Fear, Law and Criminology: Critical Issues in Applying the Philosophy of Fearism

By Desh Subba, R. Michael Fisher and B. Maria Kumar

With the growing awareness of many critics of risk society, the culture of fear and the dangerous rising levels of unhealthy fear around individual, group, and public insecurities, three keen observers of the human condition have joined experiences, theories, and ideas to create a fresh vision for how best to look at the fear problem and how law and criminology may benefit from a new lens or perspective.

The authors, with their backgrounds in the study of the philosophy of fearism (a la Subba), bring a new lens to law and criminology to social policies, politics, and policing and how best to improve enforcement of safety, security, and moral order. The fearist perspective of a philosophy of fearism creates an exciting, challenging, and sometimes radical position, whereby the authors argue that fear itself requires a concerted focus for analysis and solutionsthat is, if law and criminology are to fully meet the highest standards of serving justice for all in a globalizing complicated world.

Going beyond the simple fear of crime or fear of policing issues commonly dealt within discourses about law, the philosophy of fearism offers other concepts with a rich vocabulary introduced in this book, one of which is the introduction of a new subdiscipline called fearcriminalysis. Readers will find, additional to the main text as collective writing of the three coauthors, several fresh dialogues of the three authors in conversation, which bring their individual personalities, philosophies, and approaches into a weaving of differences and similarities. Overall, they each agree that fear has been underestimated and often misinterpreted in law and criminology, and this has resulted, at times, in exacerbating insecurity, crime, and injustice in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Aug 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984501158

Desh Subba

R. Michael Fisher, Ph.D., was born and raised in Canada, and is currently living in the USA with his life-partner. He is a researcher, educator, counselor, artist and integral human development consultant with over 25 years experience studying fear and fearlessness and their role in society, especially in education. He has published many monographs, book chapters and journal articles dedicated to improving the quality of life. In 1989 he founded the In Search of Fearlessness Project and has founded several organizations since that time. He is currently Director of the Center for Spiritual Inquiry and Integral Education. His opus work, published in 2010, is The World's Fearlessness Teachings: A Critical Integral Approach to Fear Management/Education for the 21st Century. Desh Subba is a philosopher, novelist and poet. He was born in Dharan, in the eastern part of Nepal in 1965 and currently lives with his family in Hong Kong. He started Philosophy of Fearism as a literary movement in 1999 with his fiction and in 2011 with the line poem. He’s published four novels in Nepali. His third novel Aadibashi is recently published in English, entitled The Tribesmen's Journey to Fearless. In this novel he experiments with the Philosophy of Fearism in literature. He has received three book awards in 2015: National Indie Excellence Awards (winner), International Book Awards (finalist) and New York Book Festival Award (honorable mention). He continues to write while speaking at universities, like Hong Kong University and elsewhere about Fearism. He the leading fearism spokesperson in the East, and co-founder of the Fearism Study Center (2009-) in Dharan, Nepal.

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Copyright (c) 2018 R. Michael Fisher, Desh Subba, B. Maria Kumar.

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Rev. date: 08/14/2018

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DEDICATED TO…

known and unknown philosophy of fearism students, colleagues and supporters from all over the world.

CONTENTS

Figures & Appendices

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 Philosophy Of Fearism: Multiple Methodological &

Contesting Discourse Perspectives

Rationality & Studying Fear(ism): A Perspectivist Way

Beyond Simple Rigid Oppositions & Enemy-making

Introduction to Philosophy of Fearism: Contesting Discourses

Fisher’s Domination-Conflict-Fear-Violence (DCFV) Theory

Chapter 2 Interrelational Ecology Of Fear, Law, Criminology:

Historical And Theoretical Interests

Social Control: Brief History of the Behavior of Law

Law and Fear: A Brief Case Study

Chapter 3 Fearology And Dephilosophy Of Security:

Seductions And Addictions To Worrying

Philosophy of Fearlessness & Fearology

The Security Problem of Worrying

Chapter 4 Fear Of Crime: Fear Of Cities, Fear Of Humans

Fear in the City and Landscapes

Chapter 5 Rethinking Terrorism

Terrorism: A Guide to Fearful Times Based on a Philosophy of

Fearism

References

Glossary

FIGURES & APPENDICES

Figure 1 Knowledge Structures and Other Components of this Book

Figure 2 The Historical & Evolutionary Fear Problem

Figure 3 Three Pillars of a New Model Based on Fearism

Appendix 1 Four Competing Discourses

Appendix 2 A Dialogue On Terrorism: The Fearist Perspective

Appendix 3 Hierarchical Security: Problem Of Fear Of The Eternal

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I (Kumar) would like to appreciate my wife Vijayalakshmi for her unfailing confidence in all of my endeavors that help to keep my spirits every time up! I (Subba), with many fond memories of my mother, I thank her for surrounding me with a healthy environment of family and community, which are the bricks, concrete and iron to build a house, which is my pyramid. I (Fisher) acknowledge the steadfast patience and encouragement towards my work from my two colleagues and co-authors during the building process of this book. Thanks for participating in the initial series of dialogues on fearcriminalysis when I nor you really fully understood what that term might mean. It is this kind of courageous creative inquiry together, across cultural and geographic distances, that made this book a special endeavor for me, unlike any I have had before. Your friendship means a lot to me.

I acknowledge the work of Osinakachi Akuma Kalu for his efforts to bring together the dialogue on terrorism for Appendix 2 and allows us to reprint it here for our book. A warm thanks goes out to Dr. Don Trent Jacobs (aka Four Arrows) for his spirited support of my own work on fearism and fearology and for connecting me with Luke Barnesmoore, an important young geographer, in helping re-shape some of my recent ideas around the city, cosmology and the role of fear in urban planning and design. Thank you to Luke Barnesmoore for permission to publish some of your ideas in Appendix 3. I am grateful for the opportunity to reprint the Technical Paper No. 57, Terrorism: A Guide to Fearful Times Based on a Philosophy of Fearism ©2016 R. Michael Fisher and Desh Subba; and special thanks to the In Search of Fearlessness Research Institute for permission to reprint Technical Paper No. 57 in Chapter Five.

And finally a heartfelt thanks to Barbara Bickel, my life-partner, all the book reviewers, and in particular Mariana Salcido for her feedback and critiques in supporting the final draft and improvements that a philosophy of fearism surely needs to consider in the years to come.

INTRODUCTION

When society and governments are enlightened with a new idea, the new idea opens doors to new solutions. Fearcriminalysis is like that, we just have to keep doing the work, opening doors, without expecting good results, at least not right away.

—Desh Subba

We have before us as a society where fear is still rather misinterpreted, a great challenge for fearologists, terrorologists, traumatologists, victimologists and criminologists—for starters—who have to learn to work collaboratively in the future. The fearcriminalysist could coordinate and synthesize for such teams.

—R. Michael Fisher

It is the responsibility of police to facilitate public peace and order in the society so that all the individuals enjoy their lives freely and fearlessly….Fisher’s coinage of the term ‘Fearcriminalysis’ will certainly, as I foresee, make many imaginations surrounding fear more clear, as we are aware that understanding and thinking are directly proportional to the ambit of one’s vocabulary.

—B. Maria Kumar

The things that interest us as co-authors vary greatly as we have each been born in different parts of the world (Desh in Nepal, Michael in Canada, Maria in India), we have different careers, social status, cultural backgrounds and different personalities. Yet we are inveterate life-time observers of what people do. We like to speculate and theorize as to what motivations drive humans to do what they do in particular circumstances. The complexity of humanity intrigues us and is beautiful in and of itself. Although, we don’t always like how humans behave. We abhor the subtle and gross hurting and violence we see. We know we are all capable of causing suffering; yet there is a faith we have in human potential beyond our worst-sides. This book documents our ongoing conversation about the nature of Fear, Law and Criminology for the purpose of discovering better how to bring forward positive human potential on a local and global scale.

There lies deeper a degree of unity below the surface differences we each have. We look for evolutionary and developmental patterns, principles and generalizations. We look for fundamental motivations that are more ethical and those that lead to immorality. We look for practices that really work to improve things, individually and collectively, and not merely in the short-term but in the long-term. We follow no one belief system, religion, or ideology to explain human nature. We believe in free-thinking people to make decisions that free us from our chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eminent 18th century French philosopher complained, ‘we are born free, and yet everywhere we are in chains.’ Humanity seems often severely limited by its own created chains. In the 21st century, humanity is confronted with re-examining choices, values, beliefs and worldviews. Creating a sane, sustainable and healthy world is not an option anymore as global crises are putting great pressures on human intelligence, emotional capacities, and our skills of adaptation. As one Harvard University psychologist put it, ‘humans are already in over their heads’¹ as complex problems are overwhelming our cognitive developmental capacities—the old ways of thinking are not working so well anymore. As the planet shrinks and we realize how intimately interconnected we are in one web of Life, it is time to re-think about our problems as no longer isolated or merely local, but part of a system of organizational dynamics where joint responsibility, rather than blaming and fighting, is the only rational way to find solutions.

How to analyze the most complex problems or what some call global wicked problems,² say like crime, and how to bring about solutions, has become more complex in this globalizing world shrinking—if not sinking. We’re all on the same sinking ship, so to speak, so our diversity of perspectives and experiences ought to be cherished and brought together, as much as possible. Yet, we also don’t want to over idolize differences and ignore our similarities, our common foundations as humans. As co-authors, we have all found, each in our own way, the ‘truth’ that human beings are motivated along a universal psychological spectrum with two poles: Freedom and Fear.³ Our guess is that all other motivations of humans (and beyond humans), more or less, fall under this umbrella or continuum. An implicit question running through our conversation in this book, and one that has run through philosophy from the beginning of recorded human history is: Which pole is going to prevail and shape our destiny? Can we alter our fate, alter the shaping forces and create to some degree our own history, our own quality of life, that we really want—that will free us from our chains? How best can we relate to the powerful meta-motivational forces of Fear and Freedom? We can start by not making Fear the binary enemy of Freedom. Both forces are needed.

Kiran Jethwa’s culinary adventure TV series The Fearless Chef reminds us of primal humans’ struggle involving first hand dangers to harvest food for survival. This is especially relevant in extreme situations of perils from harsh environments and wild animals. In a way, whether it entails walking in the flaming salt plains of Ethiopia to gather salt or travelling to the hostile Sundarban swamp forests of Bangladesh to fish or hunting hares from horseback in the rocky habitats of Kazakhstan, each episode conveys a life-time message that survival calls for fearlessness.

Fearlessness means ‘fear-free’ and/or with the qualities of such, which we could call freedom. That is, fearlessness is a form of ‘freedom from fear’, where fear-based conditions no longer dominate one’s well-being and decisions. The underlying meaning presupposes that there exists a fear antedate, at least in the mind of the individual. Though there has been a continuous debate over whether fears are hereditary or learned, scientists tend to agree with the explanation that both the views are correct, of course to varying extents. Swedish psychophysiologist Arne Öhman found in his research studies⁴ that fear has been shaped by evolution—and dialectically no doubt, evolution has been shaped by fear. The humans of a pre-historic era used to feel scared due to environmental dangers. Though we have to be careful not to superimpose our own contemporary fears and our own understanding of scared upon primal (Indigenous) Peoples.

Some studies also show that instincts could be considered as a certain form of memories, including those traumatic, stressful or fearful which are passed on biologically (e.g., genetically and epigenetically) from ancestors to subsequent generations. The human Fearstory, as we refer to it, is complex. And not everyone agrees on the definition of fear, never mind agreeing upon the ways humans have related to fear and managed fear with differential effectiveness over the ages and across cultures. The debates will continue, and our views in this book are no different, they are debateable and all generalizations require further thought and research to test and improve their stability and rigor with time. However, we also believe, scientific research is not the only kind valid. Philosophy has a great role to play in understanding all phenomena that has to do with the human emotions and mind—our learning, our teaching, our organization and socialization—that is, our human potential. Philosophy of Fearism, our focused lens for this book, is a particular kind of philosophy not yet fully tried out (see Chapter One), at least not relatively for very long in history. It is a philosophy all about fear, a central shaping dynamic, as Desh Subba has argued in his classic 2014 text Philosophy of Fearism.

So, humans have since birth been in a state of both positive and negative relationship to fear’s powers. But often our species has been in bondage to fear. There is an (anonymous created) sign on the Internet of late that says something very interesting:

FEAR TELLS YOU THAT YOU ARE NOT SAFE. BUT YOU ARE SAFE.

Herein lies the human issue of safety and its relationship to fear. You are safe and you are not safe—a paradox(?). Another author/philosopher stated: we are safer and healthier now than at any time in our history (as others too claim this) because our fear is a [manufactured] by-product of luxury. The mass media, pressure groups and the nanny state are all guilty of stoking the current climate of paranoia.⁵

So what is really going on? This confusing messaging reflects something deep, if not torn, within the psyche/soul of the life of our times. We seem trapped as primarily consumers in a fear-industry and a security-industry feeding in a frenzy off of each other. We seem forced into a dilemma of choice-making between listening to those who offer us all the reasons to fear and those who offer us all the reasons to hope and/or how to be safe and secure. At what price to pay if we listen to, and act upon, these messages? It seems everyone is selling something related to this be safe and be afraid polarity. One critic suggests the most fundamental driver of sociality is a message, conscious or unconscious, that we receive everyday: Be afraid, the fear industry tells us: be very afraid.⁶

This paradoxical sign (above) is made by an individual who is not so keen on trusting fear, and they may have good reasons. Rather than focus on ‘players’ of the fear-industry or security-industry, though they too are important, we focus mostly on the dynamics of fear itself. The philosophy of fearism directs this inquiry—even if such a focus on fear may seem strange or too narrow to be valuable, or to be sane.⁷ Throughout the pages of this book, we’ll return again and again to distinguishing types of fear and whether we can trust some kinds and not trust others. As co-authors, we would not be so absolutistic or confident in claiming what is suggested on this sign but it is an interesting notion to ponder about what we all mean by safe—and, at what level of reality and consciousness could we exist where we actually do realize we are safe(?) Some would argue the words peace or love could be inserted for the word safe in this sign. This enters the spiritual realm of analysis and questions our very sense of identity and what is reality. For sure, the ego consciousness, our normal sense of self, typically is structured upon separation from all Other(s), not feeling safe and is always on guard to avoid ego-esteem injury.⁸ These are higher questions of philosophy, and at times they become important to ask, as well as the more pragmatic issues of daily existence and real experiences of victimization.

From an evolutionary point of view, in order to survive, primal humans found fear useful, and we continue as modern humans likewise, yet, it seems there is always a ‘spirit’ in us that seeks freedom—that seeks to release ourselves from the bondage of fear (a la Rousseau). Western Enlightenment philosophers like Rousseau were often engaging this tension of Fear and Freedom. It is implied that the chains are of fear because we humans are consistently under threat from the world. It’s a world we didn’t choose but were born into. These perceived threats, sometimes more real and sometimes more false, are caused by problems with clans, families, employers and colleagues of organisations, socioeconomic political systems etc. We’ve been long haunted by them everywhere and every time—especially in the form of taboos, customs, traditions, laws, procedures, rules, regulations, penal punishments and provisions and so on. Therefore, humans are not yet fully in a position to experience ideal Freedom to the fullest level; or if there are such humans, they are extremely rare. Yet, the qualities of fearlessness, as we will argue in this book, are available and quite natural for the most part. Fearless is but an absolute ideal, like authentic Freedom.

In order to be free from fear, in the wake of potential threat from the wild animals or enemy, primal humans conceived of many a strategy, the most important of which was gregariousness. Aristotle referred to humans as social animals. It was a natural adaptive instinct for them to move and live in groups. But group systems had both merits as well as demerits. Normally a strong authoritative or charismatic person emerged from the crowd to dominate over other members as a leader, and sometimes lead because ‘might was right.’ And ‘strong’ in that sense of the word of the dominant person would sometimes prevail. And when questions arose as to where to hunt, who gets to mate with who, or how to settle the disputes in the group, for example, the leader pointed to and appointed themselves the decision-maker. They made the first laws.

As cultures evolved, colonisation also increased. In some cases, the dominant strong person and/or circle around them, grew subsequently to become autocratic, paving way for the stratification of society into hierarchical systems—typically freeing for some and imprisoning (via oppression) for others (that is, most of the rest). The benefits of the autocratic arrangement lasted, where-in the prototype of a body politic came into being and outweighed over the fears and risks of anarchy due to lack of order and the many feeling vulnerable to attacks.

One such autocratic ruler was King Hammurabi, who ruled over Babylon for more than four decades during 18th century BC. He observed (perceived) that there was no order among his subjects pertaining to their conduct and in order to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land and to destroy the bad people, so that the honest weak should not fear the mighty wicked, he enacted laws, named after him. It is called the Hammurabi Code.

Over time, it was also felt that the increasing quantity of laws that were enacted; the less the freedoms of the people would be. And ironically, the more stringent the laws, the more fearful the people would end up becoming. If laws are fair and in optimal number, they happen to bring about good impact on the behaviour of the individual and on social order. At least, the intellectuals through history understood this relationship. For example, American philosopher Henry David Thoreau advocated for minimal interference of government in people’s affairs. He argued that those laws that are not directly connected to people’s safety and security, do more harm than good. Too much fussy legalities as social prophylaxis are often contradictory⁹ in results, such as how they restrict freedom of the individual, reinforce racial bias against some groups, and do so creating an ecology of fear¹⁰ much to the same extent negative fear affects and effects set in to dominate social systems.

As co-authors, we are always asking ourselves do rules, regulations and laws arrive because of fear or are they arriving to diminish fear? Or both? Does safety and security have to be purchased at the cost of making us more afraid in the end? Is a fear-based rule ever a rule that will bring freedom to a society or organization in the long-run? Is a fearless society one that does not allow fear-based rules and laws in the first place? Are there entirely different ways and different worldviews to draw upon to make meaning of safety and security as basic rights? Can we modern peoples today actually truly think outside of a Fear-Ruling and colonizing consciousness we seem to have inherited via history? What would a rule or law look like if it was truly based on fearlessness? Would it be healing, transformative, liberating? And, would that liberating be scary to us as well? Remember, the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm argued that humans typically are afraid of freedom when it is offered.¹¹ These are a few of the critical reflective questions that a philosophy of fearism asks and that weave themselves in and out of the dialogues in this book.

Back to history—that is, our human Fearstory: In such never ending scenarios where fear, freedom, law, safety and security seamlessly operate in mutually contradictory directions, how can a plausible conciliation be arrived at? It largely depends upon a middle path (a la Aristotle) called by some moderation or the middle way. When survival requires fearlessness, it also dialectically involves a relationship dynamic with fear. Unless there is fear, there is no reflex to escape from the danger. When fearlessness, a spirit of fear management, sets on ‘fight’ mode, fear may steer us to a better wise choice as ‘flight’ mode or even ‘freeze’ mode. Therefore, not all fear is bad. Thus, concludes a philosophy of fearism and one of its core premises.

As far as fear is at an optimal level, it is good. We fear God. We fear parents. It is good fear called respect. If we don’t fear law, if we don’t fear elders or police, it is a type of fearlessness known as arrogance or deliberate ignorance. There are worst fears which hamper the status and growth of normal life systems. There is also good fearlessness that makes one bold and confident in times of crisis. Too much of fearfulness leads to timidity, that prevents the individual from grasping opportunities. The good avatar of fear or fearlessness is only a dynamic position on the line between the two extremes, so argues the middle path logic.

If we take excess extreme of fear as fearfulness, the absent extreme side on the other end can be referred to as fearless. The flowing continuity between the two extreme ends may be considered as a fear continuum or spectrum. As we