In his 1997 best seller, "The Gift of Fear," Gavin de Becker told how people can use intuition to help them stay safe. In "Fear Less," his response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he applies his theories to individual and national security.
De Becker is an authority on violence and threat assessment and management. His firm's clients include the U.S. Supreme Court and the CIA.
His book encourages readers to do just what its title says — "Fear Less." De Becker puts the terrorist attacks into perspective and offers suggestions on how to handle the fear they've created.
While terrorism frightens because of its seeming randomness, element of surprise and lack of fixed enemy, de Becker points out that America has its own violence epidemic: "In the past two years alone, more Americans died from gunshot wounds than were killed during the entire Vietnam War — 10 times the number who died at the World Trade Center."
This is not to say that we should accept terrorism or gun violence, but rather that fear is subjective. America has gone from feeling completely safe from foreign enemies to feeling vulnerable and powerless. Neither is accurate.
De Becker writes that each American can be part of the anti-terrorism effort through being not fearful but aware. He writes that instead of being a victim, each of us can find "a true, informed feeling of safety from understanding violence, risk, intuition, fear and security." Through trusting intuition, we can let go of unwarranted fear, that is, fear based on imagination or memory.
De Becker provides some explanations for why these times are so full of worry and anxiety. In the information age, we become aware of events far beyond those that might hurt us. Instead of knowing just what happens within our communities, we see images of calamities worldwide. This gives us a larger index of fears to draw upon.
TV news is another culprit. Rather than reporting what might happen in some awful version of the future — the "electronic equivalent of jumping out of the bushes in the dark and scaring us" — TV news should say what happened and what is happening. Instead, it nurtures and feeds on anxiety. For those subjected to the days of "all anthrax, all the time" news, it is strangely comforting to learn that in 2001, flu-related disorders killed 5,000 times as many people as anthrax did.
De Becker urges us to find our shared humanness, even if that is less comfortable than thinking in terms of "Us" and "Them." Rather than excusing behavior, recognizing sameness and being compassionate enable us to understand and prevent violence.
"Fear Less" is a timely, informative and well-reasoned book that is part explanation, part advice and part reassurance.
