This is a short summary illustrated video by a person on the internet and does a pretty good job of interpreting the theory of "gift of fear" by Gavin De Becker. As colleagues in the battle to de-mythologize the fear phenomenon and culture of fear, Gavin and I have known each other for 25 years through correspondence on emails, and he has written a Foreword for one of my publications on "culture of fear" and he has been generous to support my work on fearology overall since 2000.
His position is founder and president of Gavin De Becker & Associates, an American top security firm with international recognition as well. He's a big player in the world of violence and how to prevent it, especially for judges, celebrities and so on. He has several books and articles and is on video interviews all over. He is an amazing psychological 'counselor' as well in re: to people who have been terrified, attacked, and threatened [1].
He is recently (to my surprise), now becoming more public and even political in the public sphere of culture and politics. He has recently been called a "billionaire donar" on one leftist podcast, in re: to his (suspicious in their eyes) alignment with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his bid for 2024 president of the USA. We'll have to keep watching where this all goes. But in the meantime, I support De Becker getting involved in political life at this scale and indeed even if he wants to be a superpack donor, not that I encourage that regime of political elitism and money-dropping [2]. Anyways, I look forward to hearing more from De Becker and I'm glad to help out, especially in the project he has, like myself (and others) to better educate our society about fear (and, what Gavin ultimately wants, which is a "fear less" society [3] and he wants us all, more or less, to become "warriors" [4])--now, that gets really interesting. And, not surprising, I am also a critic of his fear theory in important aspects, but that nonetheless does not diminish my respect for it.
Endnotes
1. E.g., For his recent interview live with Sarah Silverman go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYdUV0H16lY
2. I note that De Becker with all his money and influence is not backing Marianne Williamson, and her pursuit much more forthright than RFK Jr., to make the world fear less --and, I am referring to all of MW's long career since 1983 at least, to have society shift from a politics of fear to a politics of love. She, in my view, ought to be highly supported by people like De Becker. That said, I really don't know who De Becker funds in politics, but the recent expose' podcast I mention about does say De Becker has donated 4.5 million already to RFK Jr.'s campaign bid for dems president in 2024.
3. De Becker, G. (2002). Fear Less: Real truth about risk, safety, and security in a time of terrorism. NY: Little, Brown & Co.
4. See intro of the interview he does with Sarah [endnote 1 video], and he calls Sarah a (woman) "warrior," validating her with great admiration.
