Vol. 59, No. 12 — December 1978 —
The Meaning
of Fear
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Fear is a force that is always
ready to make its move for domination over a personality 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 made about fear
is that it always relates to the future. You cannot be afraid
of the immediate present; you cannot be afraid of the past.
Neither can you be afraid of a thing, a person or a situation;
you can only be frightened of what that thing or person might
do, or of what might happen. You may fear that something has
already happened, but this too relates to the future because
what you really fear is your own discovery that the dreaded
event has occurred.
For fear, by definition, is an emotion caused by impending
danger or evil. Therefore it can only be validated when events
are beyond the control of those it occupies. Since few matters
in the ordinary course of life are totally beyond one's control,
fear is a prerequisite to our well-being and even survival.
One is afraid of what might happen; one takes action to prevent
it from happening or to mitigate the consequences; more often
than not, the pre-emptive action has the desired effect.
This can be seen best in the world of nature, in which fear,
though it may go by different names, is general. A hare will
flee from an attacking lynx; a bear will shrink back shuddering
from the approach of a forest fire. No matter how mighty,
every creature possesses the instinct to recoil from danger.
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 to tumble down the stairs
- each experiences fear in this same essence. Fear is nature's
great alarm system, enabling all the creatures of the earth
to obviate harm.
But among human beings there is always a danger that fear
will cease to function as a useful servant and become the
master. It can take control of a personality. It can gain
dominance over whole nations. It has the potential to rule
the world.
Franklin D. Roosevelt showed a keen understanding of the
limitless power of fear when, with the economy of the United
States seemingly tumbling down on the heads of bewildered
Americans, he told them that all they had to fear was fear
itself. The "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror" of
which he spoke makes a good example of the conversion of fear
from a beneficial instinct into a menace in its own right.
When the Great Depression first broke out, people reacted
with panic. This is a natural manifestation 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 deal with the danger before them, people slid into the
hopeless inertia which is a mark of cowardice. Cowardice is
a uniquely human characteristic born of another such characteristic,
imagination. When the imagination takes a positive track,
man is full of strength and courage. When it turns negative,
he becomes a helpless slave of fear.
"It knows no master but one. His name is understanding."
Thus an essay in the Duluth Bulletin identifies a vital
feature of the nature of fear. When medical researchers set
out to work on a cure for a disease, they first compile everything
that is known about the disease in all its aspects. So it
is with fear; only through an understanding of its origins,
its symptoms, and its effects, may it be overcome.
"Fear always springs from ignorance," Ralph Waldo Emerson
wrote. That may be an oversimplification, but it nonetheless
helps to point the way to an understanding of fear. It is
usually the product of incomplete knowledge or incomplete
thinking. Consider the fears one develops at the outset of
life.
"Mommy, I'm afraid of the dark. Please leave the light on."
Early childhood brings a succession of misinformed, unfounded
fears. Yet a fear is a fear, whether it has its foundation
in the mind or in external reality. Parents should treat childhood
fears seriously, gently and gradually attempting to put them
to rest.
The very baselessness of childhood fears offers parents
an opportunity to teach their children a lesson that will
last all their lives: that most fears exist only in the imagination.
It can be better demonstrated to a child than to a person
of any other age that, in the childlike words of Rudyard Kipling,
"Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are your
own fears."
Parents should watch out for developing
phobias
It should be borne in mind in bringing up children that,
like a disease, fear is contagious. In her excellent work
on the subject, Understanding Fear, Bonaro Overstreet
explains: "... Fear is not a private affair because the person
deeply infected by it will infect others, the most common
infection being that from parent to child."
Fearful adults, then, are capable of unconsciously nurturing
fears in their offspring that may never be overcome. Without
meaning to do so, the parents may encourage normal childhood
fears to the degree where debilitating phobias result.
Dozens of phobias are common among children. Parents should
be aware of what devastating force they can have. The ultimate
danger is that the child - and later the adult - will withdraw
into a social isolation in which fresh fears will breed, setting
off a cycle of misery. In extreme cases phobia 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 without potential phobias.
Some may avoid heights, some get a case of "the jitters" when
alone in an empty house, some feel an aversion to dogs. Most
of us control those feelings with our intellects, which tell
us that they are illogical. Many other unfortunates, however,
are unable to keep a rein on their fears, though they may
know full well how unreasonable these fears really are.
Fear will masquerade in many different
guises
People can harbour some very strange phobias, such as fear
of wool and fear of Friday. To those who have them, these
fears are vividly real. Two points should be made about phobias:
first that people are able to live with them, and second that
they are not incurable. A Canadian airline once ran a course
for people who were terrified of flying, gradually allaying
their fears by psychological means until they were ready to
take a specially organized conditioning flight. The majority
of those who took the course are able to fly quite comfortably
today.
Phobias have at least one merit in that they focus a person's
fears. Those who have them know exactly what they are afraid
of. Most of us are subject to a more insidious kind of fear
which often is not identified. We may not even know that we
have it, but it is there.
It masquerades in many guises, among them shyness, anxiety,
caution, conformity, false cynicism, and indolence. In these
forms fear blights hope, kills ambition, stalls progress and
ruins personal relationships. It is, to borrow a phrase from
the title of Cyril Connolly's book, an "enemy of promise".
It swallows lives.
Among the most pervasive of the elusive fears that insinuate
themselves into people's minds in western society today is
fear of failure. It makes its bid for control of a person
early in life, perhaps in a grade one classroom or on a Little
League baseball field. As it progresses it appears in a variety
of subsidiary forms: fear of making mistakes, fear of breaking
with convention, fear of one's occupational superiors, fear
of dismissal from a job, and finally fear of trying. In the
latter form it can destroy the spirit of an individual - and
without spirit, what is life?
Psychologists have established that fear of failure is frequently
a product of misleading personal comparisons. One of the most
disheartening habits a person can have is to measure oneself
against successful people who have become that way through
investing years of effort in mastering their particular field.
Their success is usually the result of trial and error - of
not making mistakes now because they have made them before
and have learned from them. They have not been afraid to fail,
and they have not let their failures stop their progress.
In short, they have braved fear of failure, and in so doing
have broken through to the road to success.
Pitting the power of reason against
the power of fear
The principal effect of any kind of fear is immobilization.
Soldiers gripped by terror on the battlefield will "freeze",
and thus increase their chances of getting shot. Fear of failure
in particular has a way of immobilizing its victim; then,
like some voracious tapeworm, it proceeds to feed itself on
failure and more failure. Ultimately, it weakens its host
to the point of abject despair.
The remedy for this is what that assiduous student of fear,
Ernest Hemingway, once called "intelligent courage". Courage
is a quality that is widely misunderstood. It is not an absence
or lack of fear, but a reaction to it. In the world of nature,
the courage shown by animals in a life-and-death crisis is
instinctive. Man has this instinct too; in addition he may
bring to it the high intelligence with which his species has
been endowed.
The human power of reason not only reinforces courage, but
helps us find our innate courage at times when we may feel
it has deserted us. In the case of fear of failure, reason
tells us that this fear itself will result in failure, because
one must always risk failure in order to achieve success.
The power of reason is humanity's most potent weapon against
the power of fear in general. And in these times we need to
match our power of reason against our fears on a general human
scale. Historians may well look back on this as the age of
the terrorist - an age in which the use of fear as a device
to gain political ends has been refined to a high art.
The assaults of the terrorists call upon people everywhere
to "keep their heads" so as to show that intimidation cannot
succeed in making the majority accede to the demands of a
ruthless minority. The historical stakes are high, for our
reason must tell us that the more public opinion gives in
to terrorism, the more terrorism there will be. Through this
process our lives could become ruled by the sub machine-gun
and the hidden bomb.
On a more subtle level, it will also take a reasoned resistance
to fear to ensure that the progress of mankind does not give
way to a state of timorous inertia. Fear is spreading about
the deleterious side-effects of economic growth. The natural,
courageous reaction to this would be to establish what there
is to be feared in the expansion of technology and the exploitation
of resources, and then to tackle these identifiable problems.
This would allow the benefits of economic growth to spread
to more and more of the people of the earth. The cowardly
reaction would be to permit fear to exert its paralyzing grip
on our will to press on with the advance of the human species.
The only possible outcome would be self-defeat.
It cannot stand up to constructive
action
Mass fear has been responsible for some of the ghastliest
chapters in history. As in the case of individuals, the existence
of fear among large bodies of people may result in aggression
- a desperate striking out at the object of fear. Mutual fear
among nations has frequently resulted in war. In the wrong
political hands - hands like those of Torquemada of the Spanish
Inquisition - mass fear has become the tool of persecution
and tyranny. We see it all around in the world today; one
racial or political group fears another; so the fearful group
attempts to persecute or even to destroy the group it fears.
If fear, whether individual or collective, usually gives
rise to negative and self-destructive responses, the obverse
is true: it cannot stand up to constructive action. The great
Canadian physician Sir William Osler worked out a psychological
plan for concentrating action into what he termed "day-tight
compartments", like the water-tight compartments of ships.
"Each of you is a much more marvellous organization than an
ocean liner, and you are bound on a longer voyage," he once
told a group of students at Yale University. "By touching
a button at every level of your life you can close the iron
doors shutting out the past - the dead yesterdays. Touch another
and shut out the future - the unborn tomorrows. Then you are
safe - safe for today."
Ask yourself just what you have to
be afraid of
Remembering that fear always relates to the future, this
would seem like good advice in combatting it. But it is obvious
that, to be safe day-by-day, we must take some precautions
to ensure our safety in the future. What about preparing for
tomorrow? Osler's answer was that, it we throw all of our
energy, intelligence and enthusiasm into doing superb work
today, there will be nothing to fear tomorrow - in other words
that present action generates future security.
Constructive activity at the peak of one's abilities necessarily
is a defence against fear. Activity demands decisiveness;
decisiveness is an adjunct of confidence; confidence is an
ingredient of courage, which is the handler of fear.
But activity in itself may not be enough to dispel fear
once it has become rooted. Here contemplation comes into play.
Once in a while each of us should take a quiet, solitary hour
or two to ask ourselves: Just what do I have to be afraid
of?. We should take an inventory of our fears, with special
emphasis on those which may live in us under a different guise.
This done, we should ask ourselves which of these fears
are imaginary and which are real. Which are of the human,
manufactured kind, and which are the healthy alarm signals
that permeate all of nature? How many of them can be handled
with the instinctive courage of nature, combined with the
immeasurable advantage of human intelligence? Which cannot
be dealt with by constructive action, taken without delay?
You may find that, as a result of this exercise, at least
some of your fears will have evaporated before your eyes.
Others will have been dissipated by your resolution to take
action, provided the action is taken immediately. Procrastination
helps to strengthen and breed fears.
It is worth speculating that, if people collectively were
to recognize the fears of society and examine them in this
way, the result would be the same. Some of the fears of the
future would prove to be illusory, and some legitimate; and
action could be taken to invalidate those legitimate fears.
There is no possibility that people will ever be entirely
without fear, nor would they want to be. Without its instinctive
warning bells, they would be powerless to cope with danger.
Fear, then, is an ally of man - but at best an untrustworthy
ally. It is devious and ambitious, ever alert for a chance
to take us over. It bears close watching if it is to be kept
in its proper, serviceable place.
The Monthly Letter is grateful for assistance in
the preparation of this edition to Mr. Dick Gariepy, President
of Motivation Associates, Barre, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
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