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Over the 34 years studying the way people perceive, think, talk, teach and preach about fear (and fearlessness), has led me to many conclusions, hypotheses, theories and a philosophy around this topic. It has never ceased to amaze me how difficult it is to find people who really want to learn something fresh and new about fear (and, typically, concomitantly that means they are likewise not very interested to learn anything new or fresh about fearlessness or fearless). 

Basically, it is not their fault they are so unwilling and uninterested to learn anew and to even transform their thinking and imaginaries about the nature and role of fear (and fearlessness). What I see over and over, generally, is their fixing in on some fav definition and conceptualization or even a theory or implicit philosophy that has grown. They have adopted such a philosophy and they teach it with such confidence. 

On one level, you'd think as an educator and human potential advocate that I would be happy that people learn anything about fear and then teach it confidently. You'd think. But that's where the subtlety comes in and disrupts what might be my easy default position to take on individuality and human expression and opinion. I am all for such a beginning of that individual attitude and teaching, even preaching, as long as it is not oppressive and "demanding" (as Yahweh recently uttered on their post here)--but that alone, that free speech agenda, and tolerance, is not what makes a systematic study and learning about fear happen. No, it will not go far. 

That limitation is part of why I began the Fearlessness Movement and its mission "to better understand..." (that's exactly what this website is about)-- and, I'll leave you all with the educative challenge as a community of learners to really look at our self, our conditioning, without blame and attack or loathing, without fear that we are doing something wrong IF we are not so confident in preaching about fear. Good intentions to give advice about fear, a mainstay, of the teacher or preacher, is often a shallow pattern of knowledge pretending to be way more than it is because the intentions of goodness and helping are seen by the individual as their motivation for "sharing." 

True fearlessness work, as a path of learning and transformation, requires so much more than that "sharing"--I guess that's my main intervening point in this short blog. After 34 years of fear study, I can tell you, and I publish on this all the time, there is less confidence I know what I am talking about or even preaching about. 

One of the things that regularly disturbs me in the common discourses that have shaped people's minds, is they think they know what not only "fear" is all about but they utter the term "fearless" or even "fearlessness" as if they know exactly what that is. Maybe they do, in their own minds. But I ask, what theory of fear(lessness) are you utilizing to make your truth claims, your offerings of advice and your expressions? I am not saying here nor have I ever said, "stop sharing people because you don't know enough" and I am not saying either "you should listen to me because I know better." That said, some will definitely interpret that is what I am saying and publishing about in my work. 

The nuances of my points above, could be debated, and I'm glad to do so as part of the learning here on this FM ning. To offer but the most basic outline of a "theory" and a good deal of how I think about these topics, go to my book The World's Fearlessness Teachings: A Critical Integral Approach to Fear Management/Education for the 21st Century" (2010). That publication is one of many of mine. It also lists hundreds of references I have looked at and suggests where you can learn more about these topics. To end here, my short thesis in that book (based on 20 years of research) is that "fearless" is quite completely misunderstood by most people and "fearlessness" is even less understood. I create an integral developmental theory (from a fearlessness perspective) in that book. The theory says that we need to speak much more carefully about our ideas re: fear and how we manage it and educate ourselves and others around it. I call for a new improved and critical Fear Education 101. 

My basic developmental (evolutionary) theory of fear (management) goes through several distinct (albeit, overlapping) phases or stages--each with its own particular intelligence and adaptive strategies to manage fear:

Stage 1 - No Fear,

Stage 2 - Bravery,

Stage 3- Courage(ous),

Stage 4 - Fear Less,

---------------'Fear' Barrier (abyss) ----------

Stage 5 - Fearlessness

Stage 6 - Fearless.

I ask people to look at the data, the arguments, the references, the logic and the intuitions behind why I have used this language and these categories. I want to upgrade our poor fear education generally to get it up to snuff with the 21st century demands upon us as a species. 

Let's learn more together! 

Excerpt p. 245, from Fisher, R. M. (2010). The World's Fearlessness Teachings: A Critical Integral Approach to Fear Management/Education for the 21st Century. Lanham, MD.: University Press of America/Rowman & Littlefield. 

The above last chapter of that book, now 10 years old, is still my foremost vision and purpose in everything I do. 

During the writing of my largest and most complex book, The World's Fearlessness Teachings: A Critical Integral Approach to Fear Management/Education for the 21st Century (2010), I was aware that maybe I ought to first be writing an even larger and more complex book called The World's Fear Teachings. This latter book seemed to be the logical precursor to The World's Fearlessness Teachings. Right? You ought to know about how "fear" is being constructed as a concept and being reproduced in some forms of information and knowledge--passed on to others and generations to follow. Then once you have a big book to understand about "fear" in this sense, you could then better be able to use and understand the big book of how to cure the Fear Problem and it would naturally be something like The World's Fearlessness Teachings as the road to liberation.

Well, all logic of that aside, it turned out when I was contemplating writing a big book on my 25 years of research and experience studying fear and fearlessness, that I just couldn't make up my mind which book was first. I actually started some drafts of The World's Fear Teachings but then, it seemed too complex and would take many years to complete, as I envisioned it. So I stopped that project. And one day had a shamanic experience 'on the table' with a registered shaman (shawoman) in a therapeutic treatment session and then did my own self-shamanic journey to explore what I ought to do. I knew I wanted to summarize my work for the past 1/4 of a century. The dream-vision and my later logical rationale "pushed" me in the direction to first write the "fearlessness" stuff. I don't regret that move. I wanted to show the world that there is a Fearlessness Movement and Spirit that is always already there and ready to handle all the Fear that is going on and has ever been going on. All we had to do is know more about it, that "spirit of fearlessness" as our cura if and when we were ready to make the choice to utilize its guidance. This simple idea for that first big book more or less came down to the findings of all my research up to that point, in a nutshell, which formed a dictum in The World's Fearlessness Teachings, that is, "When fear arises, so then does fearlessness."

It was a short and sweet, optimistic note. Here was the dictum that I would offer to the world in the early part of the 21st century, and I was curious as hell to see how the world would respond. Guess what? It didn't. Well, not much. Pretty pathetic response. I knew it was a great dictum but why was it not taking hold?

This blogpost is not about this question of the value or lack of up-take of The World's Fearlessness Teachings, which apparently is not as positive and as inspiring as I thought it was. The blogpost here is about the companion volume I never wrote, but am thinking of again, and thinking particularly how to go about it so it will be more "fun" to write and not a multi-year slog out of scholarly pages that no one will want to read. So, I thought I had a really cool idea, and that's what I want to share, and get your feedback on as well. But first a quote, from the Foreword to my first big book on fearlessness:

"Fisher offers a vision.... And he wisely insists that because the terrible curriculum of fear has been implanted in us at every level of our being, it must be addressed in an integral, holistic manner that existentially transforms not only individuals but also their cultures. What Fisher offers us, at both the personal and collective level, are some preliminary theoretical ways and practical means to transcend the matrix of fear and step out (as is our birthright) onto the bright landscape of a teleological optimism--one that lies at the heart of Fisher's profound, and profoundly healing, educational vision."  -Dr. Clifford Mayes, Professor, Educational Psychology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA (p. x).

That endorsement is right on what my project is about, but this morning I am thinking maybe this companion volume to The World's Fearlessness Teachings will be just what is needed for the populations of the world to "wake up" and really get on the bandwagon to undermine the 'Fear' Matrix controlling us. Here's my little (big) idea for the companion book. It's title would be The Fear Bible.

Now, a little background before I say what would be in this book, The Fear Bible. First, I have been listening to artist-psychoanalyst and matrixial theorist Bracha L. Ettinger for a few weeks now (with Barbara) and we are so impressed once again at what she offers in way of a critique. The video we watched last night is entitled "Subject, Trust, and Carriance" (on Youtube). She takes apart the Bible discourses in a brilliant analysis of the (mis-)translations from the ancient Hebrew to Roman language and English. She does this showing virtually all the ways the (mis-)translation in English removes systematically any divine-feminine (Woman) from the text where it is really important stuff, and the divine-masculine (Man) is inserted. I won't give details, watch the video.

Point being, her matrixial feminine critical psychoanalysis is a "ground" platform to critique all the ways the paranoidal masculine has infiltrated the Western world, and the Abrahamic religious and cultural traditions and language (i.e., Discourse). In my way of looking at all this I want to do the same analogous thing with the Western world (especially), and show how "reality" has been (mis-)translated to us through texts, traditions and what Michel Foucault, the great philosopher/historian, called big 'D' Discourse. Discourse is the term for all the ways that ideas, and more than just ideas, flow through a civilization or culture in forms of information and then knowledge and then reproductions (e.g., cultural artifacts, architectures, teachings, etc.) of that Discourse.

I see a Discourse of Fear, has been flooding humanity for a long time. We don't know fully how to even recognize this. I want to show that there is a Fear Bible that has been written but is not actually written down in one book like the Bible--and, that's the big problem because we cannot at least have one source to go to to find out how we are being conditioned into one hegemonic Discourse on "reality" that is fear-based (even though, the Bible, may say it is love-based). So, I would research and write the Fear Bible as the book that I believe captures all the ways (and discourses) that are hegemonic in determining how we thinking about "Fear" (again, analogous to how the Bible is the book that captures (most) all the ways we in the West thinking about "God"). Get it?