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In Search of Fearlessness itself is a very intriguing phrase, which has spiritual (theological), mindful (philosophical) and historical import for humanity, as well as more practical psychosocial, cultural, and political and economic implications. I wish to begin a series of FM blogs on this topic with emphasis on the "research institute" of this name and its publishing and educational role of liberation. I am inspired to write this out and share it because most people in the Fearlessness Movement (and beyond) have no idea what my main project has been in this form of a research institute "In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute" (founded by me in 1991 and still going). A few years later, with my partner Barbara Bickel we led the non-profit organization (and eventual official "society") called "In Search of Fearlessness Centre & Research Institute" combination which had two physical centre spaces in the city of Calgary, AB, Canada (between 1991-1999). That's a much longer story, of which some of that history will unfold in this blog series and some of it is documented in various places on the Internet and in my publications if you do any searching. 

The Generic Phrase: "In Search of Fearlessness"

My own prophetic vision for the use of this phrase came in late 1989 while going to university and getting involved with a woman, all of which is very intense and explosive in terms of my discovering deeper layers (mystical aspects) of "love" with another like never before in my life-time. I was 37 years old when the term and project "In Search of Fearlessness" appeared to me as my life purpose and my partner at the time agreed but she quickly bailed out of it all and the relationship ended by mid-1990. I kept at the helm to lead the ISOF Project (for short). Later, I would search the Internet and other places to see if anyone else was or has used this phrase. I found very little. Osho [aka Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh], a mystic from the East who came West and had a big impact in the E-W spiritual integration of the 1980s-90s etc. had used this phrase, which I find interesting and yet I am curious exactly what he meant by it and what his followers thought of it as well. But that's another research project to figure out, which I will not do here. But it is clear such a phrase has not taken off with anyone to any extent except myself. 

What does it mean? Well "in search of fearlessness" means many things and it all depends on how you define fear and fearlessness for one. That's extremely complex the more you get into it, especially that is the case in my own transdisciplinary investigation of these phenomena and their interrelationship. Let's start with the criticism I have received over the years since declaring publicly ISOF and attempting to develop it into a viable community, organization, research vehiicle and place of practices for liberation. Most people, or many at least, thought it was too weak and not inspiring. They believed and judged "in search of" gives the project and name a kind of nebulous unknown with no fixed and certain vision of the end goal, the promise, the reward. I was accused of being a "wandering jew" by one person and probably others with Christian faith commitments have thought the same. There was no "god" or "goddess" either that was the ultimate leader of ISOF and of its principles and practices. They couldn't trust such nebulous unknowns and that one is always seemingly in this ISOF Project always "searching" and never satisfied or redeemed or enlightened. I thought that was then, and still now, very telling of the kinds of people and their developmental evolution of consciousness, more than it was an accurate statement about ISOF Project. Reality is, they had their criticisms about this weakness, if not folly, and yet understood very little because they were largely uncurious about the nature of the ISOF Project--for they sure did not talk to me about it, they merely preferred their speculative judgments from afar with little good information or dialogue. That tells me they are afraid to really know. They want their secure fixed already known safety and security in their belief systems and their faith practices etc. They want their promise of good reward. 

In Search of Fearlessness as I articulated it was a movement from Fear to Fearlessness in an overall evolutionary developmental process. But it was a process-focused way of getting to liberation (or enlightenment or to 'heaven' if some prefer that term). Process-focused means there is always an emergent learning in and with the unknown and mystery of life/risk/death dynamics and no guaranteed outcome. One requires a larger scope and depth of understanding that the process of existence is such a variable and sometimes nebulous magnanamity that there is no way to fix and control and reduce it down to the guaranteed result one wishes for as ideal. ISOF can be an ideal way or path of life, a journey, but the ideal is not worshipped nor even fully known. I made the case early in this that "in search" keeps us humble before the ideals so that we don't let our fear of not getting to the ideal become such a big motivator that it distorts the path and the very qualities of the ideal (e.g., God or Perfection, Absolute). Most people don't have the emotional or existential capacities developed to adopt and stay with this "path of fearlessness." That is a socialization and educational problem of the modern era, which is another longer story I write and teach about in many places you can look up. 

One practical example I can give of the necessity and demand of the "in search" commitment to ISOF is to be an inveterate learner (researcher) of the highest calibre in that you are endlessly pursuing information, knowledge, knowing and understanding, from one level of superficial to a deeper level of integration of wisdom and compassion, then pursue the search to learn again as much as you can about fear and fearlessness (as central topics)--and, then again pursuing the moving from a deeper level to an even yet deeper level of integration--potentially endlessly to one's death. For many, I found, they are not used to such disciplined learning and process-focused work in their growth and in their drive to find safety and security in existence, and they short-cut their way, by-passing their way, to find a quick fix solution to their fear, without really understanding fear (and fearlessness) very deeply at all. They die mostly in this shallow state of understanding and it is a loss I see because of its short-cut path to true liberation. 

Of course, a whole set of lectures could be developed on what is liberation? That's another topic beyond what this blog is dealing with. The path of fearlessness, the ISOF Project are designed with a good deal of study I have made of liberation, and that is a critical integral perspective on liberation and not just some individualized psychospiritual liberation that I am referring to within the ISOF context. Liberation work is very complex and so far the world has made overall very little progress in my view and seems actually to resist liberation at the same time the instinctual impulse of the universe is liberation. Maybe, this is the point the brilliant psychoanalyst Erich Fromm was getting at with seeing the deep irony in the human condition where people en mass are controlled by others (dominating) because people are in "fear of freedom" (i.e., liberation). ISOF is the way to explore and understand and undermine that fear of freedom, you could say, which is based on fear of fear itself and so on. Learning what the spirit of fearlessness is and being open to learn more about it, same with fear, brings a whole new level (paradigm) to our quest for freedom, liberation, enlightenment, call it what you will. And, yes, you could say "Love" is the final goal, at least, a love purified (more or less) from the fear-based motivations that so quickly undermine love (and compassion). 

Brief HISTORY of In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute

Since the moment of my own 'awakening' to the ISOF Project, and giving this name, I feel I have been guided by spirit to enact this in my life-time on this planet. No one is paying me a salary to do this. It is service, in serving as best I can the liberation work of which fearlessness is the great principle and path. After just over a year of working and living this path in relationship in the real world, and feeling all the resistance and betrayal and despair that goes with it, my personhood was transformed and more clarity came about the need for a real space and vehicle to perform the service. The Research Institute (1991-) was my newest way to go and it has been with me ever since to this day. It shows that In Search of Fearlessness is not just about individual personal growth and development and success. So many others in the Human Potential and New Age Movements of my time were into this individualizing liberation which I saw as a flaw and still do. It is corrupted for many reasons but that's a longer critique and story you can find in my other writing and teaching. Research Institute I take very seriously because I knew we had to research this new paradigm of fearlessness (today, I call it a "fearlessness psychology") based on theories and practices adopted and tried out for real. Then making corrections and keeping track of our findings, and publishing and educating on this so it could be effective. It was a great idea I still believe in but without funding it won't go anywhere fast and it hasn't done so. I have never figured out how to inspire people overall to donate (gift) to this cause, and to the very gift of fearlessness tradition which is found in the ancient Eastern wisdom and religious traditions. In the Western world where I live, this notion is rejected and fearlessness is often vilified as being pathological and dangerous to people and societies in general. I find that very oppressive and not very wise of the Western world to have been so ignore-ant of the Eastern roots of fearlessness. 

In 1991 my partner Barbara Bickel came on board and her and I formed a non-profit Canadian publishing company "In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute" and have used that to publish several small books and booklets over the years with our own ISBN library catalogue numbers. We've pretty much stopped that in the last several years but ISOF Research Institute continues to publish my technical papers series and the journal I just founded (International Journal of Fear Studies). I am looking at finding a space again to start up the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute (and Centre) but without funding it is hard to grow anything. I see that such a Research Institute can provide many things for the public in support of them reaching their potential but also being wise and compassionate, and this is all especially important in the coming crisis years we face as humanity (including near social collapse if not extinction on mass scale). Emotional resiliency as one example, is now getting more attention in the mental health sectors, but basically it is a way of managing "fear" (emotional anxiety, panic, etc.). I would like to promote the ISOF Research Institute as offering a much deeper approach to emotional resilience, as I argue "fear" ('fear') cannot be reduced to only an emotion as these clinical psychologists tend to do. They will only address symptoms, whereas ISOFRI will address much deeper causes--and set us back (potentially) on the course of liberation (via the path of fearlessness) from which we have long strayed as nations and peoples. 

Okay, that's enough for this very beginning bit of history and clarification of ISOFRI and I trust you will find it useful in your own navigation of what liberation could mean. Feel free to contact me if you'd like more information and make Comments on this blog as well, so others can engage a dialogue with you. 

I've always been interested in the question: Who legitimately can call who fearful? What I mean is, who is qualified to do so? Who is allowed to by the other person (or by society) that is so being labeled "fearful"? And who of course is actually fearful? Are they admitting they are fearful or are they covering the fear up with bravado (for e.g.,)? Is the one labeling the other fearful, actually the fearful themselves and only projecting fear onto another? Is only a 'transcendent other' the 'one' to truly know the fear in the human soul(s)... and resolve it? The questions grow... like weeds... but I think they have philosophical, sociological, psychological and political merit. As a society we ought to reflect on these questions and others like them.

I'm concerned we don't talk about fear enough for the challenging times we live in. I'm concerned we remain largely unconscious of the great "force" of fear to influence us. And, thus, you can see I am an advocate for feartalking and fear management/education, and fearology and so on. 

I recently was in a conflict with an acquaintance who was insistent I listen to a set of videos on 'end of the world' scenarios via extreme climate change. This is a growing topic in our world, at least in the West. I said, I won't likely get to them because I have interest in other topics rather than the science of climate change. This person became incensed and bullying in response and tried to find ways to intimidate, make me feel guilty, etc. for not doing what he wanted me to do. Now, this was not an adolescent or a three year old child of mine, it was a 45+ yr old man and a very intelligent and sensitive and aware man. What was going on? I snooped out it was his fear (and fearfulness around survival of the end of the world) that was pressing on me to be informed of what he was informed on that he thought was so important to survival. I guess, in the moment I wasn't concerned about survival and the future that much. I'm more interested in other aspects of extreme climate change, like the perceptions and psychology of such events and realities. That greatly interests me. 

So, under pressure of his personal attacks on me for not cooperating with his desires for me to watch these videos, I told him bluntly, but respectfully, I heard his concern, and I wasn't ignoring it but I was more concerned with the way he was approach me and trying to get me to do it. I told him he was using fear tactics to teach, if not convert, me. This raised the level of his anger and he denied he was doing so. 

I suppose it was very hard for him to hear my message of communication, that both he wasn't effective in his communication and he was using fear tactics and that cannot be a way to wisdom. His rage went on and on and many many emails he sent. I stopped reading them. He was unloading a whole lot of distress. I told him so. He again, resented my view because it felt like a judgement upon him. Was I judging him because I said he was using fear tactics? Which, in a way I suppose I was but I wasn't trying to make him into a horrible person necessarily at all. I just was standing up for what I believe is unethical (or just not effective)--that is, to use fear tactics, some call fearmongering to make your point and to try to change people to your view. 

This all was hurtful to me and disappointing this person would treat me so disrespectfully--he treated me suddently from friend to enemy. No doubt many of you know this experience I am talking about. It felt like the 45 year old person became a young angry adolescent quite irrational--that is, fear-based in their relationship with me, rather than connecting and respectful--even if we had our differences. This is a common problem in our world. People disrespecting people with differences and for having a right to be different and to not be coerced or threatened to change. 

Anyways, I'm most intrigued by my calling him out and labeling his approach to communication as a "fear tactic." I was saying he is using fear implicitly because he is fearful. Why else would he be so insistent and stubborn and disrespectful to my free choice to do as I saw fit? Fear has to be ruling that kind of behavior, so I surmised, and I do believe this is the case as well. One could go into the theory behind my thinking, and some evidence perhaps from knowledges available but that is not what I want to do here in this blog. I merely want to have readers think about this in terms of why did this person, knowing I was a fear expert for 30 years, not want me making my observation of his fear tactic? It seems he couldn't stand it that I was discerning something he didn't see or feel? Did he not feel fear in himself when I refused to follow his orders of insistence to watch the videos he sent to me? Perhaps not, perhaps he was quite unconscious of his feelings and only trying to correct my behavior with his behavior of writing all the disrespectful emails. Later, he did apologize for trying to "force" me. 

Point being, what is more important is that he would not trust or respect all my knowledge and experience with fear and thus when I labeled it onto his activity in a particular way he rejected it completely and more or less threw back comments to try to make me fearful of his vengeance and power etc. He tried to say I was fearful to not watch these videos. I did wonder if that was true of myself? I had bits of doubt. Then it took time to get over my hurt and fears of his abusive language toward me and find out that no I was not avoiding anything, I was merely chosing a different priority of where I put my time and energy than he would. 

This person is like so many I have met, and often when in conflict--I will say, if I sense it, "you're coming from fear" or you seem to "be afraid" etc. Most people resent me saying that, no matter how soft I deliver that message or observation. I guess they don't like me interpreting them. I am not saying I am highly skilled in effective communication around this touchy issue. I have lots to learn so I can be more effective. But nonetheless, I keep doing it and will because I think it is so important as part of my teaching to point out fear and its mis-uses on others (and/or on me). I see people hate being called out on it. 

They fear being seen through--seeing their fear when they don't even seem to see or feel it. They are fearful and won't admit it. They attack me or others you label the fear in them and their actions. The attack is meant to transfer the unacknowledged fear in them onto me (or another target who names the fear). They attack the messenger, in that sense. 

Yes, very very common and very destructive this dynamic is. It is like they don't give persmission to me (or others) to so name their fear, except maybe they would do so if the person was someone they trusted a lot or was a clinical psychologist for example. Maybe. 

I wonder about this phenomenon of legitimacy to call out fear when it is there. Of course, maybe I was 'wrong' in my interpretation. That's possible. But I trust my skills in detecting fear. Anyways, it's a problem that won't go away and I have lost good friendships with many people over this issue of my naming fear when I see it in them. 

Another e.g., comes when I am not with someone I know per se in person. They are not a friend or colleague in my close connections, but I may still want to point out and name the fear I see in them, and feel they are not acknowledging, and/or feel they are abusing fear against others--e.g., in fearmongering. This is what I have done with the famous Jordan Peterson. I have done a few youtube videos on his life and work from what I gathered studying him and his work [1]. He tends to come across in his lectures and interviews as very "brave" or "courageous" (some might call "fearless")--and, yet, I don't see him that way when I watch him and listen to him speak on videos. I don't get his fearlessness--he seems quite fearful and anxious.

Now, this is subtle. But recently a psychoanalyst in Holland pronounced that J. Peterson is quite an anxious and fearful person because he mainly is a traditionalist [2] and Peterson cannot stand loss of traditionalism (a lot of it anyways)--and thus, Peterson attacks the postmodern thinkers who are rejecting traditionalism. Long story. I have made a poster below to make my inquiry visible: 

So, if you don't know, Peterson is a clinical psychologist himself, he does therapy with people, some 30+ year competent career, etc. So, why is he so fearful? Oh, but first, the question is: Do I have a right to call him a fearful person? Does Dr. Jan Derksen, from Holland, have a right to do so, even if he is a trained psychoanalyst? On and on it goes. Is the fear pathological, neurotic, or near-psychotic (at times)? Is Peterson in need of psychological treatment for his excess fear and use of fearmongering? Lots of questions could be asked. My point is, not to diminish him and his work. My purpose is to ask if I (or anyone, like Dr. Derksen) has a right to call out Peterson on his fear-based ways of approaching things in his communications? This is just like the question of my calling out my friend recently that he was using fear tactics to try to convert me in some manner. I resent such coercion and worst, it is unethical to use fear tactics or fear-based perceptions and thinking to try to change anyone. At least, that would be a working pivot point for further philosophical discussion. This blog is not the place for that. I just wanted to raise all these issues. 

Dr. Derksen, rightly I think, nails it down quite well in talking about how Peterson has become the icon (of one sort) today for defense of Tradition. Sure, I know he doesn't like everything about tradition, but he is one of its remaining advocates, and yes, he's a privilege white old male to boot--which makes many skeptical of his motivations. I say, his motivations are often quite fear-based in his defence of Tradition (and himself). That said, you can see my videos on him and his work for more nuance. But to close here, I'll give the explanation Dr. Derksen gives (interprets) re: Peterson, as Derksen is here discussing the deep roots of fear that are being raised rapidly in a society of "political correctness" around identity politics and how our culture and society and law are all grappling with the new emergence of identity politics and "difference" overall. Dr. Derksen says in the video: 

"... it shakes people, it pulls at their roots... then it gets more emotional than rational, so it's [identity] a topic that will stay with us for many years... the most important intellectual topic will be, are we culturally and politically [able] to manage that anxiety [fear] that rises out of the fact conservative principles [values] are being broken down. Is there enough leadership... to organize their emotions about that in a productive way?" 

The host of the panel came in and said: "I think for many he [Peterson] is seen as a manager of anxiety [himself, for much of the society, especially white young males]." Dr. Derksen said, "yes." At one point Derksen says (paraphrasing), that Peterson's best-selling book "12 Rules for Life" is not science it is religion, it is all about Peterson's preaching his gospel of Tradition in his own unique way as a clinical scientist/psychologist, but it is not justified in the field of clinical psychology itself it is something else Peterson is trying to accomplish. The philosopher on the panel says (paraphrasing) it is Peterson's 'new mythology' guide for especially those who have lost their way, lost their identity and pride in this postmodern world of multiple and complex identities and their conflicts. The question in the panel's mind, seems to me always implicit in its rightful questioning of just how 'healthy' is Peterson himself to be teaching this way to 'health'? I think we should ask that of any teacher, especially one who makes their living in the human services field and who trafficks in authoring self-help advice in videos, talks, books etc. How healthy is Peterson, or how fearful is Peterson? [3] These are important questions, and questions I ought to also have hurled at my own teaching and life.

So, all this comes around to the importance of fear (anxiety) management, individual to collective. Our challenging times require a tremendous up-grade of how we manage and will manage fear. My own estimate, is that Peterson doesnt' do a great job of it. Albeit, I say that knowing he's made millions of dollars on his approach to fear management (unfortunately). The discussions must continue to challenge even Peterson's approach just like my friend's approach-- we have to look at when fear-based means are used for good ends, for good teaching, for morals, etc. I am a great skeptic and will be until I see a fearlessness-based approach invoked. 

Notes: 

1. Go to: https://ca.video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=AwrVk.IRk89dvksA3BAXFwx.;_ylu=X3oDMTByNWU4cGh1BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=youtube+r.+michael+fisher+and+jordan+peterson+and+fear&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01#id=1&vid=c3e2964bb0e8876f8326dc648887b306&action=view

2. Go to youtube.com/watch?v=Y5LrxSKGW5Y for a great 2019 conversation on Jordan Peterson by a panel of scholars, including Dr. Derksen. Also see just how "fragile" (fearful, anxious, sensitized) Peterson is in recent times with this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0P6H7cm0E4

3. I suspected from the first moment I watched Peterson in a lecture on video, from several years ago, his approach is very preacherly, he has a tone and style that reminds me of many preachers I have observed and how they are very fearful of many things (like "chaos") and are trying to teach as a way to manage this fear. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but fear used this way can accumulate and multiply and become 'fear' in a cultural discourse which is far beyond Peterson's personal fears. I don't think he truly understands what it is he is doing with his fear, and so my video (note 1) is precisely my challenging of him to be more aware, and likewise with his followers. The fact that it is public knowledge that Peterson has suffered with severe depression in his life off and on and has been taking certain meds to deal with his emotional problems, he has become addicted to the meds (apparently) and in coming off those meds he is struggling even more emotionally and one can see this at times in his recent interviews, it is very obvious he is 'on edge' and highly hurting and anxious and fearful just below his tough and sharp intellectuality (the latter, which so many people admire as his strength). 

[RMF note:] Likely THE MOST COMMON assumption in looking at the “great divide” of ontology, epistemology and axiology in world history, especially in the historical era of documenting human behavior, is probably the divide between “materialist” vs. “spiritualist” worldview perspectives. Much of philosophy and theology has been particularly involved in this debate. In many ways each of us lives out this dynamic, more or less consciously, each and every day--influencing who we think we are and what is most important. It ought not be ignored today as still very complex and important in our growth and development processes.

More and more others (like Luke Barnesmoore) are questioning the structure of that debate itself and re-visioning a more useful, and arguably more “nasty” debate that we ought to be having in terms of going from an ‘old story’ to a ‘new story’ of human reclamation and re-building a ‘new’ society that is truly sustainable. Barnesmoore, over several years of his graduate work on philosophy intersecting with geography and his own contemplative experiential journey of discoveries has synthesized a somewhat coherent way to categorize the distinction he thinks is crucial to the future of our species and to guide the necessary changes in our worldviews that then will help change our behaviors individually and collectively. I think there is much merit to his work, and, most particular I am interested in his adoption of the “Fearlessness” and “Fear” distinction(s) he often makes, which are evident below:

 “The Natural Worldview: 1. The order of (human) nature is inherently good. 2. Natural order as the basis for virtue and wisdom. 3. Order through emulation of natural order. 4. Power with. 5. Order through reciprocal collaboration between sun (breath, active, relatively masculine1516 [from the finite human perspective], pollen, sperm, mind, etc.) and moon (blood, latent, relatively feminine [from the finite human perspective], flower, egg, emotion, etc.). 6. Rooted in being. 7. Deliverance through return to natural order. 8. Fearlessness (love) as guiding principle of action. (Four Arrows)

 The Artificial Worldview: 1. The order of (Human) nature is inherently evil (sic. fallen). 2. Natural order as the barrier to virtue and wisdom. 3. Order through domination (sic. ‘improvement’, ‘completion’, ‘destruction’, etc.) of natural order. 4. Power over. 5. Order through hierarchical domination of moon17 (blood, latent, feminine, emotion, etc.) by sun (breath, active, masculine, mind, etc.). 6. Rooted in privation of being. 7. Deliverance through conquest and colonization (Warrior 1989) of the ‘other’ (sic. the natural, the feminine, the heart, etc.). 8. Fear as guiding principle of action. (Fisher and Barnesmoore 2018)”

[Note: “Where the above tables attempt to differentiate between the Artificial-Domineering Worldview that extends back through the history of hierarchical civilization and the Natural-Indigenous Worldview so as to illustrate that the essential worldview divide is not along the line of spiritual-materialistic but along the line of whether order is to be manufactured through hierarchical domination (the Colonial Modernist materialism that rose out of the hierarchical domination side of this essential worldview divide has surely increased the stratification between the natural and indigenous worldviews, but this was not the original divide)...” (Barnesmoore, p. 18-19).]

 Reference Cited:  Fisher, R. M., & Barnesmoore L. 2018, “Hierarchical security: Problem of fear of the Eternal”, In R. Michael Fisher, D. Subba & B. M. Kumar, Fear, Law and Criminology: Critical Issues in Applying the Philosophy of Fearism, Australia: Xlibris.

 Title: Nomadic Explorations V1: Essays in the Craft, by Luke R. Barnesmoore Founder/Co-Director, UBC Urban Studies Lab Founder/Executive Director, Center for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies PhD Student, UBC Department of Geography. This V1 is available at: 

https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/57779865/Nomadic_Explorations_V1_Essays_in_the_Craft.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DNomadic_Explorations_V1_Essays_in_the_Cr.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A%2F20191107%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20191107T215337Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=64a472259c0af3a39f69f9b70efc433ea2b1d7796b639ca879629c1167b9ffbd

International Journal of Fear Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1 (issue) is now open for submissions (due Feb. 1, 2020) --click here for IJFS third call .docx

IJFS Founder/Senior Ed., R. Michael Fisher, Ph.D.

To access past issues of IJFS go to: https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/110103

Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook corporation is currently under investigations and growing criticism, for breaking anti-trust violations, but the situation is far worse than that. I highly recommend the 3 part interview (or even part 1) https://www.democracynow.org/2019/10/23/roger_mcnamee_facebook_russia_cambridge_analytica 

The part 1 interview above is with Mr. Mcnamee, author of the new book "Zucked" and how Facebook is completely screwing the world and destroying the fabric of democracy. Most important in this interview by a very credible critic (Roger McNamee) is basically another kind of insider whistleblower story of sorts. Worth listening to. And, particularly because McNamee talks about how Facebook (like most social media platform giants today) are making business and algorithm systems that "prey" upon the most vulnerable in a population and primarily make most of their advertising dollars and viewer numbers based on (mis-)information, hate-speech and conspiracy theories-- that is, according to McNamee's words, Facebook preys off of the information that produces and reproduces "fight flight behaviors" that become "addictive" to many, especially those who carry smart phones around nearly all the time and everywhere they go. 

The danger of ongoing exacerbation of "polarization" of the toxic kind, not just healthy conflict in societies--there is no doubt social digital media ways of doing business are hurting us and undermining our ability to manage conflict and fear in good ways. See also a review of McNamee's book 

 “I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

            In the first chamber was Dragon-Man, clearing away rubbish from a cave’s mouth; within, a number of Dragons were hollowing the cave. (Blake 1911, p. 63)

Fisher’s reflection [see FM ning Photo entry on this FM page] begins with Klein’s reflections on the importance of bringing grief and rage into our public oratory and educational praxes. Though she frames the issue in very relevant gendered terms—in terms of the ‘calm’ women are too often expected to embody when speaking truth to power—my recent experiences in the Geographical academy illustrate that this is a much deeper problem. I am a white man, but I have been facing the same calls for ‘calm’ and ‘civil’ discourse (in a number of cases by self described ‘geographical feminists’) as I have worked to authentically weave my emotions (which surely include grief and rage) into my writing. Here is just such a review, which I received from a purportedly critical Geographical journal called ACME:

“It is impossible to take this paper seriously. The angry, emphatic tone and mischaracterizations mitigate against taking this paper seriously.” (Anonymous Reviewer)

Klein (2019, Oct. 14) very aptly encapsulates my feelings about these pseudo-critical colonial geographers: “I truly don't give a shit whether I'm taken seriously by people I don't respect.” (p. 1) What the reviewer viewed as ‘mischaracterizations’ were my critiques of the colonial ‘ontological violence’ (Blaser 2014) implicit in the reduction of reality to passing time and physical space that typifies contemporary Marxist/Historical Materialists and Post(most)Modern Feminist Geography. This is of course a very apt characterization that is shared by many decolonial scholars and activists, but the genocidal nature of dogmatically materialistic cosmologies/ontologies is starkly impossible to think (Foucault 1994) for scholars who are subjugated to C.M. Worldview(s)[1]… (Barnesmoore 2018) Anyway, the important part of the review in this context is the argument that an ‘angry, emphatic’ tone somehow negates the seriousness of academic writing. Following from the colonial ontology established by canonical cosmological/ontological texts like Genesis and Plato’s Republic, and clearly reflecting the religious ontology of heaven and hell problematized by Blake’s (1911) Marriage of Heaven and Hell, ‘serious knowledge’ is assumed to be dependent upon dominion of the heart by the mind (upon dominion of desire by reason, upon dominion of the moon by the sun, upon dominion of the masculine by the feminine. upon the dominion of dark by light, etc.). These pseudo-critical scholars may purport to have left behind the sickly religious past of dominant western society for ‘scientific secularism’, but their vision of ‘proper academic writing’, of proper educational praxis, of proper language, of proper ways of engaging in public discourse, etc. still very clearly embody the sickly ontology of dualism that has plagued the earth since we ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil and came to conflate natural dualities like light and dark (wherein both polarities are good) with the progenitor of sickly, hierarchical dualities, ‘good vs. evil’. So Klein is right—this vision of proper public discourse/ academic writing/ educational praxis is surely rooted in the patriarchal cosmologies/ontologies of the dominant stream of western civilization that conquered and colonized the planet for the fallen trickster who masquerades as Creator in the Old Testament and Rome’s perverse, patriarchal, domineering rendition of the good news brought to Earth by Jesus,[2] but this vision it is not just being weaponized against women. It is being weaponized against anyone who fails to fulfill the ontology of attainment (of virtue, of ‘serious knowledge’, etc.) through subjugation of desire/emotion to Reason, through subjugation of the lunar twin to the solar twin, (Four Arrows 2010; Four Arrows 2014) against anyone who fails to fulfill the teleology of the ascent to ‘Rational Man’ that has typified dominant streams of western narrations of human teleology. (Foucault 1972)

            Why is it so important to bring rage, grief and other such authentic emotions into our educational/ research praxes? Because emotion/desire/instinct, at least when expressed through a healthy, non-colonized heart, (Meng Zi 2016, 2A6) is essential for understanding the moral/ethical quality of our experiences. Reason is useful for interpreting the logical order of facts/ relationships between facts, but we need ‘arational’ (Bickel 2005) ways of knowing to interpret the moral/ethical quality of facts/ relationships between facts.

“…My senses discover’d the infinite in everything, and as I was then perswaded, & remain confirm’d, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for the consequences but wrote.” (Blake 1911, p. 60)

We also need to bring rage and grief into our educational praxes because those emotions are a reality in the marginalized communities we should be using our privilege to work for. Many marginalized people don't have the privilege to have the emotionless, ‘civil’ discussions that are assumed as proper within C.M. Worldview(s), as many marginalized communities don't have the privilege of living a ‘nonviolent’ life… The emotionally sterilized environment and subsequent fear of emotion in the dominant spaces of the academic world are essential factors in the failure of academic scholarship to honesty and authentically reflect the world we are trying to understand. Even in more critical wings of the academy where many call themselves post-positivist we still too often uphold the positivist ethic in our visions of proper academic writing, proper pedagogy, proper discourse, etc.

Why do I write? Who do you write for?

I’ve been this way since I was small.

When people were whispering but wouldn't say it aloud, id scream to the heavens what was already well known to the crowd.

That’s just the way I am, no other way have I’ve been—the trick begets transformation by disturbing the stifling tranquility of the pattern that’s in place.

The trick can take many forms, but in the context of the many-vectored crisis we are now facing—in the context of our problems being so rooted in the unnatural sleep that takes hold when our minds conquer and colonize our hearts—in the context of so little time before we have gone too far—in the context of the ongoing genocide of the earth, from the stones to the rivers to the oceans to the mountains to the plants to the animals and to all that which is beyond our comprehension—in the context of ‘both sides’ of the MegaMachine’s left-right duality adhering to the same sickly ontological assumptions concerning evils of human nature and the subsequent need for hierarchical domination (e.g. punishment and fear of punishment, conquest and colonization of ‘the other’, ‘man’s dominion over earth’, etc.) to beget virtue that got us into this problem—in the context of no one actually challenging the western legal system and its underlying, Roman Christian ontology of virtue/justice through punishment and fear of punishment—in the context of the absurd choice between hierarchical spirituality and hierarchical materialism, which simply reflects the disconnection from spirit begotten by our history of hierarchical spiritual traditions—in these contexts, the trick has to evoke emotion.

It has to awaken,

and that’s a different process than going to sleep.

So why do I write?

Because there’s war in the air.

It has been there for millennia as the MegaMachine’s spread its hierarchical web across the Earth.

There has long been a war surrounding earth consciousness of which we are but a single manifestation.

It is much bigger than us,

But for us it has been a war over worldview(s), over the basic assumptions about the nature of reality at structure our potentials for answering all other questions. The question of cosmology—of the origin of the first relationship and the pattern set forth therein. The question that structures our potential for answering all other questions.

It has been a war for the story that will narrate our existence, for it is our stories that carry our worldview(s). It's the basic structure of the relationships that are embodied by the characters in the story—by the ‘chosen people’ or ‘chosen kings’ or ‘God’ or whatever that plays the role of the ‘good guy’ who conquers the ‘evil other’ in the sickly stories.

In truth we are both one and many and evil has no basis in the eternal—there is no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides of the duality—only two good sides, the light and the dark, which in truth are one before they can be seen as two.

A student said that, in his 5^th year of university, he had never been asked to answer the question ‘what is real?’

We as educators have failed that student.

 How can such a fundamental question, a question that surely structures our potential for relationships (we treat plants quite differently when we know they are spirited), have never been posed to this student?

So many statements about ‘myth vs. reality’ being made—so many jokes at the notion of people ‘believing’ in ‘ghosts’—so many discursive wounds carved silently into the minds of our students—but never have they been asked to look at the part of themselves that has been wounded by these discursive thrusts. The archons are too busy ‘inoculating the students with facts’…

There’s war in the air, a species has likely gone extinct while I’ve been writing, a new language may have died, a new oil well might have begun the process of cultural genocide—yet again, so often again that it can not be seen as ‘again’—its always in process.

I am not here to pander to hierarchical spiritualists, and I am not here to pander to people who have come to embody the separation from reality beyond passing time and physical space that arises from hierarchical dominion. I am by no means here to pander to anyone who accepts the legitimacy of western legal systems and their order of virtue/justice through punishment and fear of punishment. I am here in the hope that I can inspire but a drop of hope in the hearts of those who have not yet succumbed, those who live on in this world through what Four Arrows describes as the courage of hopelessness—who can be hopeful about the future even while being hopeless about the system as it presently exists and the world by its relationship with the hierarchical ontology of the system. Think of me as the Lorax, for I too speak for the trees. One of the most special aunties I have ever known runs a ‘voice for the voiceless camp’ up in the mountains here on the west side of Turtle Island. She too speaks for the trees. Our medicine is different, but I do my best to emulate what I have learned from the aunties and grandmothers who still remember what it means to be human—they are fierce, and they will eat you, for you are endangering their cubs. I do my best to emulate what I sensed from the grandmother bear who lives in the land of the tallest mountains where the first rain falls and flows down through the rivers to the sea. I’m not where you’re from, not many times over. I’m not from anywhere, and I have wandered many paths—many that are not talked about, many that are hidden from view, many that have been forgotten. The dragons are here, and the queens of owls are rising—the medicine’s almost ready, it can already be found if you know where to look, its been stored away for many an age by many a monk on a mountain, its passed all but unscathed through the fallen age and we’re ready for its revival, we still can be free if we try, but first we must die from the worldview(s) that riseth from the will-to-dominion in of the Land. Of the body. Of the soil. We must overcome the fear to die, to let go of the attachment to our present conception of self—of a sick ego—which quivers when its existence is challenged. But in nature we see, from flower to seed, that death is only the precursor to rebirth. When our sense of self dies a new sense can be born. Still I fear those moments of death sometimes—they recall moments when the fear arose from the potential for death of my body rather than my sense of self, moments where it would not have been well to embrace the form of death that confronted me—think not that I am foolish enough to believe that the above does not pertain to me. We are our relationships. I exist in relationship to the MegaMachine and the many sicknesses it has begotten in our world and beyond. I cannot but be but sickened by that relationship, as we all are. If I throw stones at a glass house then it is surely my own—the folly I was once foolish enough to accept as truth. I know that all humans are by their nature good. I know that most people retain much of that connection no matter how deeply their life has been influenced by the MegaMachine. My anger is not at individuals—my anger is at the webs of sickly ontology in which they are enmeshed. When individuals embody those webs in a domineering way towards me they draw my ire, but even then I would sacrifice my life in a heartbeat if it were to prevent these individuals from facing the horrendous cruelty of the MegaMachine’s torture chambers. We are one. I am angry at the sickness that has engulfed this planet. I am angry at whatever beings may have played a conscious, intentional role in fomenting that sickness for the sake of domination. I am angry at people who wield the hierarchical power of the MegaMachine at me, but it is precisely the part of them that is not them—that is the machine—which makes me mad. Manifestations a tricky place for communication, and it can be hard to convey two points at once when the points evoke opposing sensations, so let me state it clearly, on its own, at the end as it should have been in the beginning—however much I may detest the machine and people who come to embody its sickly ontology, I love you.

The Writing Embodies the Sickness

The writing embodies the sickness. The anger. The sharpness. The writing should embody the state of consciousness, and the state of earth consciousness is sick. We should not try to hide our imperfections behind a veil of roman civility… behind the crypt constructed by dominion of the heart by the mind… behind the veneer of scientific ‘objectivity’, or whatever that has mutated into… behind the veneer of the MegaMachine’s detached rationalist mentality… We should speak with our heart in the public square of the global digital commons so that the storm can fulfill its role in the natural order. The storm blows through, a bit of destruction ensues, and a place is made for the growth of something new. And then we get on with our life. A wise aunty once told me that courage comes in speaking your story as truthfully as possible. I think another facet of courage in this world comes in not telling stories that disrupt the pattern in places where the pattern shouldn’t be disturbed, but few such sacred places remain in this world. Anyway, we should be courageous and tell our story to the best of our abilities. We should listen when others do the same. We should reflect on what others have said. And then we should go on telling our story, which always changes through reflection, as truthfully as we can.

            If we are to tell our story as truthfully as we can in this world, then we must tell our story in a manner that reflects our state of being. Don't wait until your emotions have ‘calmed down’ to write. Bring emotion into contact with mind through the creative act and write down what you are thinking. Publish that. Let the text then evolve over time, through reflection. That’s an authentic writing practice—it embodies the actual process of transformation occurring in the subject, the raw and unadulterated emotions and thoughts of the experience. The actual story. Some will leave. Others will be drawn to such an expression of truth, even if they don't agree. But in any case a new sense of liberty will be actualized within. Unencumbered by the fear of punishment that the MegaMachine has sought to instill within us since the day we were born, we can return to something of the childlike voice that use to ring from our mouth when we were not yet so tainted by this world. When emotion and mind were not severed and we said whatever was on our minds. There will of course remain contexts where things can’t be written about, but we can always find an abstracted way to express the underlying emotions and insights.

As for me, everyday I walk through a landscape that glorifies the MegaMachine’s genocidal relationship with the earth’s one and many being(s), too often under the veneer of ‘environmental sustainability’, which is too often to say sustainable dominion of the earth—in a landscape where the banality of evil has such a tight grip that people have become unaware of what the landscape’s many physical, mental, emotional and spiritual features connote—and as I walk through this landscape at times I cannot help but become angry. Indeed, it’s precisely in the times when that dogged fury becomes woven into the streams of my mind and sings forth through my voice that the artistic magic starts flowing. That’s not the only emotion that can be woven with mind to beget the sacred form of speech that emerges from wedding the heart with the mind, but in the contexts of life in relationship to the MegaMachine its an all to prevalent emotion. How can I do justice to the voice of a landscape that is filled with anger if the voice that I use to speak through my writing is not itself angry? I think this is a big part of why the social sciences have, when taken as a whole, so drastically failed to deliver socially just outcomes for humanity. From the days of its positivist origins social ‘science’ has been hampered by its inability to account for the emotional and spiritual dimensions of human existence—the parts that cant be measured or be used to measure, the ‘bad’ side of the sickly hierarchical duality… Though positivism is said to have been vanquished by the ‘critical turn’, the positivist ethos is still alive and well in academic culture and the way that we communicate in academic writing. We remain in a disenchanted world. (Herman 2008) Emotion is still not allowed to breach the sacred temple of reason, be it in writing or in our classes. Emotion has become so foreign that students complain about the few teachers who retain the capacity to feel and cry about the sad topics they are lecturing about. We can’t say that we haven’t been warned. Blake warned us in the 1790s—he told us about the dangers of becoming trapped in the straight lines of modernist improvement and forgetting the sacredness of the crooked paths of natural genius. (Blake 1911) People from across the spectrum of human existence have been telling us for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years. We can’t say that we haven’t been warned of what happens when the straight lines of the mind are not balanced by the crooked paths of the heart’s natural genius. The consequences are right in front of us. We can’t say that we haven’t been warned.

Anyway—the writing should embody the present state of being, and in the present state of the world—with that orange pedophile piece of shit dancing around in a shit filled diaper through the rose garden screaming ‘I am the King of Israel, shoot the Muslims with bullets covered in pigs blood’—emotions like anger are never too far off, and so the writing comes to embody them. I encourage everyone to consider writing like this. Feathers may be ruffled, but new feathers grow each year and molting season inevitably comes. Leaves will blow on an autumn day, but new ones always grow back in the spring. If we didn't hide our emotion so much it wouldn’t ruffle so many feathers when someone dares to show them. I heard someone say that most people just feel embarrassed when they react in an overly emotional way—as though that is an acceptable outcome—as though people being lead to be embarrassed because emotion lead them to honestly express themselves without fear of punishment is a good thing… Emotion begetting the courage to tell one’s story truthfully is a good thing. If we cant tell our stories to each other truthfully then we cannot get angry about and resolve the aspects of our stories that are in tension. If we cannot do that, then we cannot coexist. Censorship does not facilitate harmonious coexistence, for if people cannot honestly express themselves in the public square then the storm can never come, and if the storm never comes no space is made for new growth and stagnation sets in. When we are enthralled to sickly worldview(s) stagnation implies death. If we don't change this earth will become, if not uninhabitable, all but bereft of the incomprehensibly diverse web of beauty that once graced this earth. We will, if we don't go extinct, become wholly assimilated to the MegaMachine—we will truly loose our ability to feel, to love, to be virtuous. I can assure you that death is preferable to life in a cage, that people who argue the death penalty is some horrendously heinous offence and instead promote life in an American prison cell are, at best, delusional. I keep rambling along side trails—that's the way of nomadic wandering. The things that I find as I write down these side paths often end up seeming more important than the path I had originally intended to take. But, to return to where we started, lets return to more enchanted writing and throw of the shackles of positivist social science—not just theoretically—but in a grounded sense through way that we write and teach. We need to stop hiding our emotions, to strive towards the courage of telling our story as honestly as possible. Only then can we do justice to the topics we are writing about. Only then can we embody the natural order. Only then can we remember how to be virtuous.

Returning to my reflections on Fisher’s reflections on Klein’s reflections, Fisher argues “Klein has led often the populist ‘feelings’ (perception) of an absolute ‘emergency time’ (seemingly a neurotic relationship to linear time) frame to overall existence.” The all too colonial, reductively linear vision of time that has been pushed upon the world through subjugation to the MegaMachine (Mumford 1967; Mumford 1970) and its C.M. Worldview(s) is thus posited as the cause of this vision of the present moment in history as ‘emergency time’. No doubt the illusions of linear time, of death from the world of linear time as an end to existence and the fear of ceasing to be that rises therein play a role in leading from a vision of the present as ‘emergency time’ into pathology, but I happen to share Klein’s vision of the contemporary moment as ‘emergency time’ and think we can recognize the emergency and necessity of acting in a decisive manner that sheds the emotionally sterile visions of proper discourse, writing, educational praxis, etc. without falling into pathology.

In marginalized communities around the world it is and has long been emergency time. Children are starving to death, are being trafficked by western billionaires to sate their perverse, domineering, pedophilic desires, are being shot on a daily basis, are shooting people on a daily basis. Our species may be on the edge of extinction, but for the untold number of species that have already gone extinct we have long been living in emergency time. My point is simply that there is a great danger in denying the reality of the present moment as ‘emergency time’. I often hear arguments about how the sickly perversities of the MegaMachine’s colonization of the Earth are part of a natural step in earth’s evolutionary journey, and I worry that viewing the present as anything but an emergency is only possible when we view the history of the MegaMachine as evolutionary. Take, as a counter vision, the words of Marcus Waters:

“As a First Nation Aboriginal Australian I consider agriculture not the beginning of civilization but instead the beginning of the end of civilization...” (Waters 2017)

If we view the history of western colonialism and its antecedents like Roman Christianity’s conquest and colonization of Europe as a natural part of history, then it becomes possible to see the present moment as something less than emergency time, but if we view this history as the progression of a devolutionary sickness (hierarchical consciousness) and we view this moment as the last chance (in this iteration of the emergence of self-aware Earth consciousness [Reclus 1905; Cajete 2000]) I think it becomes hard to view the present moments as anything other than emergency time. It is only when we deny that we are in emergency time that stale old liberal-democratic arguments about gradual generational change through ‘civil’ discourse (i.e. discourse in which the heart has been subjugated to Reason) can persist.

Real is not the Absence of Change[3] 

“…Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.” (Foucault 1972, p. 17)  

We can always die and be reborn.
Don't let anyone convince you that you’re not free.

The way that we look is one thing,

but the paths that we’ve walked are what make us sing.
Its not that there are things we can’t teach about,
but that we must teach about things from the perspective of our relationships therein.
We relate to these lands.
We can always teach about that relationship.
We have a responsibility to do so.

The flesh need not die for us to be reborn.
We do it everyday.
We are our relationships.
We can assign readings that arise from this landscape.

We can talk about how our new relationships inflect the way that we read the things we have been reading for years.
We can talk about how our new relationships have transformed the way that we think about the things we have written. We can honestly relate to readings, new and old—authentically, the good the bad and the ugly.

Generational change isn’t linear. It’s not unidirectional. The younger generation may bring new insights, but these insights are for not if the older generation is too stagnant to reflect the change in relational ontology that arises from these new relationships. It is reflection of the insights of younger generations by the older generations that gives force to the generational change.

We need you.
Not dead and gone, but open to the death and rebirth that occurs every day through formation of new relationships.
We are our relationships.

We do not have a discrete intrinsic ontology, let alone one derived from our physical identity. We are our relationships. Every time we form a new one our subjectivity dies and is reborn. We need you. Not dead and gone. We need you here. Reflecting the new state of being that arises from your relationship to the generational change. Without you the generational change lacks force. The web derives its integrity from all the points of relationship between the different strands. Without you the web would collapse.

We need you.
We love you.
And we sure don't want you dead and gone.

We are one, nə́c̓aʔmat ct.

Returning to my wandering path through this house of mirrors, the reality of ‘emergency time’ in our present moments of linear time does not have to be rendered as pathological by reduction of reality to passing time and physical space. We can instead balance the ‘emergency time’ that rises from viewing the present situation through the lens of linear time with the ‘nonemergency time’ that rises from viewing the present (or indeed any) situation in terms of the Eternal and Cyclical time. When we understand time as a relationship between the Eternal, the Cyclical and the Linear we remember that this is not our last chance, and that even if we fail we will have nothing-infinite ‘other chances’ along the many timelines of the 5^th dimension (where all the moments of 4^th dimensional time exist as a single moment [Nicole 1998]). We can balance the realities of the emergency we face in linear time, the emergency of the potential for/ fear of ceasing to be, with the realities of cyclical time and eternity (wherein there is in some sense no potential for or thus fear of ceasing to be). We can transition from fear to fearlessness and thus transcend pathological visions of emergency time.

[1] Artificial-Domineering Worldview(s) (A.D. Worldview[s]) assume that the order of (human) nature is ‘evil’ and that virtue/justice are thus dependent upon punishment and fear of punishment. One of the central streams of ontological continuity that draw A.D. Worldview(s) into coherence is the hierarchical ontology of dualism that assumes attainment (of virtue, of ‘serious knowledge’, etc. depends upon domination of the heart (desire/emotion) by the mind (Reason). C.M. Worldview(s) synthesize the hierarchical, domineering dogmas of A.D. Worldview(s) with reduction of reality to passing time and physical space.

[2] Jesus argued that we could have virtue/justice through love rather than punishment and fear of punishment. Jesus handed on the tradition to a woman, Mary Magdalene, in an attempt to destroy the patriarchy through wedding the polarities of heaven and hell… Peter, a patriarchal butthole, was jealous that a woman had been the confidant with whom Jesus shared his deepest mysteries, and the Church of Peter very clearly followed in Peter’s patriarchal footsteps in reducing Mary to a prostitute and defining love in terms of punishment/ fear of punishment so as to negate the ministry of Christ.

[3] Chronixx.

Like it or not, in the last few months especially, Extinction Rebellion movement on climate crisis (e.g., CO2 levels) is at the forefront and dominating media-attention re: environmentalism. One can debate the value of this, e.g., as Charles  Eisenstein and others have (see previous blog). Most important to me is the way Extinction Rebellion leaders (planners) have staged this movement upon the uses of fear, terror, panic, and what is an "emergency" beyond which they are willing to accept without their dramatic actions on the streets. We as citizens and leaders of all stripes need to pay serious heed to what their fearological strategies are, because they are decidedly (have already decided) how best to define, make meaning of, and create fear and anxiety amongst the people of the globe, but especially in the UK where the movement started and is strongest. 

Fearologics is a fearanalytical term I coined recently to assess the way anyone, or any group, cohesively and systematically induces a particular relationship to fear without providing alternative constructions but rather focuses on only one way (which, implicitly, in their view, is the right way--the one and only way)--and they put all their efforts into this dominating dicourse formation on fear and how to handle (manage it). I would question such a fearological domination (ideology) by anyone and any group and stand up to resist such domination, as I trust more and more people will do so. 

Note the fearological part of my analysis of environmentalism, as one example (including Extinction Rebellion as a most recent formation), is what is under the covers of the overt and dramatic actions and rhetoric of "activism" (of green politics). It is what we curriculum theorists call "hidden curriculum" (e.g., ideology behind the surfaces of what is being communicated and taught  of what looks benign and 'good'). I won't go into the critical theories behind the uses of hidden curriculum and the propaganda that goes with it that undermines truly educative praxis. Unfortunately, so far, Extinction Rebellion leaders have gone on full blast with their new strategy and fearologics that they have some how decided is the best and only way to manage fear and anxiety re: climate change/crisis. Environmentalists, like just about any activism I have studied for three decades off and on does the same thing, and do not disclose a rationale or make overt their agenda for using fear and promoting fear management--and of which I strongly am against such one sidedness in its uses as a process to bring about change. For many critics, "fearmongering" is not acceptable to the degree which it is being indulged in by all kinds of causes, Left or Right or Center or within activism in general-- but not only activists do this, most every form of institution and leadership does this without rationale of any critical depth and reflection. I thus assert there is more hidden curriculum (propaganda) than there is educative practices and due attention to the negative impacts on learning, on freedom of thought, and on the right of the people to have "freedom from fear" (as the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights recommends to all the world). 

One will have to take time to organize the critique in my mind regarding the fearanalysis of movements like Extinction Rebellion, but already there is one good example in thier promo (propoganda) videos they produce coming out of London (I'm presuming). I have watched two of these promotional videos where they are usually "apologizing" to the people that they have to be so disruptive in their so-called "non-violence" direct action because they realize it pisses a lot of people off like the average citizens trying to go about their lives. Again, my fearological analysis is not about that direct action, maybe that is definitely needed for a lot of good reasons, my great concern is the hidden curriculum they use to shore up and glue-together their motivational psychological approach to fear management/education. The one example I'll use here comes through to show Extinction Rebellion's primary fearologic (and its great weakness as good fear education): 

See two images stills I took from these promo videos of Extinction Rebellion

So, the pattern of communication tactic here in these two videos has one section that includes a "man" identified rather obvious by physical image and voice. These two men speak a scripted text, acting as if it is their authentic voice, but obviously it is scripted and play acted. Sure, each individual may feel scared but we don't really know when I see the same script each is repeating and performing and the fact they have chosen "males" to act this out is a part of their fearlogics that it is okay men can share they are afraid. Fine. My critique mostly then would come, as part of a fearanalysis, that they offer nothing about "fearlessness" -- as in when fear appears so then does fearlessness or some higher virtue as Four Arrows teaches and so on. No. The fear management system here is flatland. It just says, men are scared (and people are scared)--and, because of this we are "just like you" -- which is a big generalizing jump of communication and imposition because it doesn't let us each make up our mind and feel our feelings, and this imagery and text imposes upon us... and tries to get us to buy into their "I'm scared" or "We're scared" collectivism. This is the danger of this monocultural ideological messaging very typical of propaganda in general. It then leaves the justification for virtually any thing open as action and as the way to manage the fear-- that is, by joining Extinction Rebellion, joining direct action, strikes and disruption of society the way they do it and so on. Again, I'm not critiquing the particular events of strategy I am critiquing the hidden curriculum of how "best" (implicitly) to manage fear and anxiety and terror and panic-- by following their way.

Why don't these men after they say in these videos they are "scared" that they are then moving towards fearlessness... using some approach that is based on real theory about fear and fearlessness, or fearism philosophy, etc.? Truly they [e.g., Extinction Rebellion leaders, makers of these promo videos) have not done their homework on fear and its management. That's not their interest. They want to use fear to justify their behaviors, values, etc. That's the big error of their hidden curriculum, it is a mis-information on one of the most potent forces in the human universe--fear. 

So fearologics of Extinction Rebellion can begin to be critically analyzed here... from this kind of scripted imagery, text, and repetition of theme and approach. Unfortunately, it leaves nothing more for viewers, it drops us off... and I really challenge that that is really useful when the crisis situation is going the way it is. We have to be much more intelligent  (e.g., re: Defense Intelligence) in truly helping people manage (and transform) emotions of this powerful kind... truly, these movements have not thought deeply enough about this 'soft' side of the problem of eco-anxiety or whatever you want to label it. Again, I and others are writing more and more but surely these bits like this blog, are far behind and more research and critiques need to be published. I offer only the barest bit of a fearological analysis here. More to come. Let's talk about it. 

Addenda:

Thanks to my daughter for a new link: I just heard a great talk (interview) with Ronan Harrington of Extinction Rebellion as one of its UK political strategists who supports the movement for sure but also raises questions (and makes videos) re: (in his words) "shadows of the Left that make up Extinction Rebellion" [a point I have long made since I first watched how ER had a political agenda below its enviromental agenda of which moves into rigid ideologies of polarization, even though many in ER leadership talk of having "nonviolent" and non-polarizing (r)evolution]-- go to http://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcast

 ALSO a really good critique of the "hidden curriculum" (i.e., politics) denied by the XR folks (leaders) is brought out in a critique by Erica X. Eisen (2019) in an article in Current Affairs. We have to look closely at the politics behind the apolitics (slogandia) of XR, e.g., their "Beyond Politics" ideation and campaign. Eisen makes several good challenges, while still positively in support of XR. Go to: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/extinction-rebellion-has-a-politics-problem

ALSO just recently climate scientists themselves have come out and critiqued Rupert Read (Extinction Rebellion) leader who is scaring kids unnecessarily and worse, he's doing so with unjustifiable (biased) interpretations of he climate science data https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eob7P_o-6OE

ALSO, I just made a video on "Fearlessness Love" which adds to my critique of Extinction Rebellion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q7gzA1t_hU

Yes, things are getting 'messy' around the Extinction Rebellion movement (tactics, and philosophy) etc. really quickly, and I picked up on these potential problems way back several months ago as red flags were existent in my study of what they were saying and doing. Which is not to castigate or demean what they are doing. 

Charles Eisenstein - on ECO-rhetoric (ideology) and fear [1]

"I am afraid that, in adopting climate as their keystone narrative, environmentalists have made a bargain with the Devil.... The premises of the [environmental] conversation shifted away from love of nature and toward fear of our survival [fear of Nature]." - C. Eisenstein (2018, p. 131) [2]

When we confront the environmental and ecological issues of the day, we are also confronted with an overwhelming (if not distracting) rhetoric (ideology) of the dominant climate crisis narrative. I and others are challenging the implications of this narrative, even though we don't deny it is important. The question we have is how important is it? So, I'll introduce you to one of the critics, an environmentalist himself--and specifically I suggest his recent video "Am I a Climate Alarmist or a Climate Denier?" which lays out a lot of important issues, and ends in the video with a really good challenge to "fear" vs. "love" as the motivational source which will be most effective to bring to our grand environmental problems in the next decades. Unfortunately, he says nothing about fearlessness and/or fearism etc. in offering solutions. Anyways, I commented (see below) on his Youtube video channel the following: 

ALSO, see my series of two videos on The Greta Effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kHozXgPS7Y which look at similar dilemmas that Eisenstein is pointing to, albeit, he doesn't name names like I do. And see alternative views of young Swede's (other than Greta Thunberg, for e.g.) who are sick n' tired of the "prophet of panic" and "climate cults" from Leftists and their continued pc binary thinking  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZCCXZz5Esw

Equally, a great short talk on becoming a critical level-headed "climate thinker" (not propagandist) see Alex Epstein's work: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgxwDrvCQvDhZMvSdxBQlDFfKhsnM?projector=1

I like what wise elder and death-grief expert Stephen Jenkinson said recently: 

"There are people walking up my path, one-third my age. Their hands are full," spiritual activist and author Stephen Jenkinson told The Vancouver Observer a recent fundraiser for Wakan Tanka, a film about environmental elders engaging youth on climate change. "One hand is full of a blistering hatred of anybody my age—the other is full of despair, something I’ve come to call principled anxiety...They say to me, ‘have you got anything?’"

ALSO, on the back cover of Eisenstein's new book and critique see Climate: A New Story (2018):

"Flipping the script on climate change, Eisenstein makes a case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction. With research and insight, Charles Eisenstein details how the quantification [statistic obsession] of the natural world leads to a lack of [empathetic] integration and [reinforces] our 'fight' [and 'flight'] [fear-based] mentality." 

This latter point of exacerbating a battle of who's facts are right, re: climate change activists vs. the deniers, is fear-based in structuration, which is something I also have seen for many decades when it comes to making cases to 'save the environment' (or the world). The passions of fight-flight, our primal brain reflexes on survival get triggered and grow and out race the higher cognitive functions of which are needed to look at the situation and problems we have to face more collaboratively. Digitial media and social networks in the past decade have exacerbated fight-flight divisiveness on top of the quantification battles and in the end the subtleties of really listening and connecting to our hearts, souls, and our holistic nature of perception are diminished. David Abrams, cultural ecologist, geophilosopher, and author of Becoming Animal and The Spell of the Sensuous endorses Eisenstein's critique calling Eisenstein's latest book "a blast of sanity!... he writes from within an uncannily woke worldview... that discerns and feels into the complex entanglement of our lives.... This book is visionary and prophetic...". 

I think with Eisenstein's work here we have the possibility of moving from fear to fearlessness in the entire eco-problematique. I still am in the early stages of analyzing Eisenstein's work and especially from a fearological lens. So the "New Story" he speaks to is basically, as his book (back cover) says: 

"This refocusing away from impending catastrophe [as primary fear-based motivator to care for Nature] and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections [love] and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth. Freeing ourselves from a war mentality and seeing the bigger picture...".

The book (according to Brock Doman, Water Institute Director) is "A clarion call to reconnect through love with our living earth... to collectively move past divisive reductionism [fear-based patterning], betwixt false Prophets of doom and false prophets of denial, towards a revitalization of reverential relations." 

 Note

2. This shift is super important to recognize and analyze (see Note 1 also)--it is part of an emergency paradigm regarding time and risk--and the fear of failure at an unprecedented scale--thus, it is a way to motivate people and institutions to change by 'force' of fear rather than love--which is the basic foundational strategy of what is called "negative" politics/environmentalism relative and in contrast to "positive" politics/environmentalism. 

Fearlessness is complex enough. Add "fearlessnessnizing" and you get an even more intricate complication. I believe this is absolutely necessary to work our way in and through the nightmarish days we live, and the worse to come as a global reality of crises and tragedies of immense proportions will rain down. We are already there... what we do about it all is another thing and fearlessness and fearlessnessizing everything is really important, so I say and... so says the fearlessness theorizing that has come to me in the decades and most recently in the last two years or less. I introduce you to the currrent writing I have done on fearlessnessizing as a resource.

"Fearlessnessizing" - was budding, preconsciously and intuitively as I wrote the book on Four Arrows' life and work [1], and especially by the end of that book I began writing on it indirectly as Four Arrows and I were invited into another project of co-writing a chapter [2] for the SAGE International Handbook of Critical Pedagogy. I had been spending a lot of time thinking and reading about "Indigenizing" (especially via Four Arrows' perspective on this revitalizing healing transformative concept) but did not include "Fearlessnessizing" in the book on him but did bring it in somewhat alongside Indigenizing to align both with Four Arrows' thought and the burgeoning field (perspective) of Indigenous revitalization across the globe.

What would it mean to (re-)Indigenize modern societies? And, for me, that came to be: What would it mean to (re-)Fearlessnessize modern societies? It was an analogy I found very useful but have not at all developed in detail yet. 

"Fearlessnessizing" however, has continued to stay a live with me since 2017 early intuitions and then with the writing of articles with Four Arrows in 2018 forward. In the recent issue (Vol. 1(2)) of the International Journal of Fear Studies, I gave it a simple definition and officially recorded it as part of a "New Fear Vocabulary" [Fisher et al., 2019, p. 13] : 

fearlessnessizing - [coined by RMF] the process of deconstructing fear-based realities and structures and replacing them with fearlessness-based ones; analogous to indigenizing [3]

See also some writing on this concept in a recent technical paper on "fearlessness psychology" I am developing (Fisher, 2019) [4]

So, that definition, preliminary as it is, has a long history that goes back to the prophetic visionary experience I had with Catherine in the birthing of the In Search of Fearlessness (ISOF) Project (1989), a project (spiritual, philosophical and political) that was meant to counter the dominating hegemony of the Fear Project [5]. In a sense, that very counter-hegemonic 'turn' I was introducing formally to the planetary conciousness was itself a fearlessnessizing of everything. It's hard to even imagine that. The fear-based paradigm was to become eventually a fearlessness paradigm [6] and so on. I was on this grand project to re-make and re-label the world--so to speak. I know that sounds all rather grandiose. And, so is Indigenizing the world. 

Besides the ISOF Project and the Indigenizing project, there was a prior influence in my educational (re-)evolution tracing back to the Critical Tradition coming out of (mainly) Europe with the Critical Theory [Frankfurt] School and with many parallels the Liberation Theology (South American) resistance movements, of which the latter produce a very powerful line of Critical Pedagogy of which Paulo Freire made popular around the world and still ongoing. The key term I related to in Freire's writings was conscientization as a form of describing liberation process/work and its deconstruction and reconstruction of oppression. So, in that sense, I was attracted to how liberation (conscientization) was a type of fearlessnessizing as well, even though I did not call it that in the late 1970s when I studied that tradition in my education degree. Conscientizing, indigenizing, Fearlessnessizing all made a lot of sense to me. In 2017 I wrote a short piece on the FM ning [7] mentioning my interest to re-vise Freirean conscientization to Jacobsian conscientization (a la Four Arrows)--of which this was elaborated in the Fisher & Four Arrows, in press) article about to appear in the SAGE critical pedagogy handbook mentioned above. 

Notes 

1. Fisher, R. M. (2018). Fearless engagement of Four Arrows: The true story of an Indigenous-based social transformer. NY: Peter Lang.

2. Fisher, R. M., and Four Arrows (Jacobs, D. T.) (in press). Indigenizing conscientization and critical pedagogy: Nature, Spirit and Fearlessness as foundational concepts. In S. Steinberg & B. Down (Eds.), Sage Handbook of Critical Pedagogies (Vol.1) (pp.   ). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

3. Fisher, R. M. et al. (2019). New Fear vocabulary. International Journal of Fear Studies, 1(2), 10-14.

4. Fisher, R. M. (2019). Fearlessness psychology: An introduction. Technical Paper No. 79. Calgary, AB: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.

5. See for e.g., Fisher, R. M. (2018). The Fearlessness Movement: Meta-context exposed! Technical Paper No. 72. Calgary, AB: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.

6. See for e.g., Fisher, R. M. (2013). Fearlessness paradigm meets Bracha Ettinger's matrixial theory. Technical Paper No. 46. Carbondale, IL: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute; Fisher, R.M. (2006). Integral fearlessness paradigm. Technical Paper No. 20. Vancouver, BC: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute; Fisher, R.M. (1995). An introduction to an epistemology of 'fear'; A fearlessness paradigm. Technical Paper No. 2. Calgary, AB: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute. 

7. See my (2017) photo https://fearlessnessmovement.ning.com/photos/jacobsian-conscientization; and, also see my (2015) 'mapping' (photo) of critical pedagogies and locating Jacobsian critical pedagogy and conscientization as an Indigenous addition to the traditions of critical pedagogies https://fearlessnessmovement.ning.com/photos/crit-pedag-fear-fig-1001

Check out the latest issue of IJFS 

The following 1 hr interview podcast hosted by Sotiris Makrygiannis takes listeners through a philosophical tour of R. Michael Fisher's work on fear, fearism, fearlessness. 

https://soundcloud.com/sotiris-makrygiannis/the-marshal-michael-fisher

Abstract: A casual discussion around the philosophy and epistemology of Fearism. Together with M. Fisher we covered his multiple books, ways to promote books and also a philosophical branch that is inspired by the Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance. Hope you enjoy a friendly chat turned into a podcast.  - S.M.

I think one of the better teaching videos, with giving my background on how I make meaning of politics distinct from the political sphere is "The Great Citizen: Future Process Politics & Learning" from several months ago. I talk about my reasons for studying 'stars' like Michael Moore, Jordan Peterson, Marianne Williamson as a few popular culture examples. This seems to be my new research and writing--with my latest book manuscript currently under review as a study of the 2020 Democratic hopeful Marianne Williamson--a 'great citizen' in my mind and a teacher who can guide many to becoming such. And, yes, I am critical too. 

Climate crisis as part of an amoral economic system is part of Marianne Williamson's presidential campaign to tell the American people the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The question is, will the people be able to handle the truth? Fear can play it's own game of denial and forget, suppression and repression, and unfortunately I predict more and more people will carry on as 'business as usual.' Meanwhile, things will only get worse--and, deep below the surface of suppression and repression--eventually, more and more people will be overcome by the unconscious and collective fear/terror that's inevitable. Williamson teaches Love over Fear, Love as the solution to Fear-- and, so, you'd think perhaps a lot more people would 'rise up' and join her Revolution to transform America and the future. She will not be able to do it alone. 

See my series of two videos on Williamson ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHDlATRUYLM

This book published by Bloomsbury Continuum (2018), is by Dr. Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology in the UK. He is one of the leading thinkers and writers on the "culture of fear" phenomenon and I highly recommend this book (and his many others). It raises very important questions as to what kind of society we want to live in and how we can change the direction we are currently proceeding. Here's a small excerpt from the first few pages of the book: 

------------

I first contacted Frank Furedi by correspondence in 1997 after his first book on this topic and he was gracious to send me some scanned pages of the book so I could study it and it had a strong influence on how I think about fear overall. He's recently taken up my offer to dialogue with him on fear later this year for a possible article we'll co-write for the International Journal of Fear Studies (Issue 3, in early 2020). 

Ira Pastor, ideaXme longevity and aging Ambassador and founder of Bioquark, interviews Ósìnàkáchì Ákùmà Kálù, the founder and Chairman of the Transdisciplinary Agora for Future Discussions.

Ira Pastor Comments:

Today we are going to take a little journey across the Atlantic Ocean from where I am located here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, to the continent of Africa.

Africa is the world's second largest and second most-populous continent, with 54 countries, covering around 12 million square miles with 1.2 billion people.

Africa has a little over a $2 trillion Nominal GDP and its export portfolio remains predominantly based on raw materials focused on energy, mining, and agriculture.

Little known on the health front, throughout the 20th century, Africa was the source of many "bio"-products and technologies responsible for the growth of the modern pharmaceutical industry as we know it today, from various natural product and ethnobotanical derived pharmaceutical sources, to the origin of the world’s first pregnancy test.

Continuing this theme, we see a lot of novel activities going on in the 21st century in Africa from the world’s first 3D printed inner ear transplant, which occurred in South Africa earlier this year, to the testing of various Ebola antibody products, as well as novel malaria diagnostics development.

However, despite decades of efforts in the areas of both of technology transfer and indigenous innovation (in biotech, as well as man other areas), as well as being a continent paradoxically bustling with an abundance of potential and natural resources, Africa still is often portrayed in the media as a “left behind” continent.

So, today on the show we will be speaking with Ósìnàkáchì Ákùmà Kálù, the founder and Chairman of Transdisciplinary Agora for Future Discussions (TAFFDs), which will be holding its revolutionary International Conference of Techno-Scientific Awareness in Solving 21st Century Problems next month in Kigali, Rwanda, from the 7th-11th of October 2019.

The conference will be taking place at the University of Rwanda, bringing together world renowned industry experts, inventors, policymakers, scholars, futurists and transhumanists, all converging to brainstorm, exhibit innovations, exchange ideas, and provide solutions for a new direction of a technological future for Africa.

Ósìnàkáchì is a strategic planner, team builder, visionary, inspirational speaker and a humanitarian, with degrees in Business Administration (Nigeria), Philosophy (Italy), and Fearism (Nepal).

He's the author of 2 books: Conquering The Beast Fear: A philosophical Cum Psychological Approach and The First Stage of the Fearologist.

On this show Ósìnàkáchì talks about:

His background, where he grew up, and how he became interested in business, philosophy, and fearology. How he became interested in mobilizing the global forces of technology and transhumanism in Africa.

The "hot spots" for technology development today in Africa.

The indigenous property issues related to technology in Africa. We’ll hear about the role of Fearology in Ósìnàkáchì’s life.

We’ll learn about the upcoming TAFFDs conference.

Finally, he tells us who he would like to meet and why!

ideaXme is a global podcast, mentor programme and creator series. Mission: Move the human story forward!™ ideaXme Ltd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pl96S_Bu3M&t=1s&fbclid=IwAR2_E-gC5YmcRVA9_5KVPqxtNQG4zOt7VxmqBprsHiU4NoTF31wIds_EE4k

I'd like you to meet Debbie L. Kasman, an integral educator in Canada, someone I have just done a long dialogue with on fear in education. She is also taking on the writing of a book (with me) on my work making it more accessible to the populus, to school teachers, parents, etc. Check out the dialogue FearTalk 6: 

This is 6th in the series FearTalks originated by fearologist Dr. R. M. Fisher. He invites Kasman to discuss fear and education, especially in the light of recent terrorism, mass murders and schooling communities reacting to it, including now the marketing of bullet-proof kid's backpacks. They discuss how fear is the opportunity (door) to fearlessness on the way to Love. A good video for school superintendents, policy makers, teachers, principals, parents etc. We talk about philosopher-theorist Ken Wilber in this video and the AQAL and Integral perspective, so for more on this see my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPl3-... Debbie's Bio & Website (for more info.): http://debbielkasman.com/ Debbie L. Kasman, a Canadian educator interested in transformative, holistic and integral education, is the author of: “LOTUS OF THE HEART: RESHAPING THE HUMAN AND COLLECTIVE SOUL”--a former principal, acting interim superintendent, and student achievement officer at the Ministry of Education in Ontario with a career spanning over 28 years in Ontario. Debbie recently trained with Ken Wilber – a scholar of the Integral stage of human development. Wilber also taught and influenced Marianne Williamson, Deepak Chopra, Bill Clinton, and John Mackey. Debbie has lots to say about the need to transform education. She also writes about female leadership, equity and spirituality. The New-York Times Bestselling author, Daniel H. Pink, placed Debbie’s blog on his Reader Recommended List in December 2016. Four Arrows (aka Dr. Don T. Jacobs), Indigenous educator, is also referred to in this talk: See Fisher's book "Fearless Engagement of Four Arrows: The true story of an Indigenous-based Social Transformer" (Peter Lang, 2018).

See FearTalk 7 as well...

----------

ALSO, as an aside and complementary article on culture of fear and the role it plays in Education (especially, regarding higher education and the loss of intellectual inquiry) see Frank Furedi's article "he Campus Culture of Fear" --here's an excerpt from the article on the Internet: 

A climate of fear is inhospitable to the cultivation of academic relationships and the pursuit of intellectual inquiry. Take the growing stigma attached to the term “controversial speaker.” Once, controversy was seen as essential to the workings of an academic community; nowadays, many university administrators fear controversy to the point that they have designed policies to marginalize or ban provocative speakers altogether, as the title of a Xavier University publication—Controversial Speakers and Events: Strategies for Risk Management—demonstrates.

Arguably, the most regrettable feature of the campus culture of fear is the toll that it takes on human relations. People censor themselves vigilantly. Like other academics, I have been warned that it’s unsafe to shut my office door when I talk to a student. And as relations between academics and students become less spontaneous and more formal, the ancient role of mentor or interlocutor gives way to that of service provider or bureaucrat. The psychic distancing of members of the academic community from one another is the unacceptable price we pay for our obsession with campus “safety.”

Frank Furedi’s new book, How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the 21st Century, will be published soon

----------

AND ANOTHER RECENT article on the negative impact of school lockdown drills that children in the USA are continually exposed to: see

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/05/lockdown-drill-fear/589090/

Hi All. I am announcing here a project spurred by Osinakachi A. Kalu in Africa and colleagues, where they are putting on "The International Conference of Techno-Scientific Awareness 2019." It is a conference intended to bring the the best futurist thinkers, across disciplines, to bring a renewed infusion into Africa especially, but also could be other countries who are falling behind in innovation especially in techno-scientific education and advances. 

I am speaking online at this conference (see my bio. and topic: "God is Dead, Psychology is Dead, Fear is Dead: A Global Worldview Critical Analysis". 

Check it out... https://conference2019.taffds.org/speaker/r-michael-fisher-ph-d/

For a Newsletter to keep up on this initiative here are further information and contacts: 

Dr. Christopher Bollas, psychoanalyst-theorist

In 2016 the internationally renowned British (and American) psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas (one of my fav. of this school of psychology) has given an excellent lecture on "Mental Pain" and offers his decades of clinical experience, his creative original thought, and what I see as a profound wisdom of understanding the relationship of the self, to the mind, to the society (and history and politics). Go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9Frb4wMifw

I am inviting any new students out there to apply for The Fearology Institute Course TFI-118 "Expanding the Fear Imaginary". If you want to learn more about TFI just enter "The Fearology Institute" into the search box on the front (upper right) of the FM ning home page and you'll get several articles I have written about it. 

Since a year ago opening, I have had five students attempt to do the course TFI-118 as a start to their program but for various reasons only 1 student has followed through and is soon to graduate from that course. It is an online program and thus people have to make priorities and be disciplined to make it through the course. I look forward to new students in the 2019-20 season. Email me for more information: r.michaelfisher52 [at] gmail [dot] com

For an Introduction (video) to TFI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVWD7IjJ2iM

For an updated TFI Program Brochure of full details: 

Contact: thefearologyinstitute [at] gmail [dot] com

"I'm very grim, and down and out," says Emeritus professor Cornel West in a recent interview. He was responding to Anderson Cooper's (CNN host) about the current Trump rally in the US and people chanting to "send her home" referring to a Congress Woman (of color). Indeed, West has long been a Left intellectual and anti-racist advocate and scholar and he is no doubt reflecting a mood many are feeling in the USA and a lot of the world that has strong racist-right-wing elements rising to power these days. 

Why doesn't Cornel West, this great liberation (populist, intellectual) leader of our times talk about "fearlessness"? [1]

Of course, relevant to the Fearlessness Movement, I ask myself if Cornel West is a proponent of "fearlessness" in his philosophy, his Christianity, his radical left Black activism? And, upon my preliminary searching I found, just like in his recent talk with Cooper, he barely mentions fear itself and when he does he usually is talking about angst and nihilism (as loss of hope and growth of meaninglessness) as a collective dis-ease in American society. Fear as a term is never usually mentioned more than 5 times in any of West's many books, and best sellers. I wonder why? And, in his recent talk with Cooper he will admit he is "down and out" in psychic temperament in relation to the rise of White Supremacism ideology in his country (again). He's old and tired, but he's not without a bit of spirit to fight. So, next after his grim response he says to Cooper and the audience that (paraphrasing) 'we must in this time especially have moral fortitude and courage' and that's what he and all the down-trodden people have always had when they are oppressed and the fight will continue until they find their victory and justice, no matter what happens in the meantime. 

"Moral courage" is the fav phrase in West's discourses, which has a long tradition (e.g., black liberation theology) in the justice movements of history. I see this as a particular fear management system (FMS-5 with some FMS-6)--and, it is basically modernist. It is about the individual (and society) under oppression fighting back and not letting fear of oppressors, nor internalized fear destroy you and your integrity and your will to keep fighting back, even if the odds are tremendously against you gaining much in the bigger political world. "Hope" is also his fav concept to accompany "moral courage." This is the basis of ethical philosophy behind West's popularity and stardom. He attracts great followings of people from the Left especially, and I'm noticing a lot of young men are really admiring West's character and intellectual prowess--and, see him as a hero in the nightmares of the times of post-truth bullshit that is invading most all of America day to day. The young men are scared as I see it, and rightfully so, and they are looking for leaders who speak to them and impress them as having the 'best' analysis. And, true, West is "brilliant" and "warm" and "sharp" at the mouth. He's very hip too! 

But my critique is that "moral courage" is not sufficient to deal with Fear's Empire, the 'Fear' Matrix of which America and the rest of the world is being swallowed up and coded into moment by moment. Moral courage, hope, and love, as the prophetic voice has always offered since ancient times, right up to the present modernist values and virtues of a Christian like West, are helpful, but not enough; from a fearlessness meta-psychological perspective, that is [2]. Listen to West (from his best selling book Race Matters (1993/2017):

"Being a hope is being in motion, on the move with body on the line, mind set on freedom, soul full of courage, and heart shot through with love. Being hope is foraging moral and spiritual fortitude.... being willing to live and die for the empowerment of the wretched [oppressed] of the earth." (p. xxiv) [3].

For three decades, I have advocated and argued, that if one trully penetrates into the nature and role of fear, across the spheres of Natural, Cultural and Spiritual realities, from a critical holistic-integral perspective--then, fearlessness will be understood like never before too. This new understanding of fear and fearlessness repositions many things from a moral and ethical and philosophical perspective--and, one major outcome is that when operating from Fearlessness there is no need to constantly boost "hope" and "love" and "empowerment" as does the modernist approach to activism and liberation. I am not dissing these modernist and even premodernist traditions of liberation, I am merely claiming they are largely out-dated and need a serious upgrade. And, that critique, no matter how much I publish and speak about it is still largely ignored by West, and so many of his contemporaries. 

As much as I so respect Cornel West as a leader today, it is disturbing he has not picked up on the great liberation traditions (at a minimum) and thus talked a lot more about fear and fearlessness. As I said, less than 5 pages in any of his books is on "fear" and when he talks about it usually it is rather thin and about "fears" --not seeing that the entire study of fearism-t (at the base of all oppression - ism diseases) requires so much more than moral courage, hope and love. It requires an incredibly systematic study of fear itself (and 'fear', as I argue)--it requires Fearlessness which is a meta-psychology (and philosophy) and methodological re-orientation that directs our gaze and analysis to something much deeper at-cause of our worst human behaviors, individually and collectively. Fear is not a factor, as West makes it out to and as that modernist discourse does as well. Talk about a "culture of fear," a "fear lens" a 'Fear' Matrix, etc., and then we'll realize we are up against an enormous power and complex of external and internal structures in everyday life that keep us "afraid" and, to then, even at times encourage us to thus be "courageous"--but, the latter encouragement actually supports us being more afraid so that we'll develop more courage--it's an ironical productive cycle of 'Fear' as oppression itself. That's not the kind of critical self-reflection you will find amongst the Left (or West) of their very notion of "moral courage" (and hope and love) and how they too are tainted already from the start when one lives in Fear's Empire. Everything is tainted with fear ('fear')--and that's what makes an oppressive society work so well (said, in sarcasm). So, no, I am not big advocate for "courage" alone as a fear management system (discourse) that will get us very far with liberation on the scale and with the depth I am talking and theorizing about. 

Unfortunately, I have learned that people don't want to do the work of discovering Fearlessness in this meta-context I propose and teach about. I am no celebrity, like a West, and likely never will be, but I will live and die attempting to show people we can do better than "moral courage" discourses and actions--even if, I admit, those may be better than nothing--but I will argue, they are going to be 'too little too late' unfortunately. That's a larger conversation, I'm always glad to engage with you all. 

Notes:

1. I have tried email contacting him and sharing with him my work but to no avail, he typically doesn't respond or engage the work. Only once did I find in several of his books one reference where he used "fearlessness" (per se), and that was in his talking about his appreciation of the "New Black Panther Party.... they have a certain fearlessness like Malcom [X]" (West & Buschendorf, 2014, n.p.). But West doesn't define the term. See West, C., & Buschendorf, C. (2014). Black prophetic fire. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. See also my criticism of American pragmatist philosophy (Fisher, 2015) in general and its domination of American ideas, culture and society, of which I find Cornel West is susceptible to in his discourse (and ideology): Fisher, R. M. (2015). What is the West’s problem with fearlessness? Technical Paper No. 53. Carbondale, IL: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.

2. I am currently writing a new book "A Fearlessness Meta-psychology" for the 21st century. See also my Fisher, R. M. (2019). Fearlessness psychology: An introduction. Technical Paper No. 79. Calgary, AB: In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute.  

3. West, C. (2017). Race matters, 25th anniversary. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.