We start off with a contribution from my friend Dave McKinney

-the editor

We have nothing to fear but Fear itself…
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Oh, really?…
Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer

You are lying in bed late at night, sleeping soundly after a hard day. Suddenly, you are awake. What woke you? It is completely quiet, after all. The only thing you hear is the gentle breathing of your partner sleeping next to you. You roll over and start going back to sleep when you hear the gentle creak on the stair that woke you to begin with. Your eyes open wide but you lie perfectly still. Goosebumps rise all over your body like tiny frozen lumps of clay. You can actually feel the hair rise on the back of your neck and hear it scrape against the pillow as it stands straight out. You slowly turn in bed to look towards the door and see a large shadow cross the wall. What seems like a gallon of adrenaline floods your body and you jump out of bed. In your bedroom doorway stands your 18 year-old son saying, “Hey, Dad. Sorry I’m so late getting in”. You are not sure whether to smack him or hug him so you do neither and just go back to bed, thankful that you didn’t have a handgun handy.

Sound familiar? Fear is a very useful emotion. It lets us know when it is time to protect ourselves and our bodies have some very specific reactions to it. Goosebumps? That’s the skin drawing up to make it harder for a predator to get hold of it. Adrenaline? It boosts the action of the heart, constricts blood vessels so you don’t bleed as fast and gives us a blast of super strength, if needed. How about that hair rising up on the back of the neck? Ever see a dog get mad? The hair rises up on their neck. The human reaction is just a carry over from our caveman days.

Even though we don’t have saber-tooth tigers to worry about anymore, there are plenty of monsters out there to fear. The two gentlemen that I fictitiously quoted at the beginning of this essay are just two of them. With people like this in our midst, is it any wonder that many of us have become urban hermits, afraid to walk out the door lest we be ambushed by one of these creatures. We fear them because we don’t know when and where they will strike. If you are walking in a forest where grizzly bears are known to lurk, you might reasonably expect to encounter one and know to be as prepared as you can for that confrontation. With the human brand of predator, we get no such warning. I have walked through some very bad neighborhoods in my life and had no problems at all only to be confronted by a belligerent drunk on my own street. So who knows when Hannibal Lecter is going to decide that, tonight, your liver is on his menu?

Fear of the unknown is perhaps the strongest fear of all. But, yet, don’t we really enjoy being scared sometime? Don’t movies like Jaws and Psycho thrill us? If not, why do movies like this (and books like The Exorcist) continue to make huge amounts of money? As Stephen King put it in his excellent non-fiction work, Danse Macabre, we see the body under the sheet and want to throw the sheet back to see what gooey thing lies beneath. I think that most of us do enjoy the titillation of being frightened, as long as we know, logically, that we are really in no danger. That lack of danger still allows a bit of adrenaline to flow while we know we are warm and safe. And that flow feels good, too.

Of course, true fear, the constant fear of losing your life, your family, whatever is dear to you, can cause one to turn into emotional zombie. Look at the people we see on the news that have lived under brutal regimes in countries like Uganda and Romania, where entire families from Grandpa down to newborns were wiped out for no apparent reason. Look at the faces of the people that were liberated from the Nazi death camps in the aftermath of World War II and you can see a total lack of comprehension of the fact that they did not have to fear anymore.

I hope and pray that all our fears will be artificial ones, brought on by Chucky and Freddie and their ilk and not by Idi and Adolf. That way, we can enjoy our adrenaline rush and still go home when the movie is over. Wait…what was that? Do I dare look? NYAhahaha.

Dave McKinney, October 31, 2003 – Parker, CO

Editors note-
Here's another fine contribution from my friend John Hanson

-fear-

fdr stated duting a time of great distress in the world the only thing we have to fear is fear itself in need of a swell of courage from the people he so fearlessly led he was compelled to address a matter that was as close to people as the beating of the blood in the veins of the heart yet we would be truly foolish (and i wish to establish here that we have become so) were we to completely ignore and not fear the propensity for men and women to really screw things up

a bible axiom the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom lends itself to what i refer to as indispensable wonder you don't want to be without this fear we do not want to underestimate the miracle of life all around us nor should we even though science so selfconfidently is allowed to tweek and jerk the natural world around as if it was initially constructed in a laboratory in new jersey thus for thinking people to fear mans's capacity for self made disasters may be the difference between complete anihilation and a clever remnant of clear minded romantics who believe in the beauty we have inherited

parents know the natural and necessary instinct expressed in terms of fear by children every child is protected by a highly tuned sense of danger the inherent sense of his or her own vulnerablity when adults lose this sense they tend to wreak havoc even when children lose that sense like street children (portrayed so poignantly in the babenco film pixote) they turn into monsters let us never lose that fear of the potential for violence and destruction that seems to be part and parcel to our lived experience

how is it possible that i can sit here safely at this computer and fear for the world it is my contention that we have wandered into a post enlightment nightmare call it what you will post modern deconstructed freedom whatever it is a mess i say we live in a mess that some things still work in this mess is not surprising nature does extensive work in decomposing complex matter the mess to which i refer is the mess of human failure dressed up in the garments of the ideal of worldly success it is the expressed fear of this writer that we totter extremely close to the edge of world disorder even complete calamity even utter devastation and with the military capacity for anihilation we should very well fear our well reasoned stupidity an intellectual fear will rage with words an artistic fear (i think of picasso's guernica) will utilize images and color a spiritual fear will elicit prayers we need them

it is a good question for self awareness one i learned in the clinical boxes of modern day therapy to ask what do i fear? how do i respond in the world to the impulse of fear? much like in erica jongs dated but still interesting novel fear of flying the characters are tormented with desire and incapacity the title of the book describes the fear of everything from the bathroom to airplanes the feeling of being helplessly tormented and crippled and at the same time wanting craving something sex anything recently i heard the neologism erosthenia (sebastian moore i believe) effectively meaning being anaesthetized we do not know what we desire we do not know how to desire we do not even know if we desire we simply permit ourselves to be swept by the currents of information that indicate to us some avenue for desire in the absence of personal and philosophical speculation we are caught up in a managed swarm of individual impulse i am an advocate for people to transcend the limits of human categorization how easily we give ourselves over to lame social definition don't do that the novel to which i earlier referred presumes to ask that question for the reader do you know what you fear? and why? while we say fear is irrational i proclaim that fear is rationally experientially based there are damn good reasons for fear neurotic incoherent fear is the imagination gone haywire boiyng however it would be a mistake to say it is unfounded that something in the experience of the paranoid schizophrenic is of no use in understanding the fear fear like a stone comes from someplace

for a musician to fear that the way people hear music is being defined and diminished by the recording industry is not simply idle chatter in a world where sound is being perpetually relativized and therefore tuned to a very narrow range of sonic possibility a musician would do well to fear his or her purpose in playing music am i interested in music because i truly believe in its power or it's cool so i like it hey let's record that in our guts we know that the aboriginal didgereedoo resonates with power that michael jackson does not know even if he hears it perhaps the only genuine musician is a selfless person fear cacaphony caca - phony it's everywhere

an old monk once told me that the surest piety is a fear of hell another in a classroom stated that hell is the complete absence of love i offer to the humble reader is not the insanity of our world linked to the fear of the loss of love or as erica saw the fear of the impossibility of love does not a young iraqi get energized in hate by the death of his brother by an american bullet when what we know of love is taken from us we get perturbed i would say even go nuts i would even say further break down a parent's fear for the safety of a child is what makes the world go round we must fear the thinking that cheapens human life that cheapens the natural beauty of the world there is a mentality alive today that says life is cheap a good novel to help us understand that is blood meridian by cormac mccarthy if god is not beaming forth in loving desire in every face then at some level we are permitting ourselves to dismiss and/or manipulate human nature the wisest metaphysician fears the first few steps of intellectual inquiry because he she knows one wrong step can take you to a place you needn't go or would most detest going if only you could see man cannot stand too much reality to keep a cold eyed peeled on reality and a warm heart and an insatiable desire commingled with fear of god is the avenue to nirvana let's go there making the sign of the cross

paz

john hanson

Editors note-
Here's yet another contribution which was posted on an internet bulletin board that I participate in and I was so impressed that I asked the author for permission to reprint it here-
The editor

-Fear-

None of us has the absolute truth. How can we? Those who believe they do are deluded and dangerous and it seems to me that their killing is reflective of the insecurity they feel when their version of absolute truth appears to be under threat. They hold to their "absolute truth" with a tenacious fanaticism that includes so many rules and regulations, they imprison themselves within it. Truth is supposed to set us free, not put us in a straight jacket.

Others just use religion as an excuse, a blanket for the anger, frustration, hatred and fear they will not, or cannot, deal with as they should. That isn't to say their anger, frustration and fear are not honestly felt and have been occasioned very wrongly by others, but murder, terrorism and war have proved themselves over and over to never be the answer.

As long as there is fanaticism and self interest to a degree, there will be strife and horror. If not in one place then in another. I believe fear is what drives most people, fear of poverty, of failure, of losing, of pain, of a hundred or more different possibilities better avoided. The few true saints of this world were never driven by fear, but only by love. They never destroyed, only ever built up, often at extreme cost to themselves. And only that kind of love can drive away the fear that drives. I think they found the closest thing to truth that we will ever know here, and that set them free.

Veronica Parkin

Fear

I thought this was a good topic for the Halloween season and it is also a good topic for a few other reasons that I won’t go into right now because I’m afraid to. Well, not really but it sounds fun to write it like that.

Fear has its uses; I’ve always felt that stage fright makes me play better, for instance. And my fear of opening my mouth and sounding like an idiot has often kept me from opening my mouth and proving it (not often enough, unfortunately, and my fingers just keep on typing).

But I have learned. The fear of darkness that I had as a child has been overcome and now I am not afraid of it and even welcome it at times, and spiders don’t really creep me out the way they used to. But I can imagine scenarios where it might be handy to have a bit of fear of both darkness and spiders.

There was a woman I knew who had a terrible fear of snakes. One day we were walking in the woods and encountered a harmless garter snake. She froze up and would not proceed any further and I saw on her face a look that looked exactly like I have felt on occasion when encountering a precipice, a look I’ve seen in nightmares. I saw so much of myself in that look.

I like to think that I am a brave person but often I fear that this is just a thin veneer that I wear to delude myself. If put to the test I fear failure.

There are different kinds of fear. I remember a story told to me when I was a very young child that really made me scared, gave me the shivers; an odd story about a corpse looking for its liver. I don’t remember who told me that story but I do remember not being able to sleep that night and waking up with nightmares. The childhood terror kind of fear.

Then there is the fear of standing out and getting shot down, the repressive kind of fear (very useful for oppressive governments). I’ve been seeing more of this fear in the last 3 years than at any other time in my life. It is a very painful kind of fear because I know that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Then there is the fear of death which I think we all feel at sometime in our lives. But it can be overcome. To the reasoned mind death is just one more step and one which we all must take sooner or later, and not a cause for fear particularly if one has lived a good life. I don’t want to go right now but when the time comes I will look death in the eye unafraid.

Over on the “downloads” page of DaveCofell.com I have added a song I wrote in 1985 entitled “Fear.” I hope you check it out; the lyrics are available there as well if you would like to sing along- don’t be afraid.

Dave Cofell
Early November, 2003