The Meaning of Fear

Fear is a force that is always ready to

make its move for domination over apersonality or a society. It can only

be controlled when it is understood.Here, an examination of this powerful

emotion in some of its many facets --

not the least as an ally of man...

[] Perhaps the most telling observation ever madeabout fear is that it always relates to the future.You cannot be afraid of the immediate present; youcannot be afraid of the past. Neither can you beafraid of a thing, a person or a situation; you canonly be frightened of what that thing or personmight do, or of what might happen. You may fearthat something has already happened, but this toorelates to the future because what you really fear isyour own discovery that the dreaded event hasoccurred.

For fear, by definition, is an emotion caused byimpending danger or evil. Therefore it can only bevalidated when events are beyond the control ofthose it occupies. Since few matters in the ordinarycourse of life are totally beyond one’s control, fearis a prerequisite to our well-being and even sur-vival. One is afraid of what might happen; onetakes action to prevent it from happening or tomitigate the consequences; more often than not,the pre-emptive action has the desired effect.

This can be seen best in the world of nature, inwhich fear, though it may go by different names, isgeneral. A hare will flee from an attacking lynx; abear will shrink back shuddering from the ap-proach of a forest fire. No matter how mighty,every creature possesses the instinct to recoil fromdanger. There must be times when lions cringe;otherwise lions would be extinct.

The driver who wheels out of the path of a near-collision, the housewife who grabs a child about totumble down the stairs -- each experiences fear in

this same essence. Fear is nature’s great alarmsystem, enabling all the creatures of the earth toobviate harm.

But among human beings there is always adanger that fear will cease to function as a usefulservant and become the master. It can take controlof a personality. It can gain dominance over wholenations. It has the potential to rule the world.

Franklin D. Roosevelt showed a keen under-standing of the limitless power of fear when, withthe economy of the United States seemingly tumb-ling down on the heads of bewildered Americans,he told them that all they had to fear was fearitself. The "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified ter-ror" of which he spoke makes a good example of theconversion of fear from a beneficial instinct into amenace in its own right.

When the Great Depression first broke out,people reacted with panic. This is a natural mani-festation of fear, often seen in the animal world.But instead of recovering from their initial panic,as an animal will do, and then taking action to dealwith the danger before them, people slid into thehopeless inertia which is a mark of cowardice.Cowardice is a uniquely human characteristic bornof another such characteristic, imagination. Whenthe imagination takes a positive track, man is fullof strength and courage. When it turns negative,he becomes a helpless slave of fear.

~’It knows no master but one. His name is under-standing." Thus an essay in the Duluth Bulletinidentifies a vital feature of the nature of fear.

When medical researchers set out to work on a curefor a disease, they first compile everything that isknown about the disease in all its aspects. So it iswith fear; only through an understanding of itsorigins, its symptoms, and its effects, may it beovercome.

"Fear always springs from ignorance," RalphWaldo Emerson wrote. That may be an over-simplification, but it nonetheless helps to point theway to an understanding of fear. It is usually theproduct of incomplete knowledge or incompletethinking. Consider the fears one develops at theoutset of life.

~’Mommy, I’m afraid of the dark. Please leave thelight on." Early childhood brings a succession ofmisinformed, unfounded fears. Yet a fear is a fear,whether it has its foundation in the mind or inexternal reality. Parents should treat childhoodfears seriously, gently and gradually attempting toput them to rest.

The very baselessness of childhood fears offersparents an opportunity to teach their children alesson that will last all their lives: that most fearsexist only in the imagination. It can be betterdemonstrated to a child than to a person of anyother age that, in the childlike words of RudyardKipling, "Of all the liars in the world, sometimesthe worst are your own fears."

Parents should watch out fordeveloping phobias

It should be borne in mind in bringing up chil-dren that, like a disease, fear is contagious. In herexcellent work on the subject, Understanding Fear,Bonaro Overstreet explains: ~’... Fear is not aprivate affair because the person deeply infected byit will infect others, the most common infectionbeing that from parent to child."

Fearful adults, then, are capable of unconscious-ly nurturing fears in their offspring that maynever be overcome. Without meaning to do so, theparents may encourage normal childhood fears tothe degree where debilitating phobias result.

Dozens of phobias are common among children.Parents should be aware of what devastating forcethey can have. The ultimate danger is that thechild -- and later the adult -- will withdraw into asocial isolation in which fresh fears will breed,setting off a cycle of misery. In extreme casesphobia sufferers conceive a general fear of life,afraid even to set foot outside of their own homes,yet dying a thousand deaths.

Few persons of any age are entirely withoutpotential phobias. Some may avoid heights, someget a case of %he jitters" when alone in an emptyhouse, some feel an aversion to dogs. Most of uscontrol those feelings with our intellects, which tellus that they are illogical. Many other unfortu-nates, however, are unable to keep a rein on theirfears, though they may know full well how unrea-sonable these fears really are.

Fear will masquerade inmany different guises

People can harbour some very strange phobias,such as fear of wool and fear of Friday. To thosewho have them, these fears are vividly real. Twopoints should be made about phobias: first thatpeople are able to live with them, and second thatthey are not incurable. A Canadian airline onceran a course for people who were terrified of flying,gradually allaying their fears by psychologicalmeans until they were ready to take a speciallyorganized conditioning flight. The majority of thosewho took the course are able to fly quite comfort-ably today.

Phobias have at least one merit in that theyfocus a person’s fears. Those who have them knowexactly what they are afraid of. Most of us aresubject to a more insidious kind of fear which oftenis not identified. We may not even know that wehave it, but it is there.

It masquerades in many guises, among themshyness, anxiety, caution, conformity, false cyn-icism, and indolence. In these forms fear blightshope, kills ambition, stalls progress and ruinspersonal relationships. It is, to borrow a phrasefrom the title of Cyril Connolly’s book, an "enemyof promise". It swallows lives.

Among the most pervasive of the elusive fearsthat insinuate themselves into people’s minds inwestern society today is fear of failure. It makes itsbid for control of a person early in life, perhaps in agrade one classroom or on a Little League baseballfield. As it progresses it appears in a variety ofsubsidiary forms: fear of making mistakes, fear ofbreaking with convention, fear of one’s occupation-al superiors, fear of dismissal from a job, andfinally fear of trying. In the latter form it candestroy the spirit of an individual -- and withoutspirit, what is life?

Psychologists have established that fear of fail-ure is frequently a product of misleading personalcomparisons. One of the most disheartening habitsa person can have is to measure oneself againstsuccessful people who have become that waythrough investing years of effort in mastering theirparticular field. Their success is usually the resultof trial and error -- of not making mistakes nowbecause they have made them before and havelearned from them. They have not been afraid tofail, and they have not let their failures stop theirprogress. In short, they have braved fear of failure,and in so doing have broken through to the road tosuccess.

Pitting the power of reasonagainst the power of fear

The principal effect of any kind of fear is im-mobilization. Soldiers gripped by terror on thebattlefield will ~freeze", and thus increase theirchances of getting shot. Fear of failure in partic-ular has a way of immobilizing its victim; then,like some voracious tapeworm, it proceeds to feeditself on failure and more failure. Ultimately, itweakens its host to the point of abject despair.

The remedy for this is what that assiduousstudent of fear, Ernest Hemingway, once called"intelligent courage". Courage is a quality that iswidely misunderstood. It is not an absence or lackof fear, but a reaction to it. In the world of nature,the courage shown by animals in a life-and-deathcrisis is instinctive. Man has this instinct too; inaddition he may bring to it the high intelligencewith which his species has been endowed.

The human power of reason not only reinforcescourage, but helps us find our innate courage attimes when we may feel it has deserted us. In thecase of fear of failure, reason tells us that this fearitself will result in failure, because one mustalways risk failure in order to achieve success.

The power of reason is humanity’s most potentweapon against the power of fear in general. Andin these times we need to match our power ofreason against our fears on a general human scale.Historians may well look back on this as the age ofthe terrorist -- an age in which the use of fear as adevice to gain political ends has been refined to ahigh art.

The assaults of the terrorists call upon peopleeverywhere to "keep their heads" so as to show thatintimidation cannot succeed in making the majo-rity accede to the demands of a ruthless minority.The historical stakes are high, for our reason musttell us that the more public opinion gives in toterrorism, the more terrorism there will be.Through this process our lives could become ruledby the sub machine-gun and the hidden bomb.

On a more subtle level, it will also take a rea-soned resistance to fear to ensure that the progressof mankind does not give way to a state of timorousinertia. Fear is spreading about the deleteriousside-effects of economic growth. The natural, cour-ageous reaction to this would be to establish whatthere is to be feared in the expansion of technologyand the exploitation of resources, and then totackle these identifiable problems.

This would allow the benefits of economic growthto spread to more and more of the people of theearth. The cowardly reaction would be to permitfear to exert its paralyzing grip on our will to presson with the advance of the human species. The onlypossible outcome would be self-defeat.

It cannot stand up toconstructive action

Mass fear has been responsible for some of theghastliest chapters in history. As in the case ofindividuals, the existence of fear among largebodies of people may result in aggression--adesperate striking out at the object of fear. Mutualfear among nations has frequently resulted in war.

In the wrong political hands -- hands like those ofTorquemada of the Spanish Inquisition--massfear has become the tool of persecution and tyran-ny. We see it all around in the world today; oneracial or political group fears another; so the fear-ful group attempts to persecute or even to destroythe group it fears.

If fear, whether individual or collective, usuallygives rise to negative and self-destructive re-sponses, the obverse is true: it cannot stand up toconstructive action. The great Canadian physicianSir William Osler worked out a psychological planfor concentrating action into what he termed ’~day-tight compartments", like the water-tight compart-ments of ships. ~’Each of you is a much moremarvellous organization than an ocean liner, andyou are bound on a longer voyage," he once told agroup of students at Yale University. "By touchinga button at every level of your life you can close theiron doors shutting out the past -- the dead yester-days. Touch another and shut out the future -- theunborn tomorrows. Then you are safe- safe fortoday."

Ask yourself just what youhave to be afraid of

Remembering that fear always relates to thefuture, this would seem like good advice in combat-ting it. But it is obvious that, to be safe day-by-day, we must take some precautions to ensure oursafety in the future. What about preparing fortomorrow? Osler’s answer was that, it we throw allof our energy, intelligence and enthusiasm intodoing superb work today, there will be nothing tofear tomorrow- in other words that present ac-tion generates future security.

Constructive activity at the peak of one’s abili-ties necessarily is a defence against fear. Activitydemands decisiveness; decisiveness is an adjunct ofconfidence; confidence is an ingredient of courage,which is the handler of fear.

But activity in itself may not be enough to dispelfear once it has become rooted. Here contemplationcomes into play. Once in a while each of us should

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take a quiet, solitary hour or two to ask ourselves:Just what do I have to be afraid of?. We should takean inventory of our fears, with special emphasis onthose which may live in us under a different guise.

This done, we should ask ourselves which ofthese fears are imaginary and which are real.Which are of the human, manufactured kind, andwhich are the healthy alarm signals that permeateall of nature? How many of them can be handledwith the instinctive courage of nature, combinedwith the immeasurable advantage of human intel-ligence? Which cannot be dealt with by construc-tive action, taken without delay?

You may find that, as a result of this exercise, atleast some of your fears will have evaporatedbefore your eyes. Others will have been dissipatedby your resolution to take action, provided theaction is taken immediately. Procrastination helpsto strengthen and breed fears.

It is worth speculating that, if people collectivelywere to recognize the fears of society and examinethem in this way, the result would be the same.Some of the fears of the future would prove to beillusory, and some legitimate; and action could betaken to invalidate those legitimate fears.

There is no possibility that people will ever beentirely without fear, nor would they want to be.Without its instinctive warning bells, they wouldbe powerless to cope with danger.

Fear, then, is an ally of man--but at best anuntrustworthy ally. It is devious and ambitious,ever alert for a chance to take us over. It bearsclose watching if it is to be kept in its proper,serviceable place.

The Monthly Letter is grateful for assis-tance in the preparation of this edition toMr. Dick Gariepy, President of MotivationAssociates, Barre, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

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