Post by Admin on Oct 21, 2023 13:56:23 GMT
To fear well is virtuous and more important than being brave
psyche.co/ideas/to-fear-well-is-virtuous-and-more-important-than-being-brave
Fear is not the enemy, but a real and legitimate emotion. To truly support another in their fear, let them give it a voice
If given the option to choose between fear and bravery, pretty much everyone would choose to be brave. The history of moral philosophy agrees. Aristotle’s positioning of courage as a key virtue set the stage for the Western philosophical distaste for fear. Add to this common messages about fear – that ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’, that we live in a culture of fearing the wrong things, that moments of widespread fear are often seized on for Right-wing political gains – and it is easy to see why fear is seen as something best avoided or overcome. The real moral goal is bravery.
Identifying fear as inimical to effective social and political action makes fearers out to be not only unfortunate in their suffering but morally deficient. Nelson Mandela, a moral exemplar if there ever was one, said: ‘May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.’ When fears are failures according to persuasive social, political or ethical narratives, individuals have all the more reason to avoid them.
Yet many of our greatest threats – mortality, suffering and loss – are impossible to outrun. Living means confronting these fears. They cannot be ducked or dodged. In the face of such facts, should we accept nothing less from ourselves than bravery? Are we really morally deficient if we meet the prospect of our own death with anything but courage? What if we instead conceived of fearing not as the morally worse alternative to bravery, but as something we could actually do well?
Suppose your greatest fears are going nowhere. They will be constant companions, even as your circumstances change, and you grow older and (potentially) wiser. Consider a number of options for how you might comport yourself towards these fears, besides running away from them towards bravery. One option is acceptance. You relate to your fears with a tranquillity born of detachment. You accept the fears you cannot change and go about your life. If acceptance seems too great a lift, consider something more resigned: living with them. Like disrespectful neighbours who will never relocate, we might tolerate, co-exist with, or even abide by these fears.
Living with fears without trying to avoid them may be one part of fearing well, and one for which a culture of fear-as-failure has not prepared us. Living with fears is, further, something we do by living with fearers.
Moving away from a dominant picture of fearing as a private endeavour, we can begin to see that we arrive at the fears we have in the context of the fearing of many others. Both by attachment relations early in life and in ongoing fear acquisition, we come to fear what we fear together. Further, we can see that processes of fear formation depend on ongoing interpersonal expression and uptake. If we feel something like fear but the people around us deny or dismiss our attempts to express that feeling, we can actually be prevented from having the feeling in the same way. We may never be able to identify what we are feeling or what the feeling is responding to. The people around us are that important to the feelings we have. Their responses can actually make it possible (or difficult) to have and understand our own fears.
psyche.co/ideas/to-fear-well-is-virtuous-and-more-important-than-being-brave
Fear is not the enemy, but a real and legitimate emotion. To truly support another in their fear, let them give it a voice
If given the option to choose between fear and bravery, pretty much everyone would choose to be brave. The history of moral philosophy agrees. Aristotle’s positioning of courage as a key virtue set the stage for the Western philosophical distaste for fear. Add to this common messages about fear – that ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’, that we live in a culture of fearing the wrong things, that moments of widespread fear are often seized on for Right-wing political gains – and it is easy to see why fear is seen as something best avoided or overcome. The real moral goal is bravery.
Identifying fear as inimical to effective social and political action makes fearers out to be not only unfortunate in their suffering but morally deficient. Nelson Mandela, a moral exemplar if there ever was one, said: ‘May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.’ When fears are failures according to persuasive social, political or ethical narratives, individuals have all the more reason to avoid them.
Yet many of our greatest threats – mortality, suffering and loss – are impossible to outrun. Living means confronting these fears. They cannot be ducked or dodged. In the face of such facts, should we accept nothing less from ourselves than bravery? Are we really morally deficient if we meet the prospect of our own death with anything but courage? What if we instead conceived of fearing not as the morally worse alternative to bravery, but as something we could actually do well?
Suppose your greatest fears are going nowhere. They will be constant companions, even as your circumstances change, and you grow older and (potentially) wiser. Consider a number of options for how you might comport yourself towards these fears, besides running away from them towards bravery. One option is acceptance. You relate to your fears with a tranquillity born of detachment. You accept the fears you cannot change and go about your life. If acceptance seems too great a lift, consider something more resigned: living with them. Like disrespectful neighbours who will never relocate, we might tolerate, co-exist with, or even abide by these fears.
Living with fears without trying to avoid them may be one part of fearing well, and one for which a culture of fear-as-failure has not prepared us. Living with fears is, further, something we do by living with fearers.
Moving away from a dominant picture of fearing as a private endeavour, we can begin to see that we arrive at the fears we have in the context of the fearing of many others. Both by attachment relations early in life and in ongoing fear acquisition, we come to fear what we fear together. Further, we can see that processes of fear formation depend on ongoing interpersonal expression and uptake. If we feel something like fear but the people around us deny or dismiss our attempts to express that feeling, we can actually be prevented from having the feeling in the same way. We may never be able to identify what we are feeling or what the feeling is responding to. The people around us are that important to the feelings we have. Their responses can actually make it possible (or difficult) to have and understand our own fears.