Face to Face Combat with Fear

Allan thanks for the 4th comment you made in my last posting ".. the concept of fear, even refined with prefixes like political, religious and physical....isn't specific enough to be useful in any kind of study than what's to characterize how people act/behave/think in a more general way". It is unfortunate that sometimes we end up associating words with the specific contexts in which we usually find them.

A different one: For this past week my wife was struggling with fever and had a very painful throat. I took her to a physician who said hers were some 'Strep Throat Symptoms'. She was put on treatment and the medical doctor further explained that: 'Throat infection with strep bacteria is contagious and can cause a variety of symptoms associated with inflammation of the throat and its nearby structures'.

Here is the dilemma I had to go through. Everybody who heard about my wife's problem continued to emphasize that strep was highly contagious, so I needed to keep distance. With the pain that she was undergoing at times I felt she needed me right next to her and especially my patting and touching during such difficult moments. Though I knew very well what people were telling me by emphasizing the words 'highly contagious', for the most part during her sickness I could not just leave her alone. I felt she needed me close by, during such a difficult moment.

Without necessarily trying to undermine the possibility of contracting a contagious disease like strep throat, but I wonder where fear stands when matters of the heart are at stake? I did not contract the disease but of course I can not generalize my case lest a million people out there will get sick . My question is, Where does fear stand, for instance, when human beings are faced with things like love or even anger? Do people sometimes consciously ignore and/or wrestle with fear itself, in order to do what they fear?

When the people fear their government,there is tyranny ......" (Thomas Jefferson)

I think this one from Answers.Com may be interesting to sample.
Who said people should not fear the government, government should fear the people? In: Founding Fathers, United States History, US Constitution [Edit categories]

Thomas Jefferson.
The actual quote by Jefferson is "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

A variation of this was written by Alan Moore in the V for Vendetta comic book series in the late 1980s (which was made into a movie in 2005). The quote in this was: "People should not fear their government. Government should fear their people."

From Jefferson's quote, I sense the idea of accountability on the part of the government which a great idea, but unfortunately the opposite/reverse is true in some parts of the world today. As soon as people are sworn into those government offices sometimes they surround themselves with a lot of power and authority to such an extent that it may become extremely difficult for them to fear or even respect opinions of anyone (the civilian/ masses) particularly the same people that elected them into those offices. I have heard of cases where some people in government would even try to manipulate certain clauses in the Constitution so that they may be extremely feared by the ordinary people. How about that?

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_people_should_not_fear_the_government_government_should_fear_the_people#ixzz1Bo89zVQU

Between Theory & Experience

Allan, your picture and posting on snowshoeing, makes me think of how much I still fear to drive in the snow. A lot of people have told me that since my car is an all-wheel drive that has brand new snow tires, I need not fear to drive in the snow but, I still fear that experience. Each time I have to drive on snow especially ice I find myself having to be extra careful no matter how much I may tell myself that all is well and that my car is well suited for the conditions. For instance, on Saturday, January the 15 of 2011, when I was driving back from attending class at West Lebanon, I was caught in a snow storm along 1-91 interstate some 50 minutes from my house. I took the risk and kept on driving along with others. The trip was not pleasurable and I was only able to take a deep breath after getting home.

My experience of having to actually drive on snow is far from the comfort I usually find when some car experts try to give me some facts on why my car is safe to drive on snow. There is a huge gap between theory and practice, facts and experience when it comes to my fear of driving on snow. I do not know about others it seems when dealing with things such as driving on snow whereby I will have to be in that car and behind that wheel, and sometimes having to witness some accidents and so on, probabaly I need more time to translate and transform what I am told inorder to feel safe. I do not know how others might handle some such fears experinced in real life? Do not forget that my first experience of snow in real life was in 2009.

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Some thoughts on this posting....which immediately got me excited!

The gap between theory and practice.....is roughly parallel to one between a concept and the experiences that it can stand for.  Theory and concepts are abstractions from a palpably felt and understood "reality".   Granted, the imagination is part of this reality.  But be that as it may (it's inherent to an holistic perspective) theories and concepts are quite disconnected from experiences as we commonly know them.

I think this is a really great way to approach issues concerning how we "experience" fear.  

There is a famous passage in Wittgenstein where he wrote:  "When I came home I expected a surprise.  There was no surprised.  I was surprised."  

The first use of surprise is theoretical or abstract.   The second use of "surprise" moves the theory, in experience, to a kind of test.  And the third use of "surprise" (for me) expresses a use which is intended to convey the whole experience of "actual" surprise.   In this way Wittgenstein elegantly constructed an instructive example that shows us the pragmatic notion of an "experience" like surprise.

It is by comparing these usages that we can see how each has a different "flavor" if you will.

In this way i think we can see that someone can "talk to us about safety" and the composite aspect of it which might be "fear" of injury or accident.   But, these more abstract usages are put to the test when we get in the car.   A wide-variety of factors comes into play....you mention many of them.  And clearly the experienced reality of both safety and fear in this situation is much more complex than the talk about it might cause it to seem.

I think this is a highly productive way to get at "fear".   As a word....it has to be examined for how it is used in particular instances.   It has a "life" in the situation it is used and seeks to describe.  And that kind of life is what we want to better understand when we use the word:  "fear".

Thanks....very fine....and rooted (even better) in a narrative or story....

A
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some fears

In case I haven't provided it, you can see a photo gallery of pictures that I post on a fairly regular basis at:

http://gallery.mac.com/doingphilosophy#gallery

Today I snowshoed across the road from the house on a ridge that leads to some views of the Sandwich Range in the White Mountains.   Then upon returning to the house I made my first venture out onto the beaver pond/meadow that's on the east side of our property.   The picture above shows my shadow (sun setting in the west).  I'm about to cross from what I know is ground, onto a marshy margin that separates a deep part of the ponf that never freezes over (to the right of my shadow).  On the left is the marshy area that surrounds the pond.  I pretty much stick close to the marsh grass figuring "how deep can it be there?"   And that is one way I deal with the essential fear one should have when crossing areas of ice....especially for the first time of the winter and when you haven't kept track of the weather in detail (coldness/rain etc).

The fear of falling through the ice certainly has a profound effect on my behavior.  Yet, I would say I don't "fear" going on the ice.  That is due to the behavior I've effected.   Thus, when something unexpected does happen (a very loud crack?   a snowshoe goes through the ice?  (both have happened) the response is I would estimate,  beyond fear.  It's a reaction without fear.   Now if I went into freezing water....I think the dynamic would change and I'd begin to actually have the emotional components of something commonly identified as  "fear".

I think Rich Abel's observation is a "keeper".   Very insightful....lest we think that it's only "fear" that leader's use.  More comfortably, they pander to our assumptions and thus don't have to mess with the more negative dimensions of seeming to make people fear what they are saying.

However, we've distinguished previously, "fear" that results from physical violence of various kinds.   Consideration of oliticians around the world would supply many examples of this.

In the USA, in general (although in USA history there are many cases of the government using physical violence against the population) physical violence is less prevalent.  What is present is psychological fear....say in the 1980's I think there was a deliberate program of "demonizing" people who were poor or of color by the Reagan administration.   And since then this has continued as part of our political life....sometimes called "raising the negatives" about your political opponent.   This is nothing but creating a certain kind of fear that people vaguely perceive.   Or sometimes it is used in a less direct way....causing people to fear losing benefits or protections offered under the law.

The recent shootings in Arizona certainly lower the threshold for many people in experiencing fear in a variety of ways.

And then there are those of us who in an opposite way can be said to fear the level of violence as entertainment  in USA culture, coupled with the ideology of "one should be able to carry a gun".

Any effort to dominate politically raises the level of "fear" in those being dominated.  This seems inescapable to me.

So even in a rather placid democracy....forms of something that can be called "fear" are woven into the web of culture.  In this way they become "accepted".   But, I think the ideal of democratic life and shared experiences counsels that exactly the opposite should be the case.   Transactions between people (transactions are the main medium of change and transformation) are no longer guided by this kind of ideal.   And this makes me fear a slippery slope of increasing  fear....fear of losing a tactible sense of democratic transaction and leadership.

Many people have, through various aspects of our culture, come to feel that they should be more in "control" of things than is humanely reasonable.  So people get angry when the weather doesn't cooperate for example.  Once one has been weaned on the notion of control and prediction....the result of being disappointed at the lack of it is often experienced as  "fear".  Fear of losing control.  Of course it's control that people never really had.   Many people from abroad have noticed this feature of American culture....but largely it's something that people here don't see unless they have honest and transparent transactions with people from outside the culture....

It is also of interest how "fear" is transferred.  My wife has "fear" about me going out into the mountains alone and snowshoeing.  She's been after me to get a GPS tracker and I've resisted.   At first I had to deliberately counteract letting her transfer her fear to me....so that through empathy I would become "fearful" when there was not reason for it.   This is a fascinating dynamic.

These are some random thoughts that came to mind today while I was snowshoeing....

Allan

Fear and Undue Influence

Allan thanks for your comments in the past two articles, the one from Karen Evenson's book and the other one from the Zim political situation.
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In our threaded discussions for the Leadership through Writing Class, we are currently discussing the books, The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman and The Conscience of A Conservative by Barry Goldwater. In one of my postings I wrote that at times politicians embellish their facts in emotion and may sometimes appeal to derogatory terms in order to outdo propositions by their opponents. And, I was fascinated by Rich Abel's response and contribution; he pointed out that "Politicians may play to our assumptions, as well as to our fears or insecurities, as a way to manipulate us to support them knowing that we won't take the time to think through or gather evidence to support their contentions"(1/12/2011).

Fro Rich Abel's contribution, what resonated with me really, especially because of my interest in Leadership and Fear was his words 'they may play to our fears or insecurities as a way to manipulate us to support them'. Generally I think, when people are 'fearful' or even 'insecure' chances are that they may make decisions basing on their predicament (what will happen to them and so on). This may also go hand in hand, with what was postulated by Charles F. Stanley, he said 'Fear stifles our capacity to think clearly and rationally'. I would think, it is in light of this understanding that in legal terms or in jurisprudence they refer to what is called "undue influence" as a possible defense. Undue influence (as a term in jurisprudence) involves one person taking advantage of a position of power over another person and, in this situation 'free will to bargain is not possible'.

I think fear,takes away freedom of choice, and I do not think a fearful person has that capacity to bargain and their decisions may need to be judged in light of their surrounding circumstances.

(Charles F. Stanley: http://www.intouch.org/myintouch/exploring/studies/pressures/lesson6/index 345899.html, 10/06/2007).
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I am failing to get hold of Kurt regarding how he converted his blog into pdf if you get in touch with him please if you could ask him for me if you see him this weekend.

7 out of 10 Zimbabweans fear political violence

Allan I thought you may be interested in reading this article that I got from Richard Abel for my other class.


By ANGUS SHAW, Associated Press Angus Shaw, Associated Press – Fri Jan 7, 8:11 am ET

HARARE, Zimbabwe – A research group on Friday reported that Zimbabweans fear becoming victims of political violence if elections go ahead this year to end the nation's two-year coalition government.

An opinion poll carried out by the continentwide think tank Afrobarometer said seven out of 10 Zimbabweans feared intimidation and violence. The poll said the same proportion didn't feel free to speak their minds in a climate of declining civil liberties, along with almost "daily threats" of civil war by militants of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party if it lost elections proposed later this year.

The poll, available Friday, said its findings from a broad cross section of 1,200 voters — also called a "national probability sample" — had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percent at a 95 percent confidence level. In one district, its researchers were chased away by Mugabe militants.

Despite fears of violence and intimidation 70 percent of respondents still wanted elections completed this year, the group said.

In what it called one of its most striking findings: "Seven in ten would-be voters are anxious to freely elect leaders of their choice, even in an atmosphere where security forces and party militias are again on the move."

This displayed "the impressive depths of Zimbabweans' commitment to political rights" said researchers who included Michael Bratton of the U.S. Institute of Peace at Michigan State University.

Zimbabwe's coalition between Mugabe, who led the nation to independence in 1980, and former opposition leader Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai was formed in February 2009 after disputed elections in 2008 that were marred by widespread violence. Tsvangirai boycotted a presidential run-off vote against Mugabe to protest violence against his supporters by militants, police and military loyal to Mugabe.

At least 200 people died in the violence surrounding those polls and thousands of cases of torture, abductions, assault, illegal arrests and death threats were reported by human rights groups.

Afrobarometer said the coalition was now stalemated "in large part because Mugabe and ZANU-PF have been unwilling to surrender a meaningful share of executive and military power."

Mugabe has repeatedly called for fresh elections in mid-2011 after saying the power sharing agreement wasn't working and he wanted to see an early end to the coalition. Tsvangirai blames Mugabe for not abiding by several key provisions in the agreement and has demanded the completion of constitutional and electoral reform before any new polls can be held.

Afrobarometer said its research compared the public mood over the past two years of the coalition.

A program to rewrite the constitution through countrywide outreach meetings last year had also been marred by violence and with calls for fresh elections the nation now "risked relapse into another dangerous period of political instability," the group said.

It said public confidence in the coalition declined to about one-third of those polled in 2010, compared to about half of those polled in similar research in 2009. Confidence in the coalition government slipped because of leadership struggles and a policy deadlock, researchers said.

In 2010, two-thirds of those polled believed Mugabe firmly retained the reigns of power. Just 14 percent thought there was meaningful power sharing.

Redefining F.E.A.R

Yesterday I got my copy of Karen Evenson's Redefining F.E.A.R: Maximizing Limited Resources with Unlimited Ideas (Hilton Head Island: Cameo Publications, 2004. After going through its introductory section as well as browsing through it, I felt that in our context of interdisciplinary studies, hers is a necessary viewpoint and pillar from the perspective of Business and Economics.

From the outset, soon after rhetorically asking: What is fear? Karen Evenson gave a fascinating explanation of what she called 'the traditional definition of fear'. Thereafter she said, "fear is the ever-increasing emotional reaction that elicits a response and becomes the basis for decision-making....We perceive a threat of danger and assume it must be true. That perception then becomes our reality, and we make our decisions based on that reality (the fear)" (p.13).

I think there is a lot of sense in this contention for, whether in business or any other transactions when people are fearful, that becomes their point of departure in decision making. They may have to negotiate through that fear first and may sometimes chose to ignore it and take risks, but the fact it is from that standpoint that they are fearful that they may begin. After all under normal circumstances there is a lot of negotiation that has to go on in one's mind before he/she may take that chance, so if the fear is in the mind for the most part, then it would make sense to think that their decisions may have to take cognizance of their fears as well.

Nonetheless, it is also interesting to note that Evenson also postulated that each time when people make decisions as based on fear, they will actually be allowing it (fear) to control them(p.13). So I would think, in other words she is alluding to the view that, to those that act out of fear, they are in its grip as a remote controller does to any electrical gadget such as a toy or TV Set.

We will see...

Fear-Peace-Fear & 3 Forms of Anxiety

>Fear -Peace -Fear: When I placed candles in the background I didn't even think about any significance they may have, but after reading what you wrote (Allan) especially the idea of 'peace' I could not stop thinking about my days as a small boy. Usually during my primary school holidays, my parents used to take me to my grandmother's farm and during some evenings the old lady would ask me to go and collect some firewood in a shed outside of her kitchen. Because of my fear of the dark, I would insist that she lights a candle for me to carry to the firewood barn. And for as long as I carried the candle all my fears were gone and I had my peace too. Now, one night she told me that if you move with a candle in the dark then people are going to see you from afar and they may attack you before you know it. As soon as I had that knowledge, my fear of the dark changed to a new fear of being seen from afar by some dangerous people. What used to signify peace and safety (a candle) for me changed into something that would make me vulnerable or attract enemies. This interests me a lot and I would look at it as from 'Fear to Peace and to Fear again'.

On a different note, in my readings I stumbled upon C. G. Boeree's (2011, Jan 03) writings about Sigmund Freud's philosophy on: http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/freud.html

C.G. Boeree wrote that Freud once said, "Life is not easy." And: -- if you -- feel threatened, feel overwhelmed, feel as if it were about to collapse under the weight of it all. This feeling is called , and it serves as a signal to the ego ... and without it the survival of the whole organism, is in jeopardy.Freud mentions three different kinds of anxieties: The first one is realistic anxiety, which you and I would call fear. Actually Freud did, too, in German. But his translators thought "fear" too mundane! Nevertheless, if I throw you into a pit of poisonous snakes, you might experience realistic anxiety. The second is moral anxiety. This is what we feel when the threat comes not from the outer, physical world, but from the internalized social world of the superego. It is, in fact, just another word for feelings like shame and guilt and the fear of punishment. The last is neurotic anxiety.This is the fear of being overwhelmed by impulses from the id. He said, if you have ever felt like you were about to "lose it," lose control, your temper, your rationality, or even your mind, you have felt neurotic anxiety.He further pointed out that, neurotic is actually the Latin word for nervous, so this is nervous anxiety. It is this kind of anxiety that intrigued Freud most, and we usually just call it anxiety, plain and simple.

Now the definition of anxiety as well as the three distinctions he makes, are things I had not taken my time to think about before. It is very easy to lump all the three forms of anxieties under one umbrella and sometimes try to address them like they are the same yet they have different sources and different effects. I find the neurotic anxiety as pointing directly to the discipline of Psychology and probably Freud's psychoanalysis. Just to digress a little bit I always remember having to debate one of Freud's classical definitions of religion as "an infantile neurosis" in my studies in Philosophy of Religion.In this he argues that religion has much to do with a people's mindset and the nostalgic effects of their childhood and they do not want to grow up but they would rather remain as kids whereby they look up to some adults or father figures in their lives, and so on.

Anywhere, I had not come across a writing that discusses the three categories of anxiety by highlighting on what fear does to the nervous system sometimes. I do not know what others think about such three distinctions of anxieties brought out in this article?

new year hopes and pondering

Thanks for the new background.  The candle for me symbolizes "peace".   I have an ever present hope for it that's mingled with a suspicious fear that what I should expect is less than the "whole thing".   Patch-work seems more the way things are.  And then I think, it is not quite so fine for me to have "my own peace".  To want it for others in other situations where it is much more lacking is a very demanding task.

To live without fear?   That might be a kind of peace or the beginning of "peace".

There is fear of violence which is a bit of how I relate to what you wrote above.  Granted the violence can be politically motivated....although zeroing in on anyone's motivation is notoriously hard to do.  Whereas I might feel some political zeal—suggesting or deliberately prompting violence that causes fear— is okay?  The person next to me might be spurred not so much by ideology or politics but some something deeper, darker and more personal (one can always examine Shakespear's Iago for the personal construction and implementation of "evil").  

The latter configuration of fear can at times be contrasted or dialectically related to a person's lack of exposure to, or cultivation of (not sure what the right phrase is) a common sense of humanity.   Such that a culture of fear can be contrasted to a culture of humanity:

"....while we live, while we are among human beings, let us cultivate our humanity."  Seneca, On Anger  

Now when Seneca wrote this the world, then coming into closer communications between cultures and peoples, was in a similar state of considering cultural diversity as related to some sense of "humanity".  So I think it's wrong to view Seneca (as some would all of the western classical writers) as having lived in a more homogeneous culture and world.  Surely there are differences between then and now, but, also similarities.

But one needn't predicate criteria for "cultivating humanity".   More modestly, one could aspire to world without violence.  Which could be in some sense, the cultivation of human relationships and experiences without violence.   This would then cultivate away from one of the major factors that contributes to "fear".

What kinds of relationships transacted and experienced (and described) would lead to the cultivation of non-violence?   And how would these contrast with the transacted and experienced (and described) culture of fear?

In these kinds of thoughts my default position is one articulated by the American philosopher John Dewey who once wrote:

"Peace in action, not after, is the contribution of the ideal to conduct."    

So in a sense, I think this implicates where I started this posting....in a sense of how the "ideal of peace" becomes part of the culture of "peace" which is perhaps related to learning to live without fear?   Dewey suggests that peaceable actions are the "contribution".   They are guided by a sense of "ideal peace" but without suggesting that the ideal, conceptual form of peace is attainable.   But, as I've tried to indicate above, a better grasp of our transacted experiences (described) might give us a better sense of the actions that cultivate peace and by doing that combat violence and fear.    But often I think, our lack of these sensibilities obscures our own capacity to see how we create violence and fear in our ordinary, everyday transactions.

What hope is there for understanding the larger experiences we might associate with "leading others" if we cannot sense, interpret and understand our own actions (plain and simple)?