"As Marxism gives economy and Freudian psychology gives sexuality a special significance as the cause of all the human activities, in the same way fearism says that fear is behind conducting, directing and controlling all human activities."
Whether we openly admit it or hesitate to do so, it is undoubtedly true that our personal and social life have close relation with fear. In our personal life, we suffer from some or others of countless fears such as fear of darkness, fear of ghost, fear of listening to abusive or reproaching words, fear of being betrayed in love, even fear of cockroaches or lizards as we see happening often in case of film heroines, let alone the fear of death. Like countless known and unknown personal fears, we have a large number of social fears too. For example, as it happens with the Assamese people, the fear of their language getting endangered, the fear of losing their national identity etc. are among many fears which we have often been discussing in their political and social significance. A popular line spoken by former President of America Franklin Delano Roosevelt can be recalled in this context, “We have nothing to fear other than fear”.
Since long time before, so many psychoanalytical studies have been done on fear. In the year 1926 while presenting “the Theory of Anxiety”, Sigmund Freud made a deliberation on fear too along with anxiety, and these were the early discussions done on fear from the psychoanalytical points of view. Psychologists John B. Watson, Paul Ekman and Robert Plutchik etc. identified some natural emotions in human being and said that fear is one of them. While interpreting fear, an author named Strechnert said that fear is a gradually increasing possibility of danger and a reasonable or unreasonable emotional reaction to some animate or inanimate thing or event related to unhappiness, excitement, and hiding, escaping, and seeking protection. It may be mentioned that, besides psychoanalytical points of view, fears have been studies in behavioural points of view too.
Psychologists John B. Watson, Paul Ekman and Robert Plutchik etc. identified some natural emotions in human being and said that fear is one of them.
On the basis of this overwhelming influence of fear on human life, a literary and philosophical theory has recently been given birth to, which is named as ‘Fearism’. It is worth mentioning that though the words ‘terror’ and ‘fear’ belong to the same cognate, what we understand by ‘terrorism’ has no relation with the concept of ‘fearism’. In the concept of fearism, fear is the driving force of all the things in human life, whether personal or social. As Marxism gives economy and Freudian psychology gives sexuality a special significance as the cause of all the human activities, in the same way fearism says that fear is behind conducting, directing and controlling all human activities
The person who propounded this theory of Fearism is Desh Subba, a philosopher, novelist and poet born in Nepal. Born in Dharan in the eastern part of Nepal on 6th December 1965, his birth name is Desh Bahadur Limbu. An inhabitant of Hong Kong with his family at present, he not only propounded the concept of fearism, but also initiated the efforts to build fearism as literary movement in the year 1999, and to reach his goal, he resorted to fiction writing. He wrote four novels in Nepali -- 'DOSHI KARM', 'APMAN,' 'SAHID', and
'ADIVASHI'. Among them ' ADIVASHI' has been translated into English under the title 'The Tribesmanís Journey to FEARLESS'. In this novel, Desh Subba performed vrious experiments of fearism. Apart from these, he also composed some poems to serve his purpose.
Not satisfied with these along, Subba subsequently made his efforts to give fearism a theoretical structure, and in this process, he wrote his much talked about philosophical book 'Philosophy of Fearism: Life is conducted, Directed and Controlled by the Fear’, which was first published in the year 2014. In this book he elaborately discussed the impact of fear in the personal and social life of human beings. He further expanded his theory of fearism by writing jointly with Dr. R. Michael Fisher the book named 'Philosopy of Fearism -- a First East-West Dialogue' in the year 2016.
Fearism of Subba says that, there are both positive and negative aspects of the overwhelming effects of fear in human life. Subba wanted to show the positive aspect of the fear with this idea that fear encourages people to attain development in scientific and cultural aspects. In this respect, he has cited an example. Why does a scientist become encouraged to invent a vaccine for a deadly disease? Because he gets frightened by the results of the deadliness of the dangerous disease. But it doesn't also mean that fear has the positive sides only. Subba cites an example to show the negative side of fear clearly. If a student fears examination, he will naturally put his back to study. For the extreme fear that a student suffers from in respect of examination, there is possibility that they will suffer from drug addiction.
Subba fearism has discussed in detail what fear is, how it gets reflected in human life, and how the presence of fear in life can be lessened. Describing the importance of fearism, Subba said, “Disappearance of Malaysian aircraft, Civil war of Iraq and Afghanistan, spread of new virus, economic crisis etc. are the occurrences that are happening daily in the present world. These things inflict fear on people. They want to be free from this fear. For them fearism works as medicine.”
In the year 2009, Subba established Fearism Study Centre it Dharan in Nepal and took various steps to popularise fearism. Although Desh Subba's literary significance is not beyond question, still fearism has presently acquired popularity at Nepal and India. Even in United States of America and some of the European countries fearism could find some followers. At present fearism is an acknowledged literary and philosophical trend, and the awards and honors received by Subba have established this fact. That is why, Prof. Dr. Tanka Prasad Neupane, Chairperson of Fearism Study Centre says, “Fearism is a gift to the world from a Nepali....
Naju Hatikakoty Baruah
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