The emancipation of fear

“If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making
rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No it’s not. It’s
to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices.”

Today´s topic is fear. Previous episodes have focused on a number of things. By now, we have
witnessed just how absurd our society is. We have also seen that it really doesn´t have to been this
absurd way and that, as a species, we human beings are living very much below our potential as a
society and as individuals. Utopia is possible. In fact, it already has happened a couple of times in
recent history and probably before that.

On earlier episodes I discussed the structure of our absurd society. A structure which mostly
remains in the shadows, not because it is difficult to find and observe but because most of us
refuse so see it; to shed light upon it. I am aware that I have not yet published that episode in
English. On the one hand I am sorry, on the other hand I am not it is hard work and time
consuming so I might do it or I might not.

Now then, this episode will focus on the mechanism that, in a way, fuels and maintains our absurd
structure. That mechanism is fear. The junction between politics, understood as the struggle for
power and not necessarily as a force for emancipation, and fear is clear. According to G. Ferrero
every civilization is the product of a long struggle against fear. I personally agree with Margaret
Mead the anthropologist who claims that civilization begins with caring for the weak.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTKJldfHJ_Y

No one better suited to examine fear than the great theorist on the subject Jean Delumeau.
According to the late French author, fear contains a clinical framework, it is a shock emotion
generated by the awareness of an imminent danger that in turn generates physiological
responses: “the emotion of fear generates unusual energy and makes a difference for the body
whole, manifesting at the same time internally and externally in the human being”.

There are individual fears and collective fears (fears of the common and fears of the elite). There is
fear, which "has a precise object that can be faced, since it is well identified", and as opposed to
anguish, "a painful wait in the face of a danger that is not clearly identified". In other words,
distress is "a global feeling of insecurity."

Throughout history, our civilization has denied, hidden and shamed fear. For Descartes, fear
stemmed from excessive cowardice. For the Roman poet Virgil, fear was "the evidence of low
birth", while for Mointagne and la Bruyère fear manifested itself in the poor, due to their
"propensity for cowardice".
For now, let´s head back to Augsburg in the XVI th century. There, foreigners and “common folk”
are the source of fear. XVIth Augsburg is a city extremely protected by stone and iron. Common
folk’s emotions are unpredictable and dangerous, and foreigners are most likely invaders. As the
IXth century proverb reveals, this attitude is quite present in western culture: "If a foreigner comes
to your city, he relates to you and agrees with you, don't trust him; on the contrary, that is when
you have to be most careful."

Like I mentioned before, there is one emotion (or is it feeling?) that can be attributed to those of
“low birth”: fear. Before Christ was born, the Roman poet Virgil had already sentenced: “Fear is
proof of a low birth.” And so it became evident truth thereafter. The rich and noble know no fear.
John the Fearless comes to mind as does Charles the Reckless.

Symphorien Champier, a turifeary of the nobility already noted that “the lord must take delight
and comfort in the things that produce suffering and toil in his men”. Machiavelli, speaking on
behalf of reason, advised rulers that it is better to be feared, than to be loved if they were to
maintain power. The more afraid we are, the more we obey.

The powerful, the noble and rich, on the contrary have always been presented as brave. Fear has
always been something to be embarrassed about. Of course, 1789 brought about the revolution of
the fearful and cowardly. The masses found out that they too could instill fear; after all,
Robespierre´s was a regime of terror. Still, no one wants or has ever wanted to accept their own
fear, not even the cowardly low classes. After revolutionary ideas had captured the minds and
hearts of those far beyond French borders, kilometers away and years afar, Venezuela´s national
anthem was titled Glory to the brave people. No one who does great things sings songs to their
fear.

The history of fear in the west is quite interesting. "Praise the sea, but stay on the shore" is an
ancient Latin proverb. Similar proverbs can be found in Russian culture and even amongst the
seafaring Dutch. Of course, beyond the sea lay invaders, disease and the unknown. In any case, the
magnificent power of a choleric ocean wave was enough to instill fear upon civilization, until not
so long ago.

I find fear of the sea interesting because, from a psychoanalytic standpoint the sea was a signifier
for all things unknown, and ultimately for all things unacknowledged. Cape Bojador (cabo bojador)
in Morocco was the frontier between the known and the unknown for Portuguese sailors under
Henry the Navigator´s command. Therefore, it came to be known at the Cape of Fear.

Fear of course, is and has been a powerful weapon of deterrence. In XV th and XVIth centuries,
European nations discouraged others from exploring unknown lands by fabricating and
exaggerating stories about the sorts of threats that dwelled beyond. Dragons, humans with eyes in
their abdomens, men without heads, basilisks and the now familiar crocodiles and hippopotamus
were all part of these tales.
I am quite aware that the unknown, the foreign and the exotic also elicits attraction and
fascination and has done so throughout history. The unknown, that region where everything is
possible, allows shedding light upon our banished and unacknowledged desires. For more analysis
on that topic you probably want to check the previous episode, for now, only available in Spanish.

Amplifying on the historical implications of the negation fear, there is and has been throughout
western history, a fear of looking danger in the eye, of accepting danger and therefore the fear
that it carries along. In the case of the bubonic plague, negation was quite present:

“In the streets, in stores, in houses, it was welcomed with a smile of

disbelief, with teasing, with a contempt mixed with anger to everyone who ventured a
word about danger, to everyone who talked about plague. The same disbelief, let's say better, the
same blindness, the same obstinacy prevailed in the Senate, in the Council of decurions,
and in all the bodies of the magistracy.

When the danger in negation can no longer be negated, fear becomes perennial. People became
afraid of the dead, the living, of the air they breathed and of themselves. Much like in Stalinist
paranoia, where anyone could be infected with treason, the plague meant anyone could be
infected with the disease. Neighbor, friend, father and son all became sources of suspicion and the
marital bed became a deathtrap.

And speaking of negation, it would be unfair on my part to not speak about the people that our
society has historically negated: The poor and destitute. They too have been a constant source of
fear. Their sedition, and moreover the alternatives that they have attempted to create. Those have
been wiped out much like a disease.

Attempts to build classless societies, abolishing private property, without hierarchies, where
polygamy and nudism were the norm occurred in Tabor in the XVth century and in Munster in the
XVIth century. Both were carried out by unemployed artisans, criminals, clergy in opposition to the
church, poor nobility, and destitute farmers. The chimpanzees that have wanted to become
bonobos have historically been squashed by tribes that refused to integrate their own. Humans
squash what they fear, and our sources of fear are always projections of ourselves. Besides our
fear of sedition, there is also the fear that originates from the anxiety of not being told what to do
by someone. Power vacuums have fueled public disorders and panic through history.

What about the day after the revolution? Fear still remains. Should the revolutionaries be the
winners, they will fear reprisal by the former elites and their allies. Should the elite win, and the
revolution fail, then the poor, the homeless, the unemployed and those incorrigibles not included
in the social order will be a cause of fear. The change that revolution might bring creates fear,
sometimes very concrete and fearsome situations. The big scare in Paris, Robespierre´s Reign of
Terror, and of course populists, extremists, terrorists are all here to change the way things are.

Of course, concrete conservational fears are also within us. The fears of going hungry or of
external conditions that threaten our very lives also dwell within us. Excessive taxes or any threat
in general can make those fears rise within us. In any case, when there is a real and urgent threat,
there truly is no time to panic.
Now then, from the viewpoint of electoral politics, fear is a marvelous resource. Marvelous mind
you, speaking in a Machiavellian manner. Fear creates very obedient masses and individuals. In
modern day United States, powerful elites have created, vilified, and amplified multiple synthetic
sources of fear. This in turn, leads to a Culture of Fear, a term coined by Barry Glassner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6IP80Wx0Mk

Road rage, single men, single mothers, the Catholic Church, suicide, crack babies, ADHD, teen
mothers and black men have all been the protagonists of fear campaigns originating from power
structures and dispersed by media outlets. Persuading an entire population to fear one of its
members during any given moment is extremely useful in order to maintain and continue existing
power structures.

Of course, is the threat is foreign, well then political control works even better. How many of their
liberties have American people given up due to the war on terror? Is the war on terror not just
another name for the war on fear? Fear from within, fear from abroad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVUa5BLwthY

Under capitalism, fear is also a wonderful instrument for increasing consumption, by means of
creating uniformed consumers making irrational choices. Planned obsolescence is nothing
different than the management of fear. Basically, planned obsolescence is shame of having the old
and pride of having the new. Fear comes from not being able to transit from the former, to the
latter. Here, the strain to conform is such a heavy burden that deviance, including all sorts of
crime, is resorted to because people feel afraid of exclusion, they experience the fear of want.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NOFSOeOBsk

So far, I have exposed Jean Delumeau´s ideas. Delumeau considers that our fear is fear of death.
From the standpoint of psychotherapy however, the situation is more complex. In fact, gestalt
psychotherapy posits pretty much the opposite thesis. Fear, is fear of life, not death.

Wolf Biermann, German artist and dissident, considered that true idealists should ask themselves
the question “is there is life after death?” Psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Zizek considers
that the right question we should ask ourselves is if there is life before death. African slaves in
French colonial Haiti knew this question all too well. They also gave the proper answer,
considering their condition of servitude. It turns out, that those African slaves referred to each
other as zombies (that is actually the origin of the word for modern popular culture): After all, they
truly were living dead. Many of us fear to live our life as if we were alive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOzgz1Ddmz8

In fact, according to the enneagram, there is one type of personality that receives that specific
name: fear. Ultimately, fear is a neurotic escape to avoid the present. Past and future only exist in
our minds, and neurotic fear acts as a mechanism to distract us from our life.
Moreover, according to gestalt psychotherapy, fear is very closely related with doubt. Neurotic
doubt is the metaphorical handbrake of impulses and emotions that the fearful character refuses
to accept and carry out. Fear then, is a mental phenomenon that prevents and prohibits bodily
impulses (here) and emotions (now) in the individual, through the mechanism of permanent doubt
regarding the consequences of any given action.

This is quite telling, for when death is certain people forget about their fears. During the bubonic
plague for example, when death was imminent, people turned to bodily pleasures, for there was
nothing to fear.

Ultimately, fear of death is fear of the ego. The I. Our ego, that character we play for society and
for ourselves will always accompany us; however it should certainly NOT determine us or distance
us from our impulses, needs, emotions and ultimately, from our lives and our paths.

Fear then is a distraction. Looking fear in the eye does not imply a challenge or a conflict with our
fears. To look at fear in the eye, means accepting it as part of us, without banishing it to the
shadows. This implies integrating fear. By achieving this, we are in turn admitting its presence and
the emotions it generates within us.

There lies the emancipation of fear.

(141, la espera de Dios).

(86, frenesí ante el miedo)

So far, I have exposed Jean Delumeau´s ideas. Delumeau considers fear is fear of death.

Fear of life.

Panic doesn’t work, because when the threat is real the situation might be too serous too panic.

War on terror

The big scare L.Febvre. The regime of terror in rebespierre. Terrorists.

https://actualidad.rt.com/video/343167-heridos-cortes-trafico-paro-armado-eln-colombia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTKJldfHJ_Y (Hitchcock)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBSrpBYOaGI (Miedo Galeano)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew1aeidFY_U (Galeano mujeres sin miedo)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amNpxQANk0M (Mothing to fear but fear itself)

Road rage (not guns)

Child Porn (Embitttered Loner, incels, the single man who has no hope, catholic church)

Suicide: Straight As, good looking Princeton Harvard, hung abnd shot himself himself (family
trouble)

Crack babies, ADHD - Us versus them – crack babies are really poor babies

"The greatest impediment to cognitive development in young children is poverty."

Teen mothers, single mothers

Black men