Fear and Humbug
In Frank Herbert's Dune novels is a prayer-like mantra called the Litany Against Fear. It is a short formula recited by the main characters when facing a fear so powerful as to be both mesmeric and paralysing.
Early on, the central character of the first two books is required, in the company of his mother and a formidable woman by the resonant name of Reverend Gaius Helen Mohiam, to do a simple thing: to place his hand inside a box.
The young man, Paul Atreides, is facing not only a test of his manhood, a rite de passage; he is under serious scrutiny to determine whether or not he is the prophesied saviour, the Kwizatz Haderach.
With understandable tension, Paul asks what is in the box. The reply from the loathly lady is "death". His human instinct shrieks at him to withdraw his hand: yet at this instant, hovering over his flesh like a deadly wasp, the woman has placed her Gom Jabbar. In answer to his ensuing anxious query about wht this might be, she tells him that this single needle-point contains a poison that is immediately fatal to animals.
His mother increases the reader's tension by covering her own fear with momentary anger:
"Are you suggesting a duke's son is an animal?" she gamely asks.
Calmly, the Reverend Mother replies that she is merely ascertaining his humanity.
As the test proceeds, the young man feels firstly an itching, that soon is replaced by "pain upon pain," as he is convinced he sees in his mind's eye his flesh charring and crisping within the box. To his mind, to his present sense of reality, there is the terror of impossibility in the choice he presently faces: more pain than humankind can bear within the box....or certain death from the poisoned barb if he dares give way to his body's natural response.
Thus he recites the litany: I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer, the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will allow it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Young Paul is successful in passing the test. He is, within the context of the novel, aware of both the immense forces within humanity's experience and the need to be master of, rather than slave to, fear.
Many people have had occasion to explore or reflect upon the nature of fear.
Edgar Howe opined that, "a good scare is worth more to a man than good advice," attesting alongside at least one classical Greek teacher who used to hit students so they would remember the bon mot he was explaining at the time. Ah, the educational possibilities of fear....
Frank Baum, in The Wizard of Oz(the real themes of this book were to be explored in cinema several years later in the film Zardoz) reveals some of the nature of the fear experience, like Herbert, drawing attention to how fear is given power until faced up to.
At the end of the characters' journey along the yellowbrick road, they draw closer to the terrifying wizard, who is walled up in the hard beauty of the Emerald City. They manage to approach, though almost paralysed by the roaring, the smoke, flames and the threat of death and pain. Sitting behind a curtain, however, is the "wizard", revealed for what he is. When challenged, this lying , weak and lonely old man admits to being "humbug"; his manipulation of the populace is now evident, as medicine-show special effects and flammery provided the means to frighten them.
In other words, the real nature of his power was revealed as nothing more than clever lies. However, he relied on the people's enthronement of those lies: their feeding of their own fears allowed fear itself, and thus the old man too, to rule in their lives, exacting worship and sacrifice.
An old German proverb translates as, "fear makes the wolf bigger than he is," whereas Luciano Pavarotti gives his own version of feeling the fear(and doing it anyway, to re-coin the phrase): "Of course I am afraid of high notes. What sane man is not?"
It would seem then, that it is the right sort of fear, in the right amounts, at the right time, which is helpful. Indeed, having fear of excessive speed, heights, temperature extremes and pain reflects a necessary means of life-preservation.
Yet, as young Paul said, fear is still the mind-killer. A fear of excessive speed when travelling at 10mph is inappropriate; a fear of heights when sitting in one's chair would no doubt generate an additional terror all of its own....
Similarly, fearing violence, abandonment or death when unthreatened by any such scenario, is plainly not at all good. It is illogical, unhelpful, disempowering...it is humbug.
And yet this something we do as if, er, our lives depend on it
I've frequently mused on why such tv programmes as "The Apprentice", here in the UK, are so popular. Are we, I wonder, experiencing the same catharsis-by-remote as the Elizabethan groundlings when they were gripped by a Shakespearean play, for instance? Young, talented, mouthy, iconoclastic young things undergoing a series of Odyssean tasks whereby to gain riches, understanding and defeat the beast ...so that, by the Grace of God, we ourselves do not have to? Their pratfalls, their fear, their pathetic relief, along with the dramatic irony when we see too well a pit they are to fall down.....'e's behiiiind ya!
Oh no he isn't.
And who is the wizard, the mind-killer, the Grendel, the Scylla and Charybdis? Why, none other than our own Alan Sugar, the titles of "sir" and, more recently, "lord" adding resonance, depth and reverential awe: the terrible wrath or abandonment by whom means death, and to whom hushed tones and sacrifice are due. Be a very good boy...or else the Sandman will get you...or the Struwwelpeter, Fagin the Jew, Big Bad Osama, Uncle Tom Cobberley and all... and all. And we writhe in fear as the occasional irreverend youngster dares to twitch the curtain: will they get zapped....or rewarded for their heroic pluck?
Fear breeds fear, so they say. I have wondered from where that fear arose, apart from within the minds of the protagonists as fear was bigged up by report and action of others...because if fear was passed on , as by the laying on of false hands or report, that must mean it began within the one generating it:
The Reverend Mother's fear in Dune was of loss of power, influence and meaning to her universe; the Wizard of Oz was similarly afraid of losing power and authority, and ultimately afraid of the one thing that terrifies all of us: aloneness. Abandonment. I cannot comment on any fear within Lord Sugar(and how the irony of that name could add its own frisson): an East-EndaLondon barrowboy from a Jewish immigrant family driven on by the wandering spectre of poverty, so afraid of being poor that he'd fight 24/7 to avoid it? Who knows.
Fear is the mindkiller. Yet so many individuals, bodies and nations are as addicted to its presence and use as, say, the 21st century is to oil.
However, one could consider this: are we not afraid of what has already happened in our lives? If someone were living in fear of abandonment, would this merely be not a fear of the unknown....but of what has happened already at some stage in the past? And if this has already happened, then the outcome is a known thing....and if, then, it is already past, experienced and known, then why on on earth do we still fear?
And if fear, then, is actually an unreal thing apart from when a healthy measure of it is prevervational to life, then whence does it come?
In Christianity, fear is considered a healthy emotion in the right and building context. "Fear the Lord your God", and, "Fear is the beginning of wisdom," are Biblical precepts. And of course, for those whose eyes and ears are already attuned to the experience of fear rather than love, say, this enables such rantings to be seen as justification for leaving such a fundamentalist and medievally-backward religion well alone. It is easy then for a person thus emotionally triggered and "in the zone", to state "the Inquisition" or "The Crusades" as outpourings of negative and fear-based religious responses...which is true enough, but throws the baby out of the manger with the bathwater.
Mind you, the Bible says that if one has the right fear of the right thing, there is both no space for the wrong sort of fear and a more truthful recognition of its real nature.
And if all fear is based on a fear of abandonment to aloneness, then what can we say ? Presumably one could say that if God existed and has the power over life, death and everything, then to be abandoned by Him is worth fearing? One has then to consider whether the Biblical Jesus is telling the truth about being the only "way, the truth and the life"...and as C. S. Lewis comments on such outlandish and foolish claims, if someone states stuff like this, then that someone is either telling the truth or is a deluded liar.
And what of the other shadowy figure, the enemy/evil one or being that goes by a myriad of other names? The words "fear" and "demonic" would appear to go together like the Iron Maiden and a shriek. Jesus says that by His own obedience to God and His death and resurrection, any temporal and temporary power this being once had, has been more than annulled once and for all. And if fear is a transmitted disease from the feared, then the feared is very afraid.
Inasmuch as fear of the Wizard of Oz or our Reverend Mother was rooted in and outworked from their own fear...then of what is the Christian devil afraid?
Well, if we also work along the premise that all that we are afraid of has happened already, we get the following:
The Bible says(and I'm merely submitting this as evidence for yourselves to peruse) that this enemy/devil is a created being: an angel, once beautiful and in charge of worship-leading, then expelled from God's presence with a third of all the rest of the angels for rebellion and seeking such worship for itself. If we go with the biblical account, then not only has this being been disempowered but its future already certain, ending up in a lake of fire for all time. Interestingly, this notion of "hell" is not reserved for man but for this enemy and its followers, the other expelled angelic beings. Logically then, within the framework we are considering, this devil, this enemy, is indeed exhibiting a very real fear: terminal abandonment and utter separation from God prior to destruction.
(As an aside, how much more annoying it must be for it to see such puny and blownabout creatures as humans in churches leading worship in the place it once had. Little wonder then, that so many worship leaders and musicians in churches get so many fear-based issues, perhaps, given that even though the Wizard was humbug all along, he could generate fear by illusion and loud bangs.)
There would be no need for this being to fear God if the same God did not have the power over its present and future. Ergo, God does; ergo, God is the only being for whom fear or at least a cautious respect, is both healthy and life-preservational.
Fear suggests; fear speaks; fear accuses; fear uses illusion, curtains, smoke and mirrors and the suggestion of things in boxes.
Fear suggests to us that what we have already feared in the past and is thus known, is actually an unknown, replaying our past abandonments and the little death of imagined aloneness. Humbug, in other words, yet with the addition of a believer's ready ear and imagination, able to rule an entire world...as indeed did both the Wizard and our Reverend Mother's order, amusingly called the Bene Gesserit by the author.
Even though unhealthy fear may be humbug, it has the seemingly immense power to both spin illusion and to speak. So, what to do?
Dorothy and the young Paul Atreides in their separate universes nevertheless did the same thing: they answered back.
They put the truth into words, stated it with their mouths... and passed through, enlightened and unscathed.
When Jesus was in the wilderness and that same enemy suggested and spoke, He answered it back with words of truth. And it went, disempowered...or rather, seen in its real nature as being already disempowered. Indeed, the Wizard and the Reverend Mother did not suddenly lose power there and then: they never had it anyway. They were always humbug and had always been so, relying on lies and fear to mask their true nature. Once the truth had been spoken to that which was generating the notion of fear, the real nature of the accuser was revealed.
And we ourselves, how do we respond?
There is much in modern life to separate us from others and ourselves, whilst giving the illusion that we are more included. If we had our Blackberry, i-phone, mobile or cell phone taken away, would be be more or less afraid...and would this fear be real, illusory, helpful or destructive? Are we indeed more of a "global village", so that our comforting walk down to the shops is pleasantly subsumed by an email(or blog) to someone in the opposite hemisphere? Do we face our fears, speaking the truth to it...or do we erect curtains, put it in boxes, build towers and walls and empires against it whilst all along, its size apparently increases just at the limit of our peripheral vison and hearing?
And if we spend our time building walls against it, do we ever succeed, given our allotted years...? Because would it not be both a crying and fearful shame to have spent one's life walling it out by building a glittering and hard emerald city...then finding on the last day that we had spent all that energy merely walling ourselves in?
Shaun Reeder, December 2010
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