping role in human activity. He wrote [re: the 'ideal' community],

"The production of strong, fearless personalities united in a powerful community, not by compulsion but through love freely acknowledging an authority--this is certainly a grandiose ideal for the combating of fear; moreover it represents a brilliantly inspired method for permitting its beneficiaries to achieve lofty spiritual values productive of the utmost happiness, and the whole being based on secure economic foundations. But we must ask whether the [ideal] community system may not be ruined by the frailty of human nature which does not provide sufficient numbers of free [fearless] personalities freely subordinating themselves in self-sacrificing love to a social and spiritual whole. And even if repressions and fears are avoided to the greatest possible degree, can the level of sublimation and moral achievement required for the community's prosperity be reached and maintained? What is certain is that the community described presupposes a highly developed stage of individual and social morals, and that it is beset by numerous dangers. If the communal idea loses its driving force a base egoism springs up and an ugly partisanship disfigured by conceit, hate of other parties, class hatred, dissension and internal strife threatens the security of the whole, stands in the way of important achievements by the totality, plants the seeds of a new fear by frustrating love, lays the foundations for new primitive crowd formations, depresses individuals standing about the crowd to the low average level, instils a spirit of slothful negation and undermines the entire communal structure as well as the culture of the individual. It must be remembered that the entire system is built up on a minimum of compulsion and of repression.... And the spiritual element for its part can be maintained only by an effort.... It is no accident that hitherto the larger and more enduring communities have grouped themselves around a faith." (Pfister, 1948, pp. 147-148).  

The point Pfister strongly emphasizes before and after this passage on building the 'ideal' community--which can spread and grow and shape other communities, and a nation... is "education" and "development" of individuals so that they truly know how to discern between love-based and fear-based, healthy and neurotic, and that they are involved in their own fearanalsyis work (my term)... and, as for the "faith," yes, I have one you might say (not that I use that term), and, it is the Fearlessness Movement (i.e., the spirit of fearlessness that arises as fear arises--as naturally as does the spirit of healing when an organism is hurting).

End Note

1. Oscar Pfister had some 40+ years services as a pastor in Germany, trained in theology, then in Freudian psychoanalysis--he remarkably, takes the best of Freud and leaves the rest and includes a psychology of fear and religion that is incredibly insightful and close observing from his field and clinical experience with thousands of people. He knew religion did not have all the tools to bring about healthy functioning of the mild to most religious people he met when he was their pastor. It is remarkable he wrote this book in the years of Nazism in Germany, and somehow managed to get it published in 1944 (Gr. edition) and 1948 in English transl. I came across his work after reading some of the interesting cultural psychoanalysis articles by Dr. Richard Frie, at UBC in Canada.

Reference

Pfister, O. (1948). Christianity and fear: A study in history and in the psychology and hygeine of religion. [trans. W. H. Johnston] NY: The Macmillan Co.

I appreciate Rafiq's sincere and nuanced long response to my blog (Oct. 9/16) where I "review" his book. He was fine with me publishing his response here, as we both intend to keep the conversation going and invite others to comment and join in. Enjoy. I'll respond soon to this piece in Comments format.

Sometimes Fearlessly: A Grateful Response to Fisher’s Riff on Days of Shock, Days of Wonder

Rafiq

In his blog post “A Peek into a Young Artist’s Days of Fearlessness: Rafiq,” R. Michael Fisher does me a great kindness.[1] He takes my work as a writer seriously and he invites his readers to do the same. At the conclusion of his riff on my memoir Days of Shock, Days of Wonder: The 9/11 Age, the Ways of the Mystics, and One Man’s Escape from Babylon in the Belly of a Whale,[2] Mr. Fisher writes, “Rafiq will be an interesting player of the revolution to come, for I have no doubt of his importance … He and his work are still young and growing toward something more powerful. I’ll be watching, as no doubt will others, for what form it all takes.”

More than that, Mr. Fisher has invited me into a dialogue about my work with a reader who cares about the same things as me: the psychology of fear, the depth of love, the chance for revolution in the face of, as he puts it, “a harsh predatory capitalist world that doesn’t give a shit about his quest or mine.” It is rare for a writer to find a truly kindred reader. It is even rarer to find one who is passionate enough to ask questions whose answers can help carry the whole project of social and self evolution just a little bit further forward. In the interest of that project, then, here are my replies to his comments. I’m grateful for the chance to help frame these important ideas if I can.

But, first, a correction is in order. Although Days of Shock, Days of Wonder is endorsed on its cover by scholars Four Arrows (aka Don Trent Jacobs), David Ray Griffin, and Kevin Barrett, I never was able to find a publisher for this memoir. Like my first book, Gaj: The End of Religion,[3] which I wrote to counter the idea of God or Allah as an individual who could take sides in the “war on terror,” my memoir was published by my own company, Hay River Books, a writer’s cooperative that I set up in 2004, where various artists work on each other’s productions in exchange for similar help. So when Mr. Fisher writes the following, I think he has mistaken Hay River Books for Hay House: “It is an impressive feat for anyone to get a book like this published by an official publisher the quality of Hay River Books, as I believe they have published many of Noam Chomsky’s political tracts. Good for him.” I am happy to see that my book left the impression that it could have been published by Hay House, but it just ain’t so.

[RMF: Oh, you are right. My mistake. But actually I didn't think you'd at all be in the genre of 'new agey' type for Hay House publishers, but I meant Haymarket Books, where Chomsky publishes often]

Also, before turning to Mr. Fisher’s questions about Days of Shock, Days of Wonder, I should explain the context in which he asks them. His blog post, as I say, is a riff, not a review, for it is based on his reading of only the book’s final four chapters. He writes,

“I confess, beginning context material can sometimes be important for understanding what comes later in a book. So, if I misinterpret anything herein, it’s my own damn fault. Rafiq or anyone can correct me if I am way off the mark. Frankly, I get a thrill out of the risk of mis-interpretation. I can’t explain it other than it’s freeing to just ‘fly’ and be ‘incomplete’ and not apologetic to those who want a standard book review.”

I’m happy to say that Mr. Fisher is not at all “off the mark.” But filling in some pieces from earlier in the book will shed more light on my understanding of the themes he brings up.

On the matter of fear, I should respond to the following: “He skirted around defining ‘fear’ a lot more carefully (maybe, earlier in the book he does so) … I found him a bit of a conformist … in regard to his imaginary and understanding of fear and its management and/or transformation.” In my first book, which is a work of religious-spiritual philosophy, I write that a lack of connection to the greater whole “can give rise only to fear about the outcomes of our lives and to fear of each other. In turn, this fear breeds actual division, discontinuity, and the exaggeration of difference, such that our fears (like prayers) become the means by which we weave our futures” (p. 90). By the “greater whole,” I mean what can be called “God,” and I am writing about the distinction between God as an individual separate from creation and God as an energy that animates all of creation. This distinction is discussed in chapter one of Days of Shock, Days of Wonder, where I tell about how I came to write my first book.

In Days of Shock, Days of Wonder, as Mr. Fisher points out, I am “not trying to write a serious philosophy book.” Unlike my first book, which is all theory, my memoir is all practice. So rather than defining “fear,” it seeks to illustrate the conditions for fearlessness. The primary condition, as I say, is a worldview that is rooted in a holistic understanding of reality, wherein God is already conspiring in one’s favour, so to speak. One can move from the belief that this is so to the knowledge that this so only through firsthand experience of what I refer to in the title of my book as “wonder,” by which I mean evidence of a singular intelligent force at work in all of life.

Examples of such wonder appear in my memoir’s first chapter and form the core of many of the early chapters, continuing to accumulate across the real-life narrative of the book. Their collective effect is that they begin to suggest a grounds for fearlessness. But connection to the greater whole, whether in theory or practice, is not the same thing as absolute knowledge of the greater whole. As Four Arrows emphasizes in his recent book Point of Departure, the inspirited realm should be regarded as the “Great Mysterious.” One’s interconnection with the Great Mysterious is thus based on courage in the face of the unknown.[4] Courage precedes fearlessness, which cannot merely be claimed based on dogma but must be hard-won through experience.

In chapter nine, as I begin my retreat from Babylon in a camperized Volkswagen van, I write, “Driving out of the city, I turned on the radio in the middle of the Beatle’s Hey Jude to hear a joyous refrain. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ crooned McCartney. I told myself that I wouldn’t” (p. 67). What follows is an account of nearly killing myself while cliff jumping with my niece and nephews. The rally cry that day had been “no fear.” But they were just words, and when it was all over, I reflected, “I’d summoned enough fearless calm to come through with nothing but scrapes and bruised heels. But I was humbled. I’d been running around half-cocked. A city boy in nature. Real fearlessness was measured and patient. I would have to make it a practice on the road” (p. 68).

And that is what I did. The latter half of Days of Shock, Days of Wonder is an attempt to illustrate that process. After a week volunteering at a Buddhist retreat centre on Canada’s west coast, I write, “Each day before breakfast and dinner, I meditated with the group for thirty minutes. I was calmer than I’d been in my life. The world seemed ephemeral and simple. More than feeling fearless, I saw that there was nothing to fear after all. I vowed to keep meditating” (p. 73). Here, the link between fearlessness and an increased connection to the greater whole through meditation is key. This inner experience of God is a companion to the outer experiences of God that I narrate in terms of wonder.

After my van gets stuck on a beach, with its rear-mounted engine buried in a pit dug by my unsuccessful attempts to get it out, I write,

“If the tide came in, the engine would be flooded with salt and sand. It would be the end of the road. My pulse started to race. Was I truly fearless? I was about to find out … I lay awake and listened to the waves lap the shore … The waves seemed louder. All suffering is just thought, I told myself. The Buddhist stance … I turned out the light and slept fitfully” (p. 76). “At five-thirty I saw a thread of yellow in the clouds low over the ranch lands. Morning at last. I got out of the van. The tide was coming in. I started walking. I told myself that if all went to shit, I would catch a bus to an airport and get on the next plane to Montreal. I would leave the van behind, the solar panel, most of my stuff. But I didn’t really think it would come to that” (p. 77).

And it didn’t. My van was pulled out of the sand by a farmer with a tractor. We crossed paths on the road, and he managed to free the van before the tide was even getting close. Experiences like this one made it possible for me to keep on “jumping into the unknown without a net in sight” (p. 133). So although it may appear that there was little method to my madness, particularly given my professed preference for aligning with the flow of the Tao and letting its current carry me where it might, there was indeed a well-conceived basis for my fearlessness.

Mr. Fisher writes, “I was glad he interacted some with Four Arrows around the fear concept … However, in the pages I read I did not see an intricate synthesis that convinced me Rafiq was utilizing the best of what Four Arrows’ work had to offer him in this area.” Mr. Fisher is correct that at the time of writing Days of Shock, Days of Wonder, I had not moved from theory into practice with respect to Four Arrows’ ideas about how fear impedes rational reflection by making one susceptible to subconscious input from figures of authority.

Yet in chapter twelve I recount numerous experiences of Four Arrows that show how this aspect of fear works, all drawn from his memoir Primal Awareness.[5] I have included that part of my book in an article entitled “Indigenous Wisdom Explains Hypnosis of the 9/11 Lie” because understanding the psychology of fear is a necessary first step toward liberation from fear.[6] To be fearless in confronting authority, we must cultivate inner authority, and to do that we must confront past lies and discard subconsciously accepted nonsense. An ongoing project, to be sure.

As for the matter of love, I should respond to Mr. Fisher’s observation that I “didn’t spend a lot of time defining love systematically either. This makes me wonder, what does he actually mean when he writes about these important terms [i.e., fear and love] in human existence?” As with my attempt to illustrate the conditions for fearlessness, my book’s real-life narrative is intended to illustrate an opening of my heart and the factors that made this lived experience of love possible. And because no journey is linear, but instead a spiral that brings one back around to the same themes and awakenings again and again as it tightens, I structured my book as a double journey into love. That is, both the book’s middle and final chapters conclude with a surrender to love.

In the case of the middle chapter, it ends soon after a German mechanic I met while living in my van on the Baja Peninsula in Mexico tells me about his part in setting up a murder. I write,

“I watched the German sweating there on his back in the gravel and ground-up seashells of what was once an ocean floor. Like he was lying at the bottom of the world. And I felt only forgiveness. Love. Something I’d never felt for the killers in high places who’d done the [9/11] attack. Those misguided faces of the One. My days on the beach had opened my heart” (p. 81). Before the chapter’s end, I add, “I recalled what an American man had said to me in Nizamuddin. How the important thing was to choose one path and follow it to the end. At the time, I’d scoffed. That would be like reading only one philosopher. I’d forgotten what the Hindu thinker had said about all religions being a finger pointing at the same thing. The unifying, indwelling quality of God … [I felt] like I’d followed the path of Sufism to its end. Love for all in All. And I’d found my heart again” (p. 81).

While living on the Baja, I had come into the possession of a fat book of poetry by the Sufi poet Hafiz, who lived during the 1300s. Along with my immersion in nature and practice of meditation, this book played an important part in my orientation toward love. Having read it through twice, I write, “Not Shakespeare in his sonnets nor the Old Testament in its psalms built a greater monument to love than Hafiz. Love of self and love of God. The two entwined” (p. 78).

At the end of the book’s final chapter, I write that a true revolution required that we “ignite our inner fire and illuminate our hearts. We had to love. This was the teaching of Quetzalcoatl, Jesus, and Hafiz. It was what Gandhi had meant when he told us to be the change we wanted to see in the world … Love for all in All had to be the elixir” (p. 165).

From these passages, we see that I understand love, like fear, to be a factor of our connection to the greater whole. Love for God as a part of ourselves is the path to love for both ourselves and others as part of God. In a truly holistic understanding of God, all is God, so all grounds for distinction, all grounds for hate, fall away. When Four Arrows writes on the cover of Days of Shock, Days of Wonder that I have written “a book to ignite a generation,” he is referring to my memoir’s potential to ignite people’s hearts by illustrating through narrative how the workings of the inspirited realm testify to our unity, which is the grounds for our mutual love. Mr. Fisher is right when he says that my book is unlikely to ignite “anything of such grandiosity” as a revolution by my generation. Before that can happen, we need a reorientation as individuals toward a love-based rather than fear-based cosmology.

So what does fearless love look like in action? Mr. Fisher writes, “I think often because of his total fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, and other factors, Rafiq ‘missed’ the boat of doing effective good work that could have been accomplished on his four-year journey.” He wonders whether I could have done my “socially-engaged art practices ‘better’” in the communities I frequently visited in Mexico. He is talking about actions on the ground in response to the lived experiences of actual people. I am not surprised that he should look for this type of practice in his assessment of what he calls a “a socially engaged artist,” a category that I am happy to occupy. In this respect, as with many others, his thinking and mine are aligned. As the following account will make clear, to quote a poster on the door of my Grade 2 classroom, I believe that “love isn’t love until you give it away.”

In chapter one of Days of Shock, Days of Wonder, I explain, “I was living in a one-room apartment above an all-night diner in a seedy part of downtown Montreal. A lot of people asked me for spare change. I usually gave them some” (p. 6). What follows are two anecdotes about how face-to-face generosity illustrates that giving and receiving are links in a single chain –  the source of reciprocity. In chapter three, I tell about two homeless Inuit men for whom my apartment became a kind of drop-in-centre where they got warm, cooked on my stove, and occasionally slept on my floor when the winter turned bitter cold. I would end up making a documentary with them so that they might have a voice. It’s called Be Smile: The Stories of Two Urban Inuit.[7]

Later, when I settled in the town of Sayulita on the west coast of Mexico, a similar situation arose with a teenage girl from Mexico City who was sixteen when we met and had been living on and off the streets for three years. She ended up staying with me or using my camping gear to set up home on the beach. Eventually, I helped her get a job at a friend’s shop, and she worked there for two years, living with me whenever she needed to. I thought about including her story in Days of Shock, Days of Wonder, in which case it would have been there in the final chapters that Mr. Fisher read, but I didn’t have any distance from that experience at the time. In fact, she and her punk rock friends from Guadalajara were crashing in my living room as I pounded out the book’s final pages.

There is one final comment to which I should respond. Mr. Fisher writes, “I’m curious what happened eventually to the white whale? In the 80’s I bought a 1973 VW and well ... a kinship with Rafiq’s spirit is inevitable.” The white whale, Ballena Blanca, is what I came to call the van that took me out of Babylon. In chapter fifteen of Days of Shock, Days of Wonder, after three harrowing months stuck in Belize with mechanical problems and after a week of daily vehicle breakdowns of various kinds as I drove north trying to get back to Canada, the van died in Austin Texas. The engine was blown. I write,

“I could rebuild it for about four grand. I could replace it for a lot more than that. Or I could sell the van for parts and walk away … I walked away. It was 2011. Two years to the week since I’d bought my home on wheels … I kept my drum, a backpack of clothes, a knapsack with my laptop, video camera, and hard drive. And one of the younger mechanics gave me a duffel bag for my books and some odds and ends. That was just about all of my possessions” (p. 130).

True to what I told myself the night that my van had gotten stuck on the beach with the tide coming in, I walked away with no more than I could carry. And I continued on. Sometimes fearlessly. Sometimes with love in my heart. Always in search of the authentic.

I submit this tantalizing idea about Nature being one of our most foundational teachers to understanding fear and fearlessness in a healthy and sustainable way, and to correct our distortive (if not pathological) ways currently dominating the field. Soon, I'll write a blog, doing a brief fearanalysis of a fascinating book on this topic by Jon Young (naturalist, tracker and mentor, author) in his 2013 book What the Robin Knows: How Birds Reveal the Secrets of the Natural World (NY: Mariner Books). To start off this discussion, I'll leave you with this image I painted in my "wildlife art" days in the mid-1980s and the word text I just put on top in this poster... a point of encounter and inquiry in/with the birds... stay tuned...

A Peek Into a Young Artist’s Days of Fearlessness: Rafiq

-R. Michael Fisher

From time to time I drop out of my philosophical and theoretical fearology work to hone-in on living exemplars (teaching examples and guides), who attempt to practice a life of ethical resistance to the over-determining ‘Fear’ Matrix of everyday life. After all, it is much easier to talk and theorize about liberation in ideal abstractions and through texts of the ‘great ones’ as (s)heroes; yet, so much harder to find examples of those who live it in contemporary North American contexts—that’s where I live. And, especially interesting is to witness today’s younger people, self-critically reflecting on their path, critiquing their own generation and the previous one, in a unique, very clear writing style interspersed with incomplete English sentences that look as they might sound, when they talk to you in person (e.g., “I did again.” or  “Our tribe.” or “Not love.”). I also prefer such inquiries into exemplars when the person is not so popular or famous but someone struggling in the margins as a human, artist and cultural worker like myself, who never quite ‘fit in.’

I have just read with intrigue the last four chapters (33 pp. + 12 pp. of endnotes) of Days of Shock, Days of Wonder: The 9/11 Age, the Ways of the Mystics, and One Man’s Escape from Babylon in the Belly of a Whale by Rafiq (2016) (aka Robert Sean Lewis), an eastern Canadian from Montreal. I read it from the back page (177) forward. It seems an efficient strategy in my experience to get to the “guts” of what a book offers without investing a lot of time in something I am not sure I want to. At age 64, an environmental and social activist-educator-radical for 45 years, I’ve read a lot, and my focus of where I put my energy these days is often precise, if not impatient.

No one recommended this book. I found it ‘accidently’ while researching if anyone had written any new book reviews on Four Arrows’ (2016) Point of Departure: Returning to a More Authentic Worldview for Education and Survival—as I am currently writing a book (with Four Arrows), due to be published by Peter Lang in 2018, on his “fearless” life and work, focusing on his original specific theory of fear and fearlessness utilizing general principles from an Indigenous perspective. I noticed immediately on the front cover of Rafiq’s new book the endorsement “A book to ignite a generation” by Four Arrows. I had to check that out, because by the end of this review of mine there will be my view of whether I think Rafiq’s book will ignite anything of such grandiosity.  

So you’re learning about me, perhaps, as much as this book by Rafiq. Like him, I won’t pass by a chance to write about myself and promote my work—I am an entrepreneur, with no salaried cheque every month or benefits. I have to self-promote. Ego? Narcissism? Yes, no doubt, and a whole lot more. Anyways, I’ve never been much for the long slow boring intro material—and, not sure I wish to wade through a lot of pages by Rafiq’s hand about 9/11 “facts” at this point—I’ve watched a few 9/11 truthing documentary films). Although, I confess, beginning context material can sometimes be important for understanding what comes later in a book. So, if I misinterpret anything herein it’s my own damn fault. Rafiq or anyone can correct me if I am way off the mark. Frankly, I get a thrill out of the risk of mis-interpretation. I can’t explain it other than it’s freeing to just ‘fly’ and be ‘incomplete’ and not apologetic to those who want a standard book review. I prefer a radical trust that I still can say something important, doing it my way. This is a release for me, as most of my other serious writing tends to be technical and guided by a thirst for completeness in research and accurate interpretations. But in the ‘free-spirit’ of which I sense Rafiq loves to fly, let me proceed likewise going with the flow of the southern west coast waves (California, Mexico) where he and his buddies loved to hang out, according to his story. Oh, I noticed he has had some reviewers on Amazon.com books reviewing it by the genre of a “novel.” Maybe it is, but it is non-fictional.

I don’t do formal book reviews these days but prefer a “review” that lives in some form of an inter-textual intimacy with my own journey of fearlessness, especially when the author of what I am reviewing is clearly opening their life and heart to an exchange with the reader and consciousness itself. I feel ‘called’ by such intimate texts and wish to handle them gently; albeit, honestly as well with critique as skillful means. Near the end, I will address why I chose to frame this dialogue with Rafiq’s text as indicative of someone, riffing along, more or less, on the path of fearlessness (re: the latter conception, see Fisher, 2010). I’ll also suggest where I think that path could be honed, both as a spiritual consciousness explorer, revolutionary and as an artist—each of which I feel comfortable in situating Rafiq and this book.

This is my first explicit encounter with Rafiq and his work and I wish to share some of the first impressions. No doubt someday I’ll read Days of Shock, Days of Wonder from start to end, maybe look on Vimeo at some of his films. Why wouldn’t I be fascinated to read about a “conscious” (p. 135) person and his “tribe” and what kind of communities they hung in—and a travel journey of a gen-Xer North American male searching for answers to big questions—searching, for his soul in a harsh predatory capitalist world that doesn’t give a shit about his quest or mine. And, then, a big attraction for me—his searching for “truth” (actually, big ‘T’) with a sincere drive to do so deeply—authentic, ethical, and creative as can be—and, continually coming up (most of the time) self-admittedly a little short, at times losing faith and a lot of grief and lament (and some joyous, even ecstatic highlights too). A few indicative Rafiq phrases caught-up in my net on this theme—I’ll call disillusionment (as he likely would too, p. 137):

 “In my days of truth activism, I’d struggled to stay on the Sufi [spiritual] path.”   (p. 164)

 “I still wasn’t myself [also p. 143]. I’d lost faith in the idea of the new human.... And Montreal was soul-defeating.... I was depressed. It’d been a year since I’d stopped meditating.” (p. 145)

“I wasn’t Taoist enough to work with others [effectively, intimately]” (p. 146)

“More than anyone over the years... [Jody] kept me from losing sight of reality in favour of my high ideals. (p. 147)

 “I’d seen the best minds of my generation swallowed up by the system.... The trick was to stay in the world without losing your soul.” (p. 153)

 “I was still looking for an alternative to the dominant system [Babylon] [p. 148].... I intended to take what I could from the modern world in order to help create Babylon’s lunar twin somewhere out on its fringes.” (p. 162)

 “But I wanted to believe that our [magical and sacred] ceremonies to activate love in the world had meant something.” (p. 142)

 [re: resistance to paying personal taxes to the State] “... like me, most people who’d woken up to their enslavement [in Babylon] kept paying them. We weren’t going to risk going to jail over it.” (p. 162) [and he often would show his own contradictions, that he was aware of, for e.g.,] “You couldn’t pay your taxes and be a moral person at the same time.” (p. 161)

 “I miss my tribe.” (p. 153)

 Gotta luv that ‘rawness’ and vulnerability in the text. Gotta question (I do anyways) How much truth can a human being handle today? Today’s culture really needs to hear these conscious journey stories and what our young people are going through (at least, some of the most aware “conscious” ones). I know he’s not the first in history to write one but that’s beside the point. Now, lest one think this book is a lot of navel-gazing, forget it! I mean it did strike me he’s a pleasure-seeking escape-from-society kind of beach-hugging “dharma bum,” as Wilber (2006, p. 109) calls a lot of the spiritual seekers suffering from “boomeritis” dis-ease in the post-1960s-70s of America. Admittedly, Rafiq’s journey of fearlessness recorded in these pages does often involve a “return to balance” (p. 150) a search and meditation on “some kind of holy union” (p. 155)—either trying to transcend fear in himself and the world or meditating on it and his ego in order to truly understand it and have it dissolve through mastery (pp. 154-55). Yet, what stood out more than anything else in terms of the purpose of this book was his cultural, economic and political critique as an activist-critic. He continually insinuates we have to look both inward and outward to keep whole.

 The word “revolution” is the bass drum beat behind nearly every sentence I read. Another reader may say “love” is the beat—he certainly repeated the latter word enough; but I found it less powerful than what was behind his passion for revolution. I spontaneously broke into a smile when he talked about his trip to the sacred temples of Mayans in S. America etc., and wrote, “At each site we would perform ceremonies to agitate for love. To help raise the collective vibration of the human heart” (p. 138). That was some of the most new agey stuff he participated in with his hippie tribe. He also was filming and observing it as a good anthropologist might do. “Agitate for love” is however, in my mind, an perfect indicator of that revolutionary political spirit that was akin to the discourse of a radical revolutionary (agitator)—and, to see that word juxtaposed with love... hmmm interesting! Oh, I also liked how he would critique some of this love-stuff, magical-stuff as well, e.g., the December 21, 2012 end of the world/time according to the Mayan calendar and many new age teachers at that time. I heard about it, watched the various documentaries and wasn’t impressed by any of it. I’ve written critically on a similar “event” that was supposed to be so spiritually transformative (revolutionary) on a grand scale back in Fisher (1987) due to some rare astrological alignment etc. I was disturbed then by the (false) “hope” I saw so many new agers fall into and then face great disillusionment (re: a substantive shift in consciousness/paradigm) as the year and years following that ‘great event’ played out in history in real-time, with real-bodies. Mostly depressing, I might add. I’ve been through several of these campaigns and none of them moves me nor seems very wise. I’m not saying these ceremonies are useless. They do probably help us find some strength and inspiration to carry on against the banal oppressive quotidian reality. Drugs do that too. I merely think they are typically over-hyped, if not ‘dangerously’ so. Hope/Fear are always sliding, colluding, and being sold to us by propagandists of every sort, secular and sacred. That’s another topic for another time—don’t get me started.

At times Rafiq would somewhat subjectively define the term revolution, contemplate on it and then lose its definitional clarity as fast as he found it—all, I think a good thing; because it keeps one always in a healthy questioning of such an important macro-conception as “revolution”—and, at times, he focused rather on “transformation” as a milder term less threatening to the status quo (and our comfortable way of life). I so appreciate that integration of the psychospiritual discourse with the sociopolitical sphere. He wrote, “But any revolution would be meaningless unless it changed our way of being in the world” (p. 164). I appreciated he both respected and at times was critical and disturbed by various revolutions and movements of his time, e.g., “new age” and “Occupy Movement.” I can relate to ambivalent feelings and thoughts about those movements as well. I get very angry at times by “young people” who think they are doing what no other generation had done before. OMG. All and all, his wide-reaching holistic sensibility makes for a strong path, a way to both compassion and wisdom—and, in my mind it makes the way to one that is not just out to be an activist-lawyer pounding out “truth” against “lies” and power and naming culprits—but, a voice speaking with nuance and troubling itself as much as it troubles how the rest of the destructive world is operating in Babylon (i.e., the ‘Fear’ Matrix, in my terms). A welcomed breath of fresh air.

Rafiq gained my respect quickly because of this holistic-integral sensibility of looking at reality from many perspectives not merely an immature righteousness one that spouts from a singular (rebellious, adolescent) perspective. Indeed, I was pleased to see self-healing with social-healing as foundational to Rafiq’s vision (even in all its instability) for revolution—if such a revolution in the Western technological world was even possible anymore. I share his questions and doubts too. In the opening section of my dissertation (Fisher, 2003) I waxed on for 50 pp. of fictional dialogue with (real) revolutionary thinkers in history around the question: “What does it take to make a (R)evolution today?” When my research supervisors, committee members and defense judges asked me to answer the question of what I found, I must admit, I couldn’t answer it ‘straight.’ I waxed on eloquently at the dissertation defense-spin to increasing glassy if not hostile eyes amongst them. No one really got it—well, maybe one out of the panel of seven members.

No wonder he also cites his experiences with Four Arrows and aligns as much as he can with a holistic Indigenous worldview, which challenges the Western dominant worldview—diagnosing it as “ill.” Four Arrows is one of the most holistic-integral balanced activist-educators I know of—and, so Rafiq is in good company and has a good ‘nose’ for sniffing out quality teachers, in my opinion. He searched and found Four Arrows and at times treated him as his mentor, even called him an “elder” in the Indigenous sense in his book review of Point of Departure (Rafiq, 2016a).

There is no way I can do justice to this book and Rafiq’s deep and unconventional thoughts (which most interest me as a radical liberation philosopher and educator). The review here would become many pages if I let myself fully explore it in careful detail and craft arguments and challenge his arguments. Yet, why bother? I want to take his work seriously, but he is also not trying to write a serious philosophy book. Is he? It is more an adventure story—with depth! Okay. Let me finish this dialogic textual interplay with him by doing a really quick and dirty fearanalysis. I’ll then end with my artistic analysis, as a social-engaged artist, raising questions about how he may have done his socially-engaged art practices ‘better’ during his four year journey in his VW van (“white whale”) in specific communities he continually visited. I risk, with humbleness (ha ha) doing all that with knowing only a ‘sliver’ of what he actually had done and does. I’m reading text, analyzing discourse, that’s all. I can’t say anything else about the man-in-real-lived relationship with him nor have I interviewed people who know him. I’m a fool.

The brief (incomplete version) of fearanalysis (for fuller delineation see Fisher, 2012; Fisher in progress) is, somewhat parallel but very different to psychoanalysis, where I ‘read’ the way an author talks/writes about fear and fearlessness. Rafiq doesn’t actually use the word “fearlessness” per se, at least in what I read but he uses “courageous” once (p. 153) among a list of other virtues he holds dear (e.g., balance, unity, wisdom, truth, love). Based on years of scholarly research and my own processes of healing and transformation, I (among others, like the late Rinpoche Chöygam Trungpa) hold the first steps of fearlessness to be vulnerability... a rawness of peeling away conditioned layers of oneself, not just in private but in public space too... and, Rafiq is well on that path—to repeat my own words: Gotta luv that ‘rawness’ and vulnerability in the text. The fact he was continually risking to paddle board on big waves in the ocean, venture into the “truthing movement” (re: 9/11) and live a wild life on the road not knowing what was coming or how he’d survive (e.g., without a lot of money), are all signs to me of the pilgrim of fearlessness facilitating their reality encounters by consistently “jumping into the unknown without a net in sight” (p. 133). Other people might judge him ‘reckless’ and full of bravado (male ego)—even immature. How does one define such labels? I don’t know for sure. The text overall told me probably a little bit of both male bravado and fearlessness spirited him along into these adventures and zones of danger and possibility. These same characteristics I read also in the biography of Four Arrows. Rafiq reminded me at times, somewhat mirroring, how I see Four Arrows operates.

My first fearanalysis (systematic) task is to underline all the uses of “fear” or relatives to it in the text. Having studied many authors’ writing about fear for over 27 years systematically, I get a quick ‘reading’ where someone is coming from relative to all the others I have studied likewise, via fearanalysis. I wasn’t impressed that he skirted around defining “fear” a lot more carefully (maybe, earlier in the book he does so). It would be important except that the concept is as important and as complex as “love” (and, he also didn’t spend a lot of time defining love systematically either). This makes me wonder, what does he actually mean when he writes about these important terms in human existence?

Okay, I’ll let him off the hook a bit because it isn’t that serious kind of a book on contestations of theories and conceptualizations of “fear” from multiple angles across disciplines. Methodologically, my ideal request would be that he treated both love and fear in holistic ways not just everyday discourse and his own fav notion at any moment in the text. Yet, “fear” came up forefront on a few pages, and I suspect his entire trip and his own philosophy is one of fearlessness (at least implicitly,)—and thus, to know fearlessness and master it is to know and master fear (at least, he does more or less bring this forward in his talking about “ego” –arguably, his writing is typically an esoteric and mystical spiritual genre, where “fear” is equated often with “ego” and visa versa; see, for e.g., p. 138). In that sense, I found him a bit of a conformist, lacking originality, creativity and depth around these great meta-motivational forces shaping our lives and his too. I mean conformist in regard to his imaginary and understanding of fear and its management and/or transformation. He might retort to my critique: “Ah, Michael, there you go, it is your ego always looking for what is lacking in someone else, so to make you feel superior and special.” I’ve heard this a hundred times over the past 27 years of my fearanalysis critique work—always raising the question, who is fear-projecting on who?

On the other-hand, I was glad he interacted some with Four Arrows around the fear concept and phenomena (e.g., Four Arrows’ theory of CAT-FAWN). However, in the pages I read (e.g., pp. 154-55) I did not see an intricate synthesis that convinced me Rafiq was utilizing the best of what Four Arrows’ work had to offer him in this area. It made me question how his “style” maybe quite like the dragonfly skimming along the surface grabbing what it can and running (flying) off to the next pond to fulfill the addictive zeal of “learning” from everyone and everything(?) Potentially, such a “style” I see in a lot of young people these days and their digital short attention spans and endless glut for information. Luckily, I missed a lot of that being a boomer.

I would guess Rafiq had read some of the metaphysics, by many writers throughout history and across cultures, that Love vs. Fear is the primary task of liberation work. These theories (philosophies, religions) claim, in some forms, that such meta-emotions (motivators) are not compatible (see Fisher, 2012a)—that is, not able to be complementary “twins” in the mythic sense as in say solar and lunar forces (that Rafiq was learning from Howard Teich and Four Arrows) (p. 154). My conversations with Four Arrows and interpretation of his writing over a decade, indicates the Indigenous worldview (love-based) and Dominant worldview (fear-based) are opposites of a very different kind than “twins.” I think this would be worthy evidence and theoretical argument to make the case of Rafiq’s own strong stance in the book re: that there cannot be (healthy) complementarity between “Indigenous ways... [and] Western [“modern tech”] society without losing their [Indigenous] essence” (p. 152).

This ends my ‘cheap’ fearanalysis, lest I forget to say, that because of his lack of depth into understanding fear, theorizing fear, and helping the reader be more clear how he was using that term, I believe this indicates that he had not thought a lot about fearlessness either up to that point of writing this book. My own integral-holistic theory (Fisher, 2010) of fear and fearlessness claims that one only truly reaches a stage of fearlessness (Wilber’s integral consciousness level) when they are seriously interested in fear at all levels of existence from multiple perspectives. It requires disciplined study, standing back and witnessing, what archetypally can be called the path of the Sacred Warrior. I surmise, from reading his text, Rafiq is definitely on that path, albeit, in the early to mid initiatory levels.

Now, to conclude, I have made it clear this is a good book to help understand what  “conscious” and sensitive young people may be going through in having to confront the Western modern tech world and predatory capitalism and its lies—of which the 9/11 debacle perpetrated by some corporate and governmental elites, is but one symptom. It is a good book in which to witness how “revolution” may or not be carried out in our times. It is a good book to examine the limitations of human beings too—and, their wounds and inabilities to hold existential, spiritual, economic and political truths. There’s no one to blame, really. Is there? I think Rafiq and his tribe got lost at times into a lot of blaming of this scapegoat or that one. It’s part of the grief cycle, so experts tell us. Hmmm....

My view, from the start of reading a brief bio of Rafiq was that he was an independent filmmaker and artist (writer, musician, etc.) with great social concern and wants his art to help make the transformation to a new and better (more sustainable, healthy, sane) world. He referred to as the “new human” (one with a soul)—living in the world but not of it.’ I too work as an artist in this context and struggle, in the Anthropocene, as some are calling this period of history today with cascading extinction-driving imperative forces (like global warming). Of many questions stirring in my mind about his “artist” in the world, from what I read, I continually asked what his methodology overall was, as a socially-engaged artist? He seemed to care about people and communities, but I didn’t get a sense he really utilized a clear understanding and foundation to stand on based on the long documented history and practices of socially-engaged artists.

It is like Rafiq hasn’t yet claimed the “territoriality” of that postmodern artist cultural worker role. Maybe he doesn’t agree with me on that ‘peg’ I would hang his work upon overall. My wife just this morning read me a text on this issue, of which I leave here as a “resource” perhaps of some use to Rafiq and others like him. It is from a book by an ecological and socially-engaged art collective (Compass) in Chicago and area, where my wife (also an artist) spent time engaging them in person recently. Anyways, the quote from their collective’s book (cited in Pentecost, 2012, p. 18) brings forward there can be critical pedagogical and methodological clarity brought to artists/teachers/activists who want to ‘walk’ (journey) and ‘work’ in the world and help solve its problems:

Celestin Freinet established the Modern School Movement in 1926.... He developed three complementary teaching techniques: (1) the ‘learning walk,’ during which pupils [or anyone] would join him in exploratory walks around town, gathering information and impressions about their community.... Afterwards the children would collectively dictate a collective ‘free text,’ which might lead to pretexts for direct action within their community to improve living conditions... (2) a classroom printing press, for producing multiple copies of the pupil’s writings and a newspaper to be distributed to their families, friends, and other schools; (3) inter-school networks: pupils from two different schools exchange ‘culture packages,’ printed texts, letters, tapes, photographs, maps, etc. (Pinder and Sutton, in Translator’s Note to Felix Guattari’s The Three Ecologies).

It was 1926... long time ago... when that kind of progressive educative action was being systematized, and it is only one type of activist work among so many since, and even before. I really never had a sense in my reading of Rafiq that he was drawing on such sources for his own activism, and I think often because of his total fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, and other factors, he “missed” the boat of doing effective good work that could have been accomplished on his four-year journey. Who am I to judge? I’m sure he’ll at least consider my thought. It seems he was so compelled to ‘huddle’ and find comfort with his “tribe” and, I feel somewhat the loss and missed opportunity. Yet, clearly, I have no idea what impact he did have on all the places he describes he stayed at on this journey Days of Shock, Days of Wonder.

Rafiq will be an interesting player of the revolution to come, for that I have no doubt of his importance. Will he or his book “ignite a generation”—I don’t think so, for many reasons, some of which I have given, not the least of which, he and his work is still young and growing toward something more powerful. I’ll be watching and no doubt as will others, for what form it all takes. The fact that there are 16 book short ‘book reviews’ on Amazon.com alone already, tells me his book does seem somewhat popularly inspiring. It is an impressive feat for anyone to get a book like this published by an official publisher the quality of Hay River Books, as I believe they have published many of Noam Chomsky’s political tracts. Good for him. Many will like his style. It’s not my style but I feel akin to his overall undertaking. I’m curious what happened eventually to the white whale? In the 80’s I bought a 1973 VW and well... a kinship with Rafiq’s spirit is inevitable. Today, I lament, no more cars, nor more vans—I’ve used up my oil and gas quota and supported excess CO₂ for one life-time.

References

Fisher, R. M. (in progress). A general introduction to fearanalysis: Putting the culture of fear and terror on the couch.

Fisher, R. M. (2012). Fearanalysis: A first guidebook. Carbondale, IL: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.

Fisher, R. M. (2012a). Love and fear. A CSIIE Yellow Paper, DIFS-6. Carbondale, IL: Center for Spiritual Inquiry & Integral Education.

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

Fisher, R. M. (2003). Fearless leadership in and out of the ‘Fear’ Matrix. Unpublished dissertation. Vancouver, BC: The University of British Columbia.

Fisher, R.M. (1987). Life after Harmonic Convergence. Erospirit, October, 13-16.

Four Arrows (aka Jacobs, D. T.) (2016). Point of departure: Returning to a more authentic worldview for education and survival. Charlotte, NC: Information Age          Publishing.

Pentecost, C. (2012). Notes on the project called Continental Drift. In R. Borcia, B. Fortune and S. Ross (Eds.), Deep roots: The midwest in all directions by Compass Collaborators (pp. 16-24). Chelsea, MI: White Wire.

Rafiq (aka Lewis, R. S.) (2016). Days of shock, days of wonder: The 9/11 age, the ways of the mystics, and one man’s escape from Babylon in the belly of a whale.           Montreal, QB: Hay River Books.

Rafiq (2016a). Indigenous worldview and the art of transformation: A book review by Rafiq. Retrieved from https://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2016_09_01_archive.html

Wilber, K. (2006). Integral spirituality: A startling new role for religion in the modern and postmodern world. Boston, MA: Integral Books.          

As the postmodern era of scholarship has recently opened debate and doubt about the nature and role of emotions, so also has been the case specifically with new postmodern scholarship on fear (what I prefer to call 'fear'). One recent example, worth checking out, is the edited volume Entertaining Fear: Rhetoric and the Political Economy of Social Control ed. by Catherine Chaput, M. J. Braun and Danika M. Brown (New York: Peter Lang, 2010). I had not seen this book until just a week ago and thought I ought to check it out. I only read the Preface and Introduction (by Chaput), and I must say this is great work going on regarding the way to conceive of rhetoric in a conceptualization Chaput calls a rhetorical "ecology of fear." Not having studied rhetoric and theory, this Introduction chapter is very technical, and theoretical and I was not able to follow it totally. It may take time to absorb through various re-readings.

I bought the book to add to my collection of new scholarship on 'fear' that takes it way beyond the psychology or philosophy of fear, and brings it into the intersectional dynamics of social, political and economic contexts and the way rhetorical situations and energies move--directly and most profoundly influenced by an "ecology of fear." This really interests me, although it is hard to get a handle on exactly what an "ecology of fear" is. There are other authors, from biology to cultural studies also using this phrase ecology of fear all with quite different meanings in some ways, and yet I am seeing some pattern that makes them all the same as well. So, hypothetically, and theoretically, the argument of Chaput et al., and my own thought, is that the best unit to understand 'fear' is by studying its ecology (and sub-ecologies). In other words, it is best we do not rely on studying fear "as an isolated event [or experience] rather than as a circulating energy" (p. 15). Let me cite Chaput some to give you a flavor of this ecological way she is attempting to create a discourse of understanding about fear for research and practical purposes (i.e., fear management/education):

"Global capitalism, as an extension of the past and an imagination of the future, relies on fear to pull us within its new modalities. Fear discourses [rhetorics] work in an paradoxical structure.... Although individuals certainly act on their own volition, their choices are powerfully proscribed by the rhetorical energy of fear.... What I am calling the rhetorical energy inherent in these discourses functions, according to theorists of fear, as a unbiquitous and apparently innocuous form of political and social control.... Unlike the visible repression of Orwell's watchful Big Brother, this form of social control occurs through the rhetorical energy circulating almost imperceptibly among many of the more open and free political and cultural sites of contemporary life.... this overdetermined rhetorical space of political economic reproduction [e.g., a campaign speech to preys on our worries] means that 'it is not necessary to make active or express threats in order to arouse fear; instead, fear can, and usually does, hover quietly about relationships [like a glue between them and the society's forms of social order] between the powerful and the powerless, subtly influencing everyday conduct without requiring much in the way of active intimidation' (Robin, 2004, p. 19).... [p. 14] the fear explicit in any one of these examples implicitly recalls the fear in the other spaces, and such [ecological] connections form the discursive undrepinnings of an overdetermined rhetorical ecology that sustains our current [conservative] political economic moment.... it is precisely this pervasive intangible quality that gives the rhetorical energy of fear its power.... Like ambient noises, fear resonates in the background of most contemporary experiences..." (pp. 20-21). 

What I make out of this way of imagining and using the conceptualization of a rhetorical ecology of fear, is that there has grown invisible 'channels' like grooves based on hyper-over-arousal of fear energy, circulating in these grooves (or veins) and each kind of experience that 'triggers' fear, then immediately lights up the entire grooved network of past and present and future imagined fears, and more fear energy is released from these sites in split second restimulations and accumulations but also in complex systems of constructing new ecological dynamics in which this rhetorical ecology of fear serves many things, of which global (predatory) capitalism is a major provider/host.

One almost has to talk about this organismically, and autopoietically, ecologically, as well as poetically, just to 'play' with ways to ensure we don't fall into an easy reductionism as fear is only in our brain, our self thought. No, an ecology of fear, especially via rhetorical discursive practices (many which don't seem fearful themselves per se or coming from someone afraid in any obvious way)-- takes on a 'life of its own' and thus 'fear' takes on a life of its own (a point Michel Foucault made about Discourses). 

There's an entire sub-field of study of the ecology of fear, in the larger sense, that I have long been a supporter of those naming this 'unit' and way of studying fear ('fear')... and, I am barely scratching the surface in this blog post... perhaps, as I read this new book by Chaput et al. more things will come clearer... and no doubt, more complex in how to understand fear ('fear') in our highly constructed rhetorical world today.

As I have promoted a healthy and sustainable, holistic-integral curriculum of fear management/education since 1989, there is little up-take of the 'big ideas' in regular schooling and adult education generally. There is a lot of resistance actually. And, of course, because fear ('fear') has such power today in cultural circulation, you can bet on just about anyone that wants to capture the market on "power" of attention and sales, and/or votes for a cause, the corporate world here below (i.e., Nike) has shown their own tenacious way to slip fear management/education to the populus. One of their ads, several years ago, was as follows (see below also for a collage I put together around this problem during my dissertation research):

fear of failure fear of success fear of losing your health fear of losing your mind fear of being taken too seriously fear of not being taken seriously enough fear that you worrry too much fear that you don't worry enough your mother's fear you'll never marry your father's fear that you will... Group Therapy from Nike--just do it!

Your Mind is a Battleground for those who want Social Control for their own "profit"-- lest, us not forget this in the Fearlessness Movement!  -RMF

 Introduction

 In the short essay “Can I Be Fearless?” by the internationally eminent organizational consultant, leadership trainer and teacher, Margaret Wheatley, available on the Internet at several locations, is everything I’m glad about what is happening with intention regarding the improvement of fear management/education (FME)[1] today—and, unfortunately, everything that is ‘wrong’ (distortive) with how we still think and talk and teach about fear. My position has been that we haven’t had an appropriate 21^st century upgrade [2]in our “program” of how we conceive FME for a long time and its more than overdue. Fisher and Subba (2016) concluded,

            There is something profoundly new to be said about fear and its impacts in the

            21^st century. The sooner it is said the better otherwise the evidence shows we will

            continue losing ground to fear—realizing one day, fear has us in its ominous

            grip—and, our healthy fearuality development (analogous to sexuality) is compromised. (p. xxi)

If we cannot arrive at an upgraded and disciplined multiperspectival view of fear itself within the near future as an intervention, then the Fear Problem will continue to rule and destroy life on this planet to the point of mass extinctions (Fisher, 2016).

Margaret Wheatley

Before I begin my critique of how Wheatley teaches about fear and FME in this essay, that I think her teaching is almost a “standard” for most teachers who talk about fear. That said, she is also one of the ‘cream of the crop’ organizational consultants and human leadership teachers on the planet today. She brings a welcomed Buddhist perspective to much of her work and to the functioning of a healthy workplace in the Western world. I have published off and on of her positive contributions and her critical and useful challenge for all of us to think better about the 21^st century in terms of how we relate to fear, personally and collectively. In particular, two of her publications are worth noting, of which I have honored for their direction we need to go, and which I ended my book (Fisher, 2010) with: (a) “Eight Fearless Questions” in 2006[3] and, (b) “Fearlessness: The Last Organizational Change Strategy” in 2007.[4]

When I recently found and read her essay “Can I Be Fearless?” (Wheatley, 2008), I decided to carefully analyze it to see what if any thing might be new in her synthesis and teaching of FME. It struck me as a good teaching case study.

            Problem of Use of Terms

The first problematic in this short essay is her unsystematic classification system (i.e., no system) for terms that are crucially important in any FME curriculum. There is no adequate attention given to discussion of fear per se or with a philosophy and/or theory of fear to accompany and support it. Where is her starting point for a discussion of fearless, if one has no robust idea of what she defines or means by fear?

I don’t necessarily expect something complex and scholarly in such an explicit defining, as her piece is obviously written as a quick and practical overview for the practitioner. However, this is an omission too often found in 95% of the writing I read on FME. Thus, she, like the rest, assume the reader already knows what fear is (i.e., an emotion, is the assumed default “truth”). I have challenged this type of omission in a recent article (Fisher, 2016a) by criticizing it functions as a political and epistemic hegemonic (dominating) discourse—and, thus a tragic distortion of the four major ways/discourses of knowing fear on the planet (i.e., beyond, fear is an emotion discourse). In fairness to Wheatley, she does draw on two opening quotes referring to “fear” by rather famous spiritual teachers, Hafiz and Parker Palmer,[5] who say a few things about fear but do not define it either, other than indirectly. They do at least acknowledge, as does Wheatley herself, the importance of fear in shaping the human condition—of which, my own work with Desh Subba supports (e.g., Fisher and Subba, 2016). 

Secondly, she repeatedly exchanges “fearless” with “fearlessness,” of which I have argued is a very common tendency, which has no theoretical or philosophical grounds to do so—and thus, falls into a common populist discourse usage with the same looseness (Fisher, 2016b). It also contravenes (seemingly by ignoring), the decades of scholarly work others and I have done on the topic. Albeit, I can forgive her somewhat for this loose use of these terms because I never articulated the integral theory of fear management systems until Fisher (2010), making the explicit distinction based on a good deal of historical and cross-cultural research. I have argued, however, since the early 1990s that “Fearless” is a very high level (or stage[6]) of evolutionary and personal development of consciousness that includes but transcends “fearlessness.” They are best used not interchangeably.

Her focus, despite the title of the essay (on “fearless”), is on “fearlessness”  and there is some worthy material there. Again, without having defined “fear” earlier, it leaves me with continually questioning how useful really is her discussion on fearlessness. I also question the reliance on any tradition (e.g., Buddhism, which highly values “fearlessness”) by Wheatley or other authors, touting the great virtue of fearlessness when one could argue the person pursuing fearlessness is not able to identify “fear” (or ‘fear’ as I add to the complexity of knowledge required). She does ask, “... what is fearlessness? It’s not being free of fear, for fear is part of our human journey” (Wheatley, 2008, p. 1). Here you can see the necessary dependency of fear and fearlessness as a dialectical relationship, yet, without fear being defined per se, and assume to be meaningful and true as “part of our human journey” (i.e., natural), she glosses over a huge epistemic problem in discussions about FME. She does not make clear what is natural fear or normal fear or pathological fear, etc. A number of authors do this in their discourse, but they all confuse and conflate to make natural and normal one and the same thing. This is highly problematic and distortive because of the evidence that is shown from many disciplines that there is a constructed fear born in the cradle of a “culture of fear” context,[7] and thus, to assume fear is simply natural or normal is to exclude the context of our lived reality. I have referred to this problem of reductionism (once again) to a hegemonic psychologization of fear (or FME). Writers, like Wheatley, disavow and/or ignore the historical, cultural, social and political complexity of fear and how humans are impacted by it and are participant co-creators of constructed fear (i.e., cultural modified fear, as analogous to genetically modified organisms). 

Colonial Western (Dominant) Worldview Bias

Although there are other things I could critique,[8] including how Wheatley later uses “true fearlessness” without mentioning its dialectical partner “false fearlessness” and why there would be such a distinction required in the first place. I’ll end with one last point of great disturbance—and, that is her highly Western modernist (colonialist) perspective on the topic, even if she refers to authority figures in spiritual teachings from the Eastern world (e.g., Hafiz, Zen). It comes across that she has not at all integrated Indigenous traditions around the world (especially, from her own country of origin, America) to offer wisdom on FME—an Indigenous-based critique made recently of the “Dominant worldview” in relation to fear, courage and fearlessness (Four Arrows, 2016; see chapter two).

This flaw shines brightly in the first paragraph of her essay when she talks of “our own families, perhaps going back several generations” as guides and inspiration because they “have been fearless.” She mentions, “They may have been immigrants who bravely left the safety of home, veterans who courageously fought in wars, families who endured economic hardships, war, persecution, slavery, oppression, dislocation. We all carry within us this lineage of fearlessness” (Wheatley, 2008, p. 1). I do not here a direct acknowledgement of the people who have lived relatively sustainably with Nature for 99% of human history and what they went through, and how they are the more reliable source (than the Dominant worldview) to understand fearlessness—and pass it on.

Bottomline, one finds no nuanced understanding of fear and fearlessness in Wheatley’s essay and teachings and worse it has no multiperspectival approach to understanding these notions. She makes no effort to question the “reality” and definitions she vaguely offers. The lack of such critical awareness is not what one would expect from a person who is into Buddhism. So, the message to me is that if someone as top-notch as Wheatley is so flawed in her presentation on this topic, what are we getting fed as a public by the rest of the FME teachers out there in the world?

Time to develop our own critical awareness of everyone who teaches some form of FME, even if they don’t believe they are doing so. Fact is, we most all are teaching by modeling, if not more directly through instruction. FME is a socialization phenomena, and a critical one to do well. We have a lot of work to raise the consciousness about the Fear Problem, of which part of it is how we talk, write, and teach about fear itself.

REFERENCES

Fisher, R. M. (2006). Invoking ‘Fear’ Studies. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 22(4), 39-71.

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

Fisher, R. M. (2016). Invoking fearanalysis: A new methodology applied to wicked problems and paradigm shifts in the Anthropocene. A CSIIE Yellow Paper, DIFS-15. Carbondale, IL: Center for Spiritual Inquiry & Integral Education.

Fisher, R. M. (2016a). 80% of fear discourse focuses on 25% of fear reality. Retrieved from http://fearlessnessmovement.ning.com/blog/80-of-fear-discourse-focuses-on-25-of-fear-reality

Fisher, R. M. (2016b). Problem of branding “fearlessness” in education and leadership. Technical Paper No. 59. Carbondale, IL: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.

Fisher, R. M., and Subba, D. (2016). Philosophy of fearism: A first East-West dialogue. Australia: Xlibris.

Four Arrows (2016). Point of departure: Returning to a more authentic worldview for education and survival. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

 Kleiner, A. (with Wheatley, M. J.) (2007). Fearlessness: The last organizational change strategy. Retrieved from http://www.strategy-business.com/li/leadingideas/li00044?pg=1

 Wheatley, M. (2008). Can I be fearless? Retrieved from margaretwheatley.com/wp-content/.../Wheatley-CanIBeFearless.pdf‎

I think the following image here is self-explanatory, other than the fine details. So, I leave with you to ponder and feel free to start-up a discussion on the FMning. 

I've just written and published a CSIIE Yellow Paper which I think gives one the most updated clarity on my work. I've attached it here. "Invoking Fearanalysis: A New Methodology Applied to Wicked Problems and Paradigm Shifts in the Anthropocene" by RMF.

I mean if Michelle Obama, now First Lady to Pres. Barack Obama in the USA, back in Aug. 2007 was feeling afraid, and they lived a very comfortable life, you can imagine what the vast majority of the American population was feeling. She spoke to supporters in rural Iowa in regard to why she and her husband agreed to go for the presidency:

"And as more people talked to us about it, the question came up again and again, what people were most concerned about. They were afraid. It was fear. Fear again, raising its ugly head in one of the most important decisions that we would make. Fear of everything. Fear that we might lose. Fear that he [Barack] might get hurt. Fear that this might get ugly. Fear that it would hurt our family. Fear

You know the reason I said 'yes'? Because I am tired of being afraid. I am tired of living in a country where every decision that we have made over the last ten years wasn't for something, but it was because people told us we had to fear something. We had to fear people who looked different than us, fear people who believed in things that were different from us, fear of another right here in our own backyards. I am so tired of fear, and I don't want my girls to live in a country, in a world, based on fear." [1]

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Wow! I hadn't seen this or heard this speech by her. It really hits the soul of things, and trust a woman to say it like it is in this realm of the affective side of life--living in a culture of fear that has truly not been anything but growing for quite a long time, and especially after 9/11. You'd think this would be the "grist" for the mill of American society, and especially American education systems to get out the best of our intelligence and figure out why it is that everyone is so afraid of everything down here!

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End Note:

1. Excerpt of Michelle Obama's speech, taken from Glassner, B. (2009). The culture of fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things. NY: Basic Books, 243-44.