Contrarian Determinism
The Fear.less staff
Today is a Saturday, a balmy summer morning, a couple days after my quietly-celebrated 40th birthday. Everybody around the house seems not distant, necessarily, but reserved. It’s eerie. My son and my brother decide we’re gonna go out golfing for a few hours.
I know what’s going on here, because I have seen it happen many times. The golfing outing is a distraction for all my friends and family to show up at my enormous surprise party. Politely, I stay quiet and feign ignorance while outgolfing my family. At 3:00 p.m. we begin the trip back. The car pulls into the driveway. I walk out back, preparing my plumb-flustered face.
No one is there. There is no party. What the hell? Why?
Because I thought about it first.
This is an extrapolation of a fanciful idea I had a couple years ago that I called, to be as pretentious as possible, contrarian determinism. It means that stuff doesn’t happen to you only because you imagined that it might happen, and the universe hates you. Do you think you’re going to find your wallet when you go back to the restaurant? Well it’s gone forever. Do you think you aced your exam? B-.
And it only works to hurt you. So you can’t imagine your best friend dying in all sorts of horribly brutal accidents and make him immortal.
There is a little truth to this idea, unrelated to fate. Running scenarios in your head like movie scripts is a common preparation technique for job interviews and dates but sometimes it can severely derail you when you’re caught unaware by a diversion from your imagination. But it is clear that this idea is also the epitome of diffidence. After years of being assured variations of “anything is possible if you just believe”, I came to almost seriously think that “what you want is impossible, just because you believe it. You, specifically.”
When we are afraid, we begin to subscribe to philosophies of fear. With our limited, fear-stained experiences, we construct a framework for a dreary ontology.
In reality, “nothing ever goes my way” is always false when said by a living thing. Instead of classifying and varnishing the architecture of our pessimism, giving it a name and joking about it with out friends, let’s try knocking it down.
It can pose a challenge. When something I was looking forward to gets postponed or cancelled, my kneejerk reaction is to blame it on myself for having fantasized about it first. This is ridiculous.
Many of the Fear.less contributors laud the importance of mental training, of wiring the brain to just not lend any credence to that insanity. And you, and I, should listen. Because you just can’t go on thinking that the universe is fundamentally opposed to you.
The Price
Howard Zinn is a Fear.less contributor with a rich life-tapestry and a compelling story to bring to our magazine. The interview he gave refreshed, in contexts steeped in the most important events of American history, basic and treasured bastions against fear that we sometimes lose sight of. He granted adages like “strength in numbers” and “stand up for what you believe in” a brighter breath.
He died on January 27, 2010. I went into a class of mine two days later and the professor informed the class that “Howard Zinn, hero of the American Left” passed away a couple days ago, and the class’s general sentiment was “for whatever that’s worth”. Then this morning, three weeks later, in a different class, we discussed federalism and Hamilton and Madison and Wheatley and a student brought Zinn into the conversation and at the mere mention of his name the instructor flinched and went “ugh”.
A second later, when I realized that several circumstances precluded Zinn from defending himself, I gained new insight on courage.
I have a capricious interest in politics and I had never heard of Howard Zinn before I read his Fear.less story. I didn’t know he had written over 20 books, or had participated in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement with so much exposure. I gathered from his Fear.less story the general idea that he placed himself in peril for his beliefs, but I under-understood it. The man put himself on front street, at risk of either praise, or disgust and derision from my class’s pretentious gooberocracy. I grasp how fame works, but it never really hit home until I saw how it affected people’s perception of Howard Zinn. It resonated with me because he participated in a project that has brought me great personal reward, not because I agreed with his politics, but I’ll make do with what I have.
Ideas can be big hits, but big hits make big waves, in all oceans. J.K. Rowling and Stephen King have earned vast wealth and admiration for their imaginations, but it’s so easy (especially through the cowardly anonymity of the Internet) to find people blubbering “Harry Potter is formulaic tripe” or “King can’t write endings worth a crap”. Maybe it’s true, and those people are entitled to their opinions. Certainly Zinn generated controversy and disagreement. But sometimes the amateur armchair critics overdo it. They hate people who are commonly believed to have universal acclaim. When your beliefs and ideas become exposed to millions, you open yourself up to be hated. Not just your ideas, you. People will seriously think that you are a detriment to the human species. And yeah, you can dismiss them as petty and resentful and all that, but I don’t think you can escape being stung over and over. Unless you are even more fearless than Howard Zinn.
The day Zinn died there was discussion about it on a forum I frequent, and in poured anonymous insults more severe than what the relative politeness of the classroom allowed my instructors to get away with. My responses were incredulous and profanity-ridden. These people didn’t even know him. I never met him, but after reading his Fear.less story I wish I did, and I know something about how he felt during a very important time in his life and in American history, and he seemed like a swell guy. I am biased because like Zinn I support civil rights and liberties (crazy I know) and would have opposed the Vietnam War, but I didn’t know any of that about him until after I learned his position on fear.
In one of his last interviews, Zinn said he wanted to be remembered as “somebody who gave people a feeling of hope and power that they didn’t have before.” As far as I’m concerned, he succeeded with his Fear.less story, and also taught me something about the challenge of standing up for what you believe in. And yeah, a lot of bad people say nice-sounding things, but I think there comes a point where you have to admit to yourself that maybe someone who disagrees with you isn’t a villain who’s going to cripple the human race, they just disagree with you. Reserve the rage for the malevolent and the manipulative, why don’t we.
I have a story that exemplifies this, a story about Roger Ebert and Rob Schneider.
Rob Schneider releases Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, which is panned by a Los Angeles Times critic. Schneider attacks the critic in an open letter, mocking him for not winning any awards… “maybe you didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven’t invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who’s Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers.”
Roger Ebert, alumnus of my university and all-around disher-outer of important thoughts, replies in his review of the film, “As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.” He then writes a book about terrible movies called Your Movie Sucks.
Two years later, Roger Ebert is struggling with cancer, operations, recovery, life. Then he writes a curious article: “A beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered to the house the other day. A handwritten note paid compliments to my work and wished me a speedy recovery… The card was signed, “Your Least Favorite Movie Star, Rob Schneider.” Roger Ebert realizes something important. “They were a reminder, if I needed one, that although Rob Schneider might (in my opinion) have made a bad movie, he is not a bad man, and no doubt tried to make a wonderful movie, and hopes to again. I hope so, too.”
I didn’t know Howard Zinn but from what I do know about him I don’t think he was a bad man and I find his story very uplifting, even after what he has posthumously taught me about the price of being vocal.
Stand up for what you believe in. You will make mistakes. You will have to put up with a lot of bullshit. But do it anyway.
Rest in peace, Mr. Zinn.
Chameleons
Have you ever read the Fear.less blog and exclaimed “What the hell? He’s not talking about fear!” That’s wrong. You are wrong. I am always talking about fear.
A lot of people (conservative estimate: a bajillion) have said that fear and love are the two most basic human emotions, and I agree. (Maybe one day you will see Love.less. I mean more.) Basic emotions tend to evolve into many different forms that are often related. Imagine fear is a chameleon. It can change color based on its mood, still certainly a chameleon, but manifesting in ways dependent on the situation. And, if it also happens to be camouflaged, you might not be able to see that it’s fear at all.
Fear is the parent of anger, sadness, hatred, ignorance and low self-esteem. And probably many other things, but I am trying to avoid falling into the habit of writing long lists. When you take a deep breath, give yourself a compliment or research something, you are really targeting the angry/incompetent/stupid part of the problem, and this chips away at your overarching fear.
We address a wide variety of fears in our magazine. When you’re being pulled over by a cop, the techniques suggested by the neuroscientists we interviewed for managing the fight-or-flight response will come in most handy. This situation has little to do with depression or self-loathing and is a more primal fear. But if you’re nervous about beginning to teach a group of people, maybe because you don’t know how or you think you are not cut out for it, that’s when Ben Zander’s suggestions for gentle, nurturing instruction will give you the tools you need to be a better teacher in your own eyes.
So sometimes these blog posts will look more like they belong in Hate.less or Cry.less or Commit.less.arson but you should think of them as chapters in the Fear.less story instead of negligent diversions from our goal.
In fact, when you find yourself experiencing a higher negative emotion, try to figure out what the corresponding fear is. If you dislike your boss, is it because you fear living in a world where the dishonest and inconsiderate can have positions of power, or because you fear the affronts to your self-worth that come from him breathing down your neck every day?
Fear-reducing observation of the day: at least you are not this thing.
What the Future Holds
No, not this I hope.
After working on and planning out later issues of fear.less, I can’t help but use the future as a salve for the wounds of the present. I have much work to do this week that is unrelated to fear.less and it will be agonizing. But when it is done I will be, at least for a while, in a state where I can focus on things that really reward me. This right here.
I’ve alluded to this technique in previous posts but as I am consumed by it now I just have to suggest it outright, to everyone who has an imagination or at least is willing to accept the possibility that they do. It’s a meditation thing. You’re in the troublesome present now, but close your eyes, let your mind’s eye bathe in thoughtful psychedelia, and picture a future where the present’s hassles are things of the pastles. A realistic future, no flying away on dragons or anything. I imagine my work finished and my mind free to focus on this.
One time last year my friend and I went out for a run late at night and found ourselves caught in a wild spring storm. Torrential rains, howling winds, you know the drill. We took shelter in a building a long way from our apartment and, since we were basketcases afraid of getting struck by lightning, sat there a while, waiting for the storm to stop. It showed no signs of doing so. This was pretty frustrating. I sat there thinking, not frantically wanting for warmth and dryness and safety, but sculpting it in my head – the glorious release of changing out of soggy clothes, the relieving anticlimax of falling onto my bed in triumph. Feeling better, we laughed and talked for a while, and then we hauled home at warpspeed. Upon making it through the front door, arms raised, we danced like crazy people in front of several confused but clearly moved people. The relief was double – not only had I made it home, but back in the rain I had sewn myself a coat made of a situation and I discovered that it fit comfortably.
Personally I have a tough time with meditation and thought exercises but I find this one stark enough to make a difference for me.
And, since I mentioned them I may as well comment on them: the issues of fear.less we’re working on are stupidly good. Stay tuned.
Cutting the Deck
“Always cut the deck if it ups your odds.” I forget exactly where this is from, but I think it’s from a Robert A. Heinlein book. What it means is, if your back is against the wall, do something. (Almost) anything. Even if you don’t know the ins and outs of possible repercussions, you might do something that can help you out.
In Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, the titular character is ambushed in the showers of the Battle School by a bully named Bonzo. Ender slyly manipulates the vain Bonzo into fighting him one-on-one, but knows he will probably get ruined. As they exchange dramatic banter, Ender turns on all the showers in the bathroom to maximum heat. “I’m not afraid of hot water,” Bonzo says. But the steam makes Ender sweat. Between that and the soap on his body, he becomes a slippery fish. Bonzo wants to throw Ender into a toilet, but when he tries, he can’t get a solid grip and becomes vulnerable. Ender beats him senseless. A lot of good not being afraid of hot water does.
I am big on real-life examples of things, so take a gander at seth godin add some brackets, a blog post by fear.less contributor Seth Godin. Unexpected punctuation to distract someone from getting intimidated by the daring idea – wily, right?
Both of these examples have calculation in them, they’re not truly random. Rarely will you be in a situation where your actions, much less that one that saves your skin, comes out of completely nowhere. The point is there are a lot of little things with unpredictable effects that, especially if you have the disadvantage in a situation, might be helpful to introduce. The other point is that they are introduced by action, by making them so. As fear.less contributors Bernard Lown and Paul Ekman claim, action can go a long way to reducing fear, but it may also coincidentally defeat it outright. You choose to say the weird thing at what turns out to be the right time, or put just the right spin or quirk into a presentation that makes it pop. And in times of great antagonism, you may even the playing field by creating a situation that your opposition did not anticipate dealing with – making the natures of ideas and people more clear.
Don’t be a seventh-grader about it, but keep it in mind. Some balances are best tipped by fate.
Wow I Suck
Who thinks this? Let us extrapolate to a variety of topics. The tantras of low self-esteem! (Or is it mantras?) To the big bad dog-eat-dog go-get-’em types, these look like short hurdles, or maybe just one of them is tall. But sometimes Type B people want to be successful too.
-I am not shrewd enough to make the sale
-I am not creative enough to generate elusive ~*~NeW iDeAs~*~
-I am not perceptive enough to deduce what this person is thinking
-I am not charming enough to build a social network
-I am not attractive or talented enough to have confidence
-I am not adaptable enough to belong here
-Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat some wo-o-orms
-Everything I touch gets ruined
-God hates me
-I too miserable of an excuse for a human being to conquer my fears
It’s true. If you think the guitar is broken, you won’t bring down the house with it. This is an important post for me to write and I realize that a lot of you forward-thinking entrepreneurial types have opinions of yourselves that range from “okay” to “God”. I am being silly about it but some people, even if they aren’t trying to make money or help people, are still crippled by fear because, dang it, they’re just dopes. Or so they think. Fear.less contributor Karen Armstrong is very big on compassion, so I invite you “I-love-me” types to indulge and nurture those who are less existentially fortunate than you, because they could still have a lot to offer even if they don’t think so. “No time to waste on wet blankets!” Whatever dude. You don’t impress Karen Armstrong. Or me, Deputy Editor Supreme of Fear.less.
Did you hear that? You still have a lot to offer, even if you don’t think so! You could be wrong about you! Ignore the urge to point out “yeah, being wrong, how very like me” and perhaps consider the possibility that you do not know yourself as well as you think you do. Maybe you have been trying for 20, 25, 30 years or more, but for some of that time you were incontinent… the point is that if you think so negatively of yourself there are probably a lot of arenas you haven’t tested yourself in.
Do it. Leave your comfort zone. Start the album, shoot for the interview, get the girl. It terrifies but it rewards. You have nothing to lose and so much to gain. You will learn about you and the world and your place in it. It doesn’t matter if it comes from real resolve or from coincidentally productive fatalism. Even if you totally blow and the world totally blows, if you just admit to yourself that there could be a chance that it is not true (since you have not met everyone or been everywhere or done everything in the world) then you can begin to turn things around. It’s okay if it’s a slow process (hint: it is) and it’s okay if you still get crapped on. It’s really okay. fear.less contributor Pema Chodron has written books on how to view things as okay and be your own friend. Check one out.
I feel like I am being harsh, but I hope it is interpreted more as Vigor and Inspiration because I used to think I suck, and now I think I am okay. (Partly thanks to the art of BLOGGING.) Treat yourself gently and find people who treat you gently, not like me, who Tells You What To Do. Thoroughly hopeless people like Charlie Brown and John Locke are exclusively television inventions.
You ARE at the very least an adequate enough person to throw yourself together and bare your teeth at fear. I personally have never met a decent-hearted person that I thought was beyond redemption. Fear is for everyone. Consider that courage is, too.
The Dot in Fear.less
The chemistry of the moment courage overcomes fear is a total mystery.
Fear.less loves stress management techniques, productive reframing and positive thinking. We have psychologists and neuroscientists ready to explain why these work. Almost all of the contributors admit that they were afraid at their life-defining moment of truth and continue to feel fear to this day. Fear remains a presence in their lives, and for some of them, it even becomes a moderator or ally.
You can weaken fear or reshape it, but it will remain, telling your dreams “no”. No matter what there is going to be some precise, hyperdense point in time where your fear meets your new mind face to face – and hand to hand. All your new perspectives and defense mechanisms are but preparations for this one quantum of self-confrontation.
Nobody knows how the mechanics of this battle for sure. You will just have to make a leap of faith of some length and dare to venture a piece of yourself.
You’ve been on the high diving board for a while now, staring down at the water and the witnesses, too conscious of the harsh crispness of the air. Once you tip your body over the edge, you have decided. Gravity runs its course and there is no turning back. There is a fateful autonomy to it. Soldiers trained by generals must pull the trigger, alcoholics tempered by meetings must skip the party.
I think fatalism can be a factor in this moment, and so can love, and anger, and I’m sure many other things, many other volatile cocktails of emotions tailored to different people. It’s not useful to ruminate too much over it though. I just think it’s important to know that it’s there, looming, waiting for you. A singularity where you decide to sit down and write a business plan or a job application or the next great American novel.
That’s what the dot in Fear.less means to me. In a way I think that devoting yourself too much to fixing your mindset can distract you from the reason you want to do that in the first place. Your head is full of background noise and with our magazine we’ve trying to lead each reader to the stark silence of peering into his fear’s eyes and then making his move.
Get fearless. But then get the dot.
When You Can’t Get Answers
The speed and scope of the Internet can provide so much to us. Sports stats, TV spoilers, job opportunities, provocative thoughts, rare products, and overlong lists of things. It’s the Information Age, and information possessed by a person is called knowledge. Sweet, powerful knowledge. The curious and the hungry can find explanations for almost anything if they look. Almost.
Sometimes, you just don’t get any answers.
It is terrifying to be without knowledge. Not being able to make sense of something twists your stomach and melts your skin. Some dark beast at the periphery of your existence passed you up for a promotion, wrote you a Dear John letter of babbling incoherence, or ended the life of someone you love. Your attempts to connect the dots calls the whole design of your life into question. Where did I go wrong? What threads of perverse causality led me here? How is it narratively acceptable that I, the lovable hero of my own story, am flailing in helpless ignorance? When your search for meaning turns up nothing and you start to contemplate your irrelevance, you just hurt more. You receive (and probably have given before) half-answers and limp solace. It wasn’t the right time. It just wouldn’t work out. Shit happens. All men/women are scum. He’s in a better place. These thought-terminating clichés help no one. But here’s one that I think might see you through. It’s a revision of my Sweet Isolated Statement above.
Sometimes, you just don’t * need any * answers.
*insert expletives as appropriate to level of indignation
The universe is too big and mysterious for anyone to know everything, and too big and beautiful to waste time searching for rationalizations that are hiding from you or aren’t there at all. If you can muster the courage to celebrate life, love, time, beauty and earnest effort, you can make your own truth. There is no door so heavy that you can’t close it alone. You don’t have to be puppeted about by a cruel and hazy past. A lot of our past is a useless blur anyway.
You are in pain, no doubt. But how do you know an explanation would even help? You may just learn that hard work doesn’t pay, that you are not appreciated… it would actually be nice to have the doors slam shut on that kind of thinking. Instead of scrabbling for answers, ask new questions. You might not see them yet at your emotional nadir, but there are so many silver linings waiting to be woven into a coat for your chilling heart.
We may be owed explanations, but we aren’t slaves to them.