a history of fearlessness essay

From Fear to Fearlessness

Fearlessness is not an absence of fear.

Posted February 21, 2019

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Fearlessness is not an absence of fear ; it is being committed to something bigger than the fear. That something can be another person’s safety, a higher purpose, a calling, or any other intention.

You may wonder why a book on relationships would be addressing the concept of courage. Anyone who has been in the trenches of committed partnerships knows that it takes more than sweetness to meet the challenges that love demands. Loving another person requires us to live with an open heart. The French root of the word “courage” is “Coeur”, from the Latin “Cor”, both of which mean “heart”. To live openheartedly requires great courage since we are vulnerable to loss, rejection, and pain.

When our feelings get hurt, it takes great courage to resist the temptation to become defensive and to instead become fearless. We can’t help but feel fear when we are threatened, but even in those difficult moments, we have the power to determine how we react. Acting from our deeper intentions rather than indulging our impulse to defend, withdraw or attack can pay off in long-term rewards. Whenever we make this choice, we strengthen our fearless muscle.

Fear is normal. Fear is not the enemy. We can’t get rid of fear; even if we could it would NOT be a good thing to do. Fear can alert us to possible dangers. Cultivating fearlessness does not mean that we no longer have fear, but that we have moved from fearing fear and avoiding anything that activates it, By accepting the inevitability of fear, we learn to appreciate its value. Fearlessness is the state of being in which we are aware of fear yet not controlled by it.

When we are possessed by fear, we’re unwilling to take risks, which can be a good thing, since some risks would be unwise. When we live in a state of ongoing anxiety , our primary commitment is to avoid pain or loss. There are some risks that are worth taking if we seek to experience fulfilling lives. The old cliché states, “The only constant in life is change.” And change isn’t guaranteed to be for the better. We can try to minimize the risks involved in the inevitable changes that life brings, but if we don’t become friends with fear, our lives can become stagnant.

Risk-taking is something that if done with discernment, supports our ability to learn from our mistakes. As we correct our errors, we are better prepared for future challenges. If we don’t risk, we don’t learn and grow.

Rather than being guided by the question of “What is the safest thing to do in this situation? we can ask ourselves the questions, “What is it that I truly want to experience now?” Cultivating fearlessness is about redirecting the focus of our attention from away fear and towards desire. This is not to say that we ignore fear, but simply that we subordinate it to our commitment. Doing so puts fear in its rightful place. It is still in the equation, but it is no longer the determining factor.

Often it’s not that we have too much fear; we don’t have enough of it, and we’re afraid of the wrong things. Many people reach the end of their lives with regrets. Often, their regrets are not about mistakes they made, but about what they wish they had been willing to risk.

When we trust ourselves to survive our mistakes, to learn from them, we put in the corrections that will affect our future actions. We feel less fearful since we have established greater trust in ourselves that we can handle the failures and disappointments that occur in all well-lived lives. Trying to avoid discomfort weakens us and makes us more fearful. Reawakening the curiosity that we had as children helps us know fear intimately. As we become familiar with fear, we come to be less averse to it and see it as an intrinsic aspect of the process of coming to terms with our deeper values.

Resistance, control, rage , and resignation are all defenses against fear. Any form of manipulation, lying , avoiding, denying, withdrawing, withholding, or defensiveness, strengthens fear. In cultivating fearlessness we are challenged to do the opposite of these things, to confront that which we have been avoiding.

The process of becoming fearless has to do with the development of self-care, self-responsibility, self-compassion, and self-trust. It also requires us to cultivate the quality of forgiveness , not just for others, but also for ourselves, the person who is often the hardest to forgive.

Many of us view the world as a dangerous place where it would be foolish to let down our guard. Granted, there are people to whom it would be very unwise to give our trust, but there is also a grave danger in bringing a stance of suspicion to every encounter. Such a posture predisposes us to justify dishonesty hypocrisy and irresponsibility.

Confronting fear requires experiencing both our aversion as well as our desire, and to engage both sides directly. If desire is strong and the expected rewards are high, we can commit to going forward even in the face of fear. This is truly “warrior work” and it’s not for the faint of heart. We don’t necessarily begin with a brave heart; we develop it along the way. We begin wherever we are right now and just put one foot in front of the other and repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

Linda Bloom, L.C.S.W. , and Charlie Bloom, M.S.W. , are the authors of Secrets of Great Marriages: Real Truths from Real Couples About Lasting Love .

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Montaigne’s Essays : A Humanistic Approach to Fear

• First Online: 18 April 2018

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• Sergio Starkstein 2  

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Montaigne’s Essays is of major importance for the philosophy of fear. In this work, Montaigne provides narratives of a variety of fears, and in doing so describes a full palette of fear-related emotions, from individual doubts and avoidance, to terror and generalised panic. Montaigne’s analysis and treatment of fear is unique because he is among the first philosophers to openly discuss his own fears and the variety of philosophical therapies he used to subdue them. After employing Stoic and Epicurean remedies, Montaigne found the most useful philosophical therapy in the sceptical Pyrrhonian tradition. Thus, the Essays express an open-minded, particularistic and anti-dogmatic approach to life. Montaigne’s motto ‘What do I know?’ reflects his non-partisan approach and receptiveness to improving his emotional well-being, as well as increasing his knowledge and joy of life by accepting life events as these unfold.

It is fear that I am most afraid of: In harshness it surpasses all other mischances . Michel de Montaigne, Essays (Book I, “On fear”) (Montaigne 2003 )

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It is difficult to introduce Montaigne as a philosopher, as he did not belong to the ‘establishment’ nor did he want to become a ‘professional’ philosopher. He was a ‘humanist’ in the sense of Petrarch and Erasmus, a man of letters, and a politician. Nevertheless, the Essays is the work of a profound philosopher, one of the most original thinkers of the Renaissance who understood the human soul as few before or after him. Julie Roberts ( 2015 , p. 246) considers the Essays as a “pathographically curative” text, with the effort to examine oneself as one of the main aspects of philosophical therapy. She connects Montaigne’s therapy with Foucault’s “care of the self” (Foucault 1986 ). Rachel Starr ( 2012 , p. 436) considers the Essays as the pinnacle of “humanistic psychotherapy.”

After publishing the first edition in 1580, Montaigne continued adding material, which creates some confusion, as he did not correct his previous concepts even when they were in contradiction with the new ones. The additions from 1580 to 1588 are marked with a “B”, whereas the additions from 1588–1592 made in the 1588 ‘Bordeaux copy’ (first published in 1595) are marked with a “C”. I have used Screech’s translation (Montaigne 2003 ), but also added material from Frame’s translation whenever I considered the concept to be more clearly conveyed (Montaigne 1965 ). Reference to specific essays will be given to by volume and number, and page numbers within specific essays will be referred to by volume, essay, and page number. Letters A, B and C are used, when necessary, to indicate the different editions.

The presence of clearly demarcated philosophical stages in Montaigne’s intellectual evolution has been contested by a number of authors, and is extensively discussed in Bermúdez ( 2015 , pp. 54–61). Frame ( 1955 , pp. 5–7) describes three periods in Montaigne’s philosophical development: the first one (“Stoic period”) extended from 1572 to 1574; the second one (“Sceptical period”) extended from 1575 to 1577, and the final period (“Epicurean period”) extended from 1578 until Montaigne’s death in 1592.

This type of autobiographical writing was not new (Montaigne’s Essays was preceded by Augustine’s Confessions and Petrarch’s Secretum ), but Montaigne’s text is unique in the frankness of personal descriptions, in which a reader of any place and period may be easily reflected.

Fear is a main theme in I.6 “The hour of parley is dangerous”, I.11 “On prognostications”, I.16 “On punishing cowardice”, I.19 “That we should not be deemed happy till after our death”, I.20 “To philosophise is to learn how to die”, I.21 “On the power of imagination”, I.33 “On fleeing from pleasures at the cost of one’s life”, I.39 “On solitude”, and I.57 “On the length of life”.

This sounds anachronistic, but the extrapolation of the Essays into contemporary life is commonly practiced and for good reasons (Lazar and Madden 2015 , pp. 1–2), as fear is one of the most primitive human emotions, the phenomenology in terms of feelings and behaviour has not changed in its conceptual essence, and the main causes of this emotion are perennial, such as the fear of death, poverty, sickness and wars.

Scholar ( 2010 ), remarks that the Essays “haunt its readers” by the free-thinking style of Montaigne’s writings. Montaigne was a scholar, but fiercely anti-dogmatic, anti-authoritarian, and able to make “all questions accessible to his readers” (Scholar 2010 , p. 7).

“When he is threatened with a blow nothing can stop a man closing his eyes, or trembling if you set him on the edge of a precipice…” (A.2.3.388).

“Anyone who is afraid of suffering suffers already of being afraid” (3.13.1243).

The main essays discussing the fear of death are “Constancy” (1.12), “That the taste of good and evil…” (1.14), “That to philosophise is to learn to die” (1.20), “Solitude” (1.39) and “The inconsistency of our own actions” (2.1).

The topic on the futility of premeditation is discussed in-depth in the penultimate essay “On physiognomy” (3.22).

“I am one of those by whom the powerful blows of the imagination are felt most strongly. Everyone is hit by it, but some are bowled over” (A.1.21.109).

“When I contemplate an illness I seize upon it and lodge it within myself” (C.1.21.109).

“Once the pain has gone I am not much depressed by weakness or lassitude. I know of several bodily afflictions which are horrifying even to name but which I fear less than hundreds of current disturbances and distresses of the mind” (C.3.13.1245).

“Then, there is no madness, no raving lunacy, which such agitations do not bring forth” (A.1.8.30).

“Resigned to any outcome whatsoever once the dice have been thrown” (B.2.17.732); and “Few emotions have ever disturbed my sleep, yet even the slightest need to decide anything can disturb it for me” (B.2.17.732).

“In events I act like a man: in the conduct of events, like a boy. The dread of a tumble gives me more anguish than the fall” (B.2.17.733).

“…thank God we have nothing to do with each other” (A.1.24.143).

“I tell those who urge me to take medicine at least to wait until I am well and have got my strength back in order to have the means of resisting the hazardous effects of their potions” (A.1.24.143).

“Can I feel something disintegrating? Do not expect me to waste time having my pulse and urine checked so that anxious prognostics can be drawn from them: I will be in plenty of time to feel the anguish without prolonging things by an anguished fear” (B.3.13.1243).

His father lived to 74 years, a grandfather to 69, and a great-grandfather to almost 80, “none having swallowed any kind of drug” (A.2.37.864).

“How many men have been made ill by the sheer force of imagination? Is it not normal to see men bled, purged and swallowing medicines to cure ills which they feel only in their minds?” (A.2.12.547).

“Why do doctors first work on the confidence of their patient with so many fake promises of a cure if not to allow the action of the imagination to make up for the trickery of their potions? They know that one of the masters of their craft told them in writing that there are men for whom it is enough merely to look at a medicine for it to prove effective” (A.1.21.116). Thus, the trickery of doctors consisted in using medications as strong placebos to cure imaginary illnesses, as well as convincing patients that their drugs were curing an otherwise irreversible condition (Justman 2015 ).

Robert ( 2015 , pp. 721–744) has analysed the subtle way in which Montaigne ridiculed both physicians and patients for engaging in fully unproven expensive treatments.

“… they rob us of feelings and concern for what now is, in order to spend time over what will be – even when we ourselves shall be no more” (B.1.3.11).

“The continual suspicion, which leads a Prince to distrust everyone may torment him strangely” (A.1.24.145).

“So vain and worthless is human wisdom: despite all our projects, counsels and precautions, the outcome remains in the possession of Fortune” (A.1.24.143).

“The longest of my projects are for less than a year; I think only of bringing things to a close; I free myself from all fresh hopes and achievements” (C.2.28.797).

“My old age…deadens within me many of the desires and worries which trouble our lives: worry about the way the world is going; worry about money, honours, erudition, health… and me” (C.2.28.797).

“I am the most ill-disposed toward pain” (C.1.14.69).

“When my condition is bad I cling violently to my illness: I abandon myself to despair and let myself go towards catastrophe” (B.3.9.1072).

“Death is the only guarantor of our freedom, the common and ready cure of our ills” (A.1.14.53). Montaigne acceptance of suicide is not explicitly stated in the text, perhaps due to fear of the Inquisition.

It may also be the case that Montaigne had no firm opinion about the best ‘remedies’ for fear, and left different options open.

“The anxiety to do well…puts the soul on the rack, break it, and make it impotent” (Montaigne 1965 1.10.26, Frame’s translation).

Bakewell states that premeditation did not liberate Montaigne from his fears, but actually served to imprison him (Bakewell 2010 , p. 3).

“Do we ask to be whipped right now…just because it may be that Fortune will, perhaps, make you suffer a whipping some day?” (B.3.12.1189).

“No man has ever prepared to leave the world more simply nor more fully than I have. No one has more completely let go of everything than I try to do” (C.1.20.98) [my italics].

“How many country-folk do I see ignoring poverty; how many yearning for death or meeting it without panic or distress? That man over there who is trenching my garden has, this morning, buried his father or his son” (B.3.12.1178).

This description seems to idealise and romanticise the behaviour of the ‘lower classes’, but this is what Montaigne was contemplating, what he saw in his own estate. Although he cannot know what was going on in the minds of his peasants and he employs a clumsy generalisation I believe that this image can be read as being used to contrast different human responses to fear and to show that fear can be successfully dominated.

Hartle ( 2013 , p. 17) also believes in a more opinionated than a non-judgmental Montaigne, stressing that throughout the Essays Montaigne constantly makes judgments of all sorts. This is certainly true, except for the questions that obsessed Montaigne the most: the fears of sickness poverty and death. When discussing Montaigne’s scepticism in relation to Sextus Empiricus, Bermúdez Vazquez remarks that “philosophical speculation leads only to confusion because of the inevitability of uncertainty. It produces anxiety rather than peace of mind” (p. 17).

“Fear, desire, hope, impel us towards the future; they rob us of feelings and concern for what now is, in order to spend time over what will be – even when we ourselves shall be no more” (B.1.3.11).

This has obvious Buddhist resonances, and may be related to Montaigne’s admiration of Pyrrhonism, which has many affinities with Eastern thought (Beckwith 2015 ). Pyrrho’s main concepts as reported by Sextus Empiricus had been translated into French about 20 years before the first edition of the Essays (see Calhoun 2015 ).

Montaigne’s purported unnoticed way of life was only partially true, since while trying to stay away from the daily nuisance at his chateau, he would eagerly seek the company of the few erudite Montaigne had in esteem to engage in conversation, and more reluctantly, work for the king on political missions.

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself” (A.1.39.272).

This is clarified in a footnote by Screech (Montaigne 2003 ) as “I make a distinction,” a term used in formal debates to reject or modify an opponent’s assertion.

“Life must be its own objective, its own purpose. Its right concern is to rule itself, govern itself, put up with itself” (C.3.12.1191).

The number following the year corresponds to the remark in Philosophical Investigations .

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Starkstein, S. (2018). Montaigne’s Essays : A Humanistic Approach to Fear. In: A Conceptual and Therapeutic Analysis of Fear. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78349-9_4

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The five principles of fearlessness

National geographic society’s chairman jean case explains the bold risk-taking behind great discoveries and innovations..

Philanthropist and National Geographic Society's chairman Jean Case outlines the qualities of change makers in her book Be Fearless .

If you think that only a rare genius, an exceptionally privileged individual, or a massively funded organisation can launch a breakthrough product or bring a world-changing movement to life, I’ll introduce you to the fearless people from all walks of life who have made the unimaginable possible. You might be dazzled by their achievements, and it’s easy to assume they possessed extraordinary abilities or advantages that set them apart from ordinary strivers. But I have news for you. Their single common trait was this: they were all passionate about making the world better. They seized an opportunity and kept at it in spite of daunting barriers, frequent failures, and loud objections—and they succeeded. Today we look at them, our most iconic creators, and wonder how the world ever existed without their contributions. But, as you will see, many of their stories provide inspiration and helpful hints on how we can all make a greater impact in every aspect of our lives, and serve as beacons of fearlessness for others.

Today’s global challenges—poverty, civil unrest, political stalemates, economic divisions, climate change—play out daily against the backdrop of our living rooms. But if these problems seem too big and complex—easier to ignore than to even attempt to solve—know that there has never been a better time to engage. An explosion of technological innovation is transforming the way we live. And if we’re going to keep up with the rapid pace of change, we need to rethink the old way of doing things.

My husband, Steve, and I started the Case Foundation in 1997 with a fearless mission: to invest in people and ideas that can change the world . This means we’re always investigating and experimenting to find the best ideas out there, the best leaders, the best models for innovation. A few years ago, we engaged a team of experts to determine the “secret sauce” that propelled those rare leaders, organizations, and movements to success. They discovered five principles that are consistently present when transformational breakthroughs take place. To spark this sort of change, you must:

1. Make a Big Bet. So many people and organisations are naturally cautious. They look at what seemed to work in the past and try to do more of it, leading to only incremental advances. Every truly history-making transformation has occurred when people have decided to go for revolutionary change.

2. Be bold, take risks. Have the guts to try new, unproven things and the rigour to continue experimenting. Risk taking is not a blind leap off a cliff but a lengthy process of trial and error. And it doesn’t end with the launch of a product or the start of a movement. You need to be willing to risk the next big idea, even if it means upsetting your own status quo.

3. Make failure matter. Great achievers view failure as a necessary part of advancing towards success. No one seeks it out, but if you’re trying new things, the outcome is by definition uncertain. When failure happens, great innovators make the setback matter, applying the lessons learned and sharing them with others.

4. Reach beyond your bubble. Our society is in thrall to the myth of the lone genius. But innovation happens at intersections. Often the most original solutions come from engaging with people with diverse experiences to forge new and unexpected partnerships.

5. Let urgency conquer fear. Don’t overthink and over analyse. It’s natural to want to study a problem from all angles, but getting caught up in questions like “What if we’re wrong? What if there’s a better way?” can leave you paralysed with fear. Allow the compelling need to act to outweigh all doubts and setbacks.

Hear how Alex Honnold copes with fear while free solo climbing mountains.

These five principles can be summarised in two words: Be Fearless. Taken together, they form a road map for effective changemaking for people from all walks of life, but it’s important to note that they aren’t 'rules'. They don’t always work in tandem or sequentially, and none is more important than another. Think of them as a set of markers that can help identify when decisions are being made fearlessly.

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• People and Culture

Excerpt: the five principles of fearlessness

National Geographic Society’s chairman Jean Case explains the bold risk-taking behind great discoveries and innovations.

If you think that only a rare genius, an exceptionally privileged individual, or a massively funded organization can launch a breakthrough product or bring a world-changing movement to life, I’ll introduce you in these pages to the fearless people from all walks of life who have made the unimaginable possible. You might be dazzled by their achievements, and it’s easy to assume they possessed extraordinary abilities or advantages that set them apart from ordinary strivers. But I have news for you. Their single common trait was this: they were all passionate about making the world better. They seized an opportunity and kept at it in spite of daunting barriers, frequent failures, and loud objections—and they succeeded. Today we look at them, our most iconic creators, and wonder how the world ever existed without their contributions. But, as you will see here, many of their stories provide inspiration and helpful hints on how we can all make a greater impact in every aspect of our lives, and serve as beacons of fearlessness for others.

The cover of Jean Case's book, Be Fearless.

Today’s global challenges—poverty, civil unrest, political stalemates, economic divisions, climate change—play out daily against the backdrop of our living rooms. But if these problems seem too big and complex—easier to ignore than to even attempt to solve—know that there has never been a better time to engage. An explosion of technological innovation is transforming the way we live. And if we’re going to keep up with the rapid pace of change, we need to rethink the old way of doing things.

Read about the history of risk and exploration at National Geographic.

My husband, Steve, and I started the Case Foundation in 1997 with a fearless mission: to invest in people and ideas that can change the world . This means we’re always investigating and experimenting to find the best ideas out there, the best leaders, the best models for innovation. A few years ago, we engaged a team of experts to determine the “secret sauce” that propelled those rare leaders, organizations, and movements to success. They discovered five principles that are consistently present when transformational breakthroughs take place. To spark this sort of change, you must:

1. Make a Big Bet. So many people and organizations are naturally cautious. They look at what seemed to work in the past and try to do more of it, leading to only incremental advances. Every truly history-making transformation has occurred when people have decided to go for revolutionary change.

2. Be bold, take risks. Have the guts to try new, unproven things and the rigor to continue experimenting. Risk taking is not a blind leap off a cliff but a lengthy process of trial and error. And it doesn’t end with the launch of a product or the start of a movement. You need to be willing to risk the next big idea, even if it means upsetting your own status quo.

3. Make failure matter. Great achievers view failure as a necessary part of advancing towards success. No one seeks it out, but if you’re trying new things, the outcome is by definition uncertain. When failure happens, great innovators make the setback matter, applying the lessons learned and sharing them with others.

4. Reach beyond your bubble. Our society is in thrall to the myth of the lone genius. But innovation happens at intersections. Often the most original solutions come from engaging with people with diverse experiences to forge new and unexpected partnerships.

5. Let urgency conquer fear. Don’t overthink and overanalyze. It’s natural to want to study a problem from all angles, but getting caught up in questions like “What if we’re wrong? What if there’s a better way?” can leave you paralyzed with fear. Allow the compelling need to act to outweigh all doubts and setbacks.

Hear how Alex Honnold copes with fear while free solo climbing mountains.

These five principles can be summarized in two words: Be Fearless. Taken together, they form a road map for effective changemaking for people from all walks of life, but it’s important to note that they aren’t “rules.” They don’t always work in tandem or sequentially, and none is more important than another. Think of them as a set of markers that can help identify when decisions are being made fearlessly.

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Lapham’s quarterly.

On feigning fearlessness.

When a boy, I read a passage in one of Frederick Marryat’s books which always impressed me.

The captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he was not frightened. After this is kept up long enough, it changes from pretense to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. This was the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid, I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose. They will first learn to bear themselves well in trials which they anticipate and which they school themselves in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, and they will behave well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon them unawares.

It is of course much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy and respect those who are. But it is a good thing to remember that the man who does not enjoy this advantage can nevertheless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the like efficiency, if he chooses to . Let him dream about being a fearless man, and the more he dreams the better he will be, always provided he does his best to realize the dream in practice. He can do his part honorably and well, provided only he sets fearlessness before himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as something to be faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should regard it, not as something to be thrown away but as a pawn to be promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger interests of the great game in which we are all engaged.

Theodore Roosevelt

From his Autobiography . In 1915, six years after leaving the White House, Roosevelt spoke to a mostly Irish audience of the Knights of Columbus at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism,” he said. An originator of this nativist phrase, he expanded on the idea: “There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.”

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The Role of Courage on Behavioral Approach in a Fear-Eliciting Situation: A Proof-of-Concept Pilot Study

Peter j. norton.

University of Houston

Brandon J. Weiss

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The current study was conducted to assess courage, defined as behavioral approach despite the experience of fear, in an effort to better understand its relationship with anxiety, fear, and behavioral approach. Thirty two participants who completed a measure of courage and reported elevated spider fears during an earlier screening participated in a Behavioral Approach Test where they were shown a display of four taxidermied tarantulas and asked to move their hand as close to the spiders as they felt comfortable doing. After controlling for scores on measures of spider fears, courage scores were significantly associated with approach distance to the spiders, such that participants with greater courage moved closer to the spiders. This study advances knowledge about the relationship between courage and fear. Based on our findings, future studies can explore the extent to which (a) courage mediates willingness to engage in therapeutic exposure in treatment, and (b) whether courage can be augmented in treatment prior to implementing exposure therapy.

The study of anxiety, fear, and their disorders has traditionally viewed these phenomena as, at best, adaptive but unpleasant emotions and, at worst, maladaptive pathological conditions. Considerably less attention has been paid to the highly related construct of courage, which has important implications for understanding the nature and treatment of fear and anxiety disorders. Courage, as opposed to fearlessness, has been defined by Rachman and colleagues ( Cox, Hallam, O’Connor, & Rachman, 1983 ; McMillan & Rachman, 1987 , 1988 ; O’Connor, Hallam, & Rachman, 1985 ) as behavioral approach despite the experience of fear. In one of these studies ( McMillan & Rachman, 1988 ), paratrooper trainees defined as courageous evidenced as much physiological arousal prior to a training jump as those defined as fearful, but were equally likely as those defined as fearless (who did not show physiological arousal) to complete the jump. Thus, according to Rachman and colleagues, courage is unique from fearlessness in that the courageous individual completes the same act as the fearless individual, despite experiencing fear. A more recent study operating under this definition ( Schmidt & Koselka, 2000 ) took a cursory examination of courage as part of a larger study of factors mediating panic disorder. This study used a simple non-validated seven-item measure of courage (e.g., In general, are you a courageous person? How courageous are you when it comes to dealing with panic attacks?) and found no relationship between courage and any theoretically-relevant measures.

Drawing from a different model of courage, Woodard (2004 ; Woodard & Pury, 2007 ) developed a 31-item measure of courage. Woodard’s definition of courage, which forms the basis for the measure, stresses the “quality of grace, nobility, credibility, sensibility, practicality, or meaningfulness” ( Woodard, 2004 ; p. 174) of the act or cause, and the “important, perhaps moral, outcome or goal” ( Woodard & Pury, 2007 ; p.136). This presents an interesting value judgment in the definition of courage. Although few would question the courage of individuals who “if called upon during times of national emergency… would give my life for my country” (item #5; Woodard, 2004 ), disagreement with this sentiment does not automatically connote a lack of courage. Many individuals might object to military service, for example, due to political, religious, pacifistic, or other reasons that are unrelated to courageousness. Indeed, conscientious objectors to military conflict who refuse mandatory service may be seen as courageously defending their beliefs in that “intense social pressure would not stop me from doing the right thing” (item #10; Woodard, 2004 ). Furthermore, this measure utilizes items that describe specific scenarios, such as “I would risk my life if it meant lasting world peace” that may not be applicable to, or within the scope of understanding of, many individuals who have not faced such a situation.

Most recently, a special issue of the Journal of Positive Psychology examined various emerging theories of courage. Rate, Clarke, Lindsay and Sternberg (2007) , for example, utilized multiple methodologies and measurement approaches to identify implicit theories of courage using undergraduate and graduate student samples, and Air Force Academy trainees. Across each of their methodologies, a generally consistent pattern emerged wherein courage was defined by three components: fear, risk, and nobility of purpose. Pury, Kowalski, and Spearman (2007) asked a sample of 250 students to describe a time in their lives when they acted courageously, and provide ratings of their level of fear, courageousness, and self-confidence. Linguistic coding of narrative data and analysis of the ratings provided evidence distinguishing general courage, more monumental actions that would be courageous for anyone, and personal courage, actions that are seen as courageous due to the context of the individual. Other less empirically-derived definitions and types of courage have also been offered (e.g., Hannah, Sweeney, & Lester, 2007 ; Putman, 1997 ). Interestingly, although these definitions vary in terms of their emphases, including the nobility of the cause or the requirement of fear, most hold as part of their core definition a notion of persistence in the presence of perceived threat as described by Rachman and colleagues ( Cox, Hallam, O’Connor, & Rachman, 1983 ; McMillan & Rachman, 1987 , 1988 ; O’Connor, Hallam, & Rachman, 1985 ).

Despite the limited research, the concept of courage is important in understanding human behavior in general, and it also has important implications for understanding behavioral treatments for anxiety disorders. Exposure to feared stimuli has consistently been shown to be an integral part of anxiety disorder treatments ( Norton & Price, 2007 ), and the Surgeon General of the United States, in his 1999 Report on Mental Health, stated that a “critical element of therapy is to increase exposure to the stimuli or situations that provoke anxiety” ( Office of the Surgeon General, 1999 ; p. 241). By definition, exposure connotes courageous behavior – approaching a feared or anxiety-producing stimulus. Although some (e.g., Hembree et al., 2003 ) have demonstrated that some exposure-based treatments do not have elevated dropout rates when compared to other empirically-validated treatment approaches, Zayfert et al. (2005) documented that the majority of participants discontinuing cognitive behavioral therapy at a specialty anxiety disorder clinic did so before the initiation of the first exposure session. Although many factors could explain these data, Zayfert et al. (2005) posit that “it is possible that this reflects avoidance of direct engagement with trauma stimuli, which is required during ET [exposure therapy]” (p. 643, clarification added). Thus, it is plausible that avoidance behavior and a perceived inability to confront one’s fears – lower courage to confront fears – might underlie some clients’ lack of initiation of or discontinuation from exposure-based treatments. Therefore, measuring courage may help to predict who is likely to complete exposure and identify those who would benefit from strategies to increase courage prior to initiating the exposure portion of treatment.

While several of the aforementioned studies have attempted to quantify courage (e.g., Woodard, 2004 ; Woodard & Pury, 2007 ; Schmidt & Koselka, 2000 ) or empirically define courage (e.g., Pury et al., 2007 ; Rate et al., 2007 ), none have attempted to predict actual behavior using the definitions or scales. Indeed, despite the care and scrutiny taken in deriving these models and scales, the lack of any comparison to actual behavior opens the possibility that self-presentational biases and/or idealized perceptions of courageousness might have influenced the findings. The purpose of this current study was, therefore, to assess whether self-reported courageousness can reasonably predict behavioral approach in fear-provoking situations. Two possible relationships between courage, fear, and behavioral approach were specifically tested. First, it was expected that courage would account for additional variance in behavioral approach above-and-beyond that accounted for by pre-existing levels of fear. Second, it is also possible that courage could moderate the relationship between fear and behavioral approach, such that as courage increases, the relationship between fear and behavioral approach becomes less negative.

Participants

Participants were 31 female undergraduate psychology students 1 attending the University of Houston. Participants had a mean age of 22.13 years ( SD = 2.62), and represented all years of college (3.2% Freshman, 12.9% Sophomore, 51.6% Junior, and 32.3% Senior). Ethnic distribution was as follows: 9 Asians (29.1%), 8 Hispanics (25.8%), 7 Caucasians (22.6%), 4 African Americans (12.9%), 2 Multiracial (6.5%), and 1 Middle Eastern (3.2%).

For the purposes of this study, we developed twelve rationally-derived items to assess self-perceived courageousness (Courage Measure; CM). The CM uses an operational definition of “persistence or perseverance despite having fear.” Items were rated by a 7-point Likert-type scale, from 1 (Never) to 7 (Always). The items are presented in Table 1 .

Items used to estimate courage.

Spider fear

The Spider Questionnaire (SPQ; Klorman, Hastings, Weerts, Melamed, & Lang, 1974 ) is a 31-item self-report measure assessing the verbal-cognitive component of fear of spiders. Items consisted of statements and asked for participants to agree or disagree with the statement. The SPQ has demonstrated temporal stability ( Muris & Merckelbach, 1996 ), discriminant validity ( Fredrickson, 1983 ), and sensitivity to treatment ( Hellstrom & Ost, 1995 ). For the current study, Cronbach’s alpha was .80.

The Spider Phobia Beliefs Questionnaire (SBQ; Arntz, Lavy, van den Berg, & van Rijsoort, 1993 ) is a 42-item self-report measure assessing beliefs about, and fears of, spiders. The validation study of the SBQ found the measure to have excellent internal consistency, adequate temporal stability, and demonstrated discriminant validity and sensitivity to treatment. For the current study, Cronbach’s alpha was .98.

Anxiety and distress

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory – State form (STAI-S; Speilberger, 1983 ) is a well-validated 20-item questionnaire designed to assess current levels of general anxiety. The psychometric properties of the STAI-S are strong across multiple populations (Spielberger et al., 1993). In the current sample, the internal consistency of the STAI-S was .94. Participants also reported their peak anxiety using a Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS; Wolpe, 1958 ) rating, ranging from 0 (No fear/anxiety) to 100 (Highest anxiety ever experienced or worst imaginable anxiety).

A Behavioral Approach Test (BAT) measures approach behavior in the context of a feared stimulus. For the current study, approach was measured in inches (see Procedures) according to how close the participant came to touching the spiders.

All aspects of the current study were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Houston. The study consisted of two phases.

The purpose of the first phase (T1) was to screen eligible participants for elevated spider fears. During the first phase, participants were recruited via undergraduate psychology classes to complete an online battery of questionnaires, including the CM, SPQ, and the SBQ, for extra credit. At the end of the questionnaire battery, which was presented in a single fixed order, participants were asked whether they would like to be considered for additional extra credit opportunities. Participants who expressed interest in further participation and scored 10 or greater on the SPQ, roughly one standard deviation above non-clinical sample means ( Antony, Orsillo, & Roemer, 2001 ), were contacted to participate in the second phase. Although the focus of this study was on spider fears, measures of other specific fears (e.g., snakes, dental fears, etc. were also included to mask the purpose of the study and the eligibility requirements for the second phase of the study.

Of the 312 students who participated in the first phase of this study, 103 were eligible for, and had consented to being contacted about, possible participation in a second phase of this project. Eligible participants were contacted and informed that participation would involve attending an in-person session during which they would be asked to complete additional questionnaires and participate in a short task. Of the 103 contacted for possible participation in Phase 2, 31 participants agreed and attended a scheduled experimental session 2 . In most cases, attrition was due to non-response to an e-mail offering participation, or non-attendance at a scheduled experimental session. In each case, participants were unaware of the nature of the second phase.

The second phase of the study (T2) involved a one-on-one experimental session where participants were informed that they would be shown spiders (which were hidden at the time) and reminded that they could withdraw from the study at any time. Only one participant declined to participate after learning of the spider display. After obtaining informed consent (which revealed that they would be shown spiders), participants were again administered the CM, as well as the STAI-S, before beginning the BAT. For the BAT, participants were informed that the purpose of the task was to see how close people who are fearful of spiders are willing to get and that they were not required to touch the spider if they did not want to. The spider display was uncovered, and participants were asked to move their hand as close to the spider as they felt comfortable doing along a yard stick attached to the spider display. No inducements were provided to encourage the participants to move closer or further than they chose. The distance from the spider was measured along the yard stick. All participants completed the BAT within 30 seconds of the spiders being unveiled, thus limiting the likelihood that the participants might have habituated to the spider. Immediately following the BAT, participants were asked to self-report the peak SUDS they experienced during the BAT.

Analysis of the data was conducted in three steps. Initially, the data were examined to ensure distributional normality and the absence of univariate or multivariate outliers. Second, we examined CM scores to estimate the psychometric characteristics of the instrument. Finally, CM scores were examined in relation to spider fear scores and behavioral approach.

Preliminary Analyses

All variables were normally (skew < .80) distributed, with the exception of the SBQ, which was slightly skewed positively (.90). Square-root transformation of this variable normalized the distribution (skew = .09). When examining for univariate outliers, using Tukey’s approach of 1.5 times the Interquartile range, two univariate outliers were identified on the CM from T1: one beyond the upper-bound and one beyond the lower-bound. Both values were Windsorized ( Hoaglin, Mosteller, & Tukey, 1983 ). No other univariate outliers were noted. Examination using Mahalanobis distance ( Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007 ) revealed no multivariate outliers. Corrected means and standard deviations of the scales are presented in Table 2 . The median SUDS score of 62.50 indicates that, for the most part, the spider display evoked moderately high levels of distress.

Univariate scale summaries and simple correlations.

Notes: SPQ: Spider Questionnaire, SBQ: Spider Beliefs Questionnaire (not skew transformed), T1 CM (T2 CM): Courage Measure from Time 1 (Time 2), STAI-S: State-Trait Anxiety Inventory state form, SUDS: Subjective Units of Distress Scale, BAT: Behavioral Approach Test,

Psychometric Analysis of the Courage Measure

CM items from T1, based on the full sample of 312 who completed this measure, and T2 were independently analyzed for internal consistency, both of which showed good internal consistency (T1 α = .877, T2 α = .918). Test-retest reliability of the measure, over an average of three weeks, was evidenced by no significant mean differences over time, t (29) = 1.13, p = .269, although there was only a moderate test-retest correlation between scores at the two time points, r = .66, p < .001.

Next, the factor structure of the CM was analyzed. Given the small sample that participated at T2, CM scores from the 312 participants at T1 were examined. The data were subjected to Principal Axis Factoring using an oblique (oblimin) rotation, and the number of factors to retain was determined by Scree plot examination and factor interpretability. Examination of the Scree plot supported a unifactorial solution, with item loadings ranging from .423 to .775.

Finally, simple correlations were run to examine the patterns of relationship between the CM and the other scales ( Table 2 ). The CM showed only moderate to low correlations with measures of spider fears and general anxiety, no significant relationship with SUDS during the BAT, and a strong relationship to approach distance, suggesting that it is not simply assessing fearlessness and providing preliminary support for its predictive and discriminant validity. scores were unrelated to participant age, T1: r = .117, p = .244; T2: r = .005, p = .980, and sex, T1: r = .044, p = .664; T2: r = .252, p = .165.

Courage, Fear, and Behavioral Approach

Given that scores on the CM showed distributional normality and reasonable psychometric characteristics, two hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted to examine the relationships between courage, fear, and behavioral approach. In each equation, the distance each participant moved his or her hand toward the spiders (higher scores equal closer distance) was the criterion variable. Spider fear scores (SPQ and SBQ) were entered in the first step of the equation to control for the variability in distance predicted by spider fears. CM score from Time 1 or from Time 2 was entered in the second step of each equation, respectively, to examine whether courage predicted variability in distance above-and-beyond that accounted for by fear. Finally, the interaction of the spider fear measures and the corresponding CM score was entered in the third step to explore whether courage moderated the relationship between spider fears and approach toward the spiders.

In the first equation (see Table 3 ), entry of the SPQ and SBQ in the first step significantly and negatively predicted approach distance, R 2 = .252, F (2,24) = 4.04, p = .031, although neither SPQ nor SBQ made significant unique predictions of approach distance. Entry of CM scores from Time 1 did not significantly improve the prediction of approach distance, R 2 = .295, R 2 Δ = .040, F Δ (3,23) = 1.42, p = .245, nor did the inclusion of the interaction terms, R 2 = .354, R 2 Δ = .059, F Δ (5,21) = 0.96, p = .399.

Summary of multiple regressions of fear, courage, and their interaction on behavioral approach.

Notes: SPQ: Spider Phobia Questionnaire, SBQ: Spider Beliefs Questionnaire, T1 CM: Courage Measure from Time 1 (initial pretesting), T2 CM Courage Measure from Time 2 (immediately prior to behavioral approach task).

In the second equation, SBQ and SPQ together significantly and negatively predicted approach distance, R 2 = .247, F (2,25) = 4.09, p = .029, although again neither SPQ nor SBQ made significant unique predictions of approach distance. Inclusion of Time 2 CM scores, however, did significantly improve the prediction of approach distance, R 2 = .418, R 2 Δ = .171, F Δ (1,24) = 5.74, p = .014, and made a significant unique prediction of approach distance beyond that accounted for by the spider fear measures. A trend toward SBQ, but not SPQ, predicting distance was also observed in Step 2. Finally, entry of the interaction terms in the third step did not improve the prediction of the equation, R 2 = .429, R 2 Δ = .011, F Δ (2,22) = 0.21, p = .810, and only Time 2 CM scores significantly uniquely predicted approach distance (see Table 3 ) 3 .

The lack of correspondence between T1 and T2 CM scores with behavioral approach was unexpected; therefore, exploratory analyses were conducted to examine factors that might be associated with changes in CM scores from T1 to T2. CM scores were residualized, by regressing T1 CM onto T2 CM, and saving the standardized residual score as a new variable. This new variable reflected change in CM scores from T1 to T2. While peak SUDS during the task, r = −.063, p = .742, and both SPQ, r = −.298, p = .116, and SBQ, r = −.225, p = .251, scores were unrelated to the change in CM scores, STAI-S scores reported immediately after completing the T2 CM (at which point the participant was aware of the spiders) were negatively associated with the change in CM scores from T1 to T2, r = −.366, p = .047. Examination of the scatterplot indicated that participants who were more anxious (e.g., STAI-S > 43) after learning about the spiders and the study design showed decreasing courage from their previous report.

The results of this study provide support for the hypothesis that courage is a measurable construct that can be adequately self-reported and is predictive of actual behavioral approach in the presence of a feared stimulus. Indeed, courage, as measure in the phobic context, predicted behavioral approach above-and-beyond scores on measures of spider fears. Courage scores reported three week prior, outside of the phobic context, did not predict behavioral approach. Furthermore, courage scores were not found to moderate the relationship between spider fear scores and behavioral approach.

That only courage scores obtained immediately prior to the BAT, when participants were informed of the spiders and the task but had not yet seen the spiders, significantly predicted behavioral approach, while courage scores obtained at pre-testing an average of three weeks prior were not significantly related to behavioral approach, raises questions about the assessment of courage. Although courage scores at T1 and T2 were moderately correlated and did not significantly differ from each other, their pattern of relationship to behavioral approach obviously shifted across time. Whether this reflects measurement error or a temporal instability in the courage construct is unclear. Thus, it is uncertain if courage, or at least that which was tapped by the CM, is best conceptualized as a state or trait construct. While the evidence here might seem to suggest that it is state-like, it is also possible that it is trait-like but less accurately self-reported outside of a specific fear-inducing context. Indeed, in a low fear condition, such as when completing questionnaires online, it is possible that demand characteristics might influence scores. Clearly these are important qualification that will bear on any future attempts to assess the construct. Should courage be found to possess trait-like qualities, then measures could be developed and refined to identify individuals at risk of, for example, discontinuation from or avoidance of exposure exercises. Motivational enhancement techniques could then be employed to assist the individual in developing the motivational base to persist with treatment.

The significant correlation between residual change scores in courage (i.e., change in courage scores from T1 to T2) with state anxiety immediately prior to the task, does suggest several possible explanations. First, it may be that courage is difficult to accurately self-report in the absence of a specific stressor or fear-producing situation. Indeed, we levied a similar concern with another published measure of courage ( Woodard, 2004 ) earlier in this manuscript. It seems reasonable to assume that more specific information about a situation would yield more accurate predictions of one’s behavior in that situation. Second, it may be that courage is not a single stable trait-like characteristic, but rather a series of characteristics that are highly context dependent. Future studies of courage should utilize multiple behavioral approach scenarios to estimate the extent to which measures of courage predict behavioral approach globally or specifically. While spider fearful participants were specifically used in the current study as a method of experimentally inducing a state of fear, there is no reason to assume that this fear differs appreciably from that experienced by individuals with other concerns or with anxiety disorder diagnoses. Finally, it must also be acknowledged that the scale used to measure courage may have contributed to the variability in the result. The items, although showing good psychometric properties, were developed based on face validity and were not subjected to typical scale development procedures (e.g., Spector, 1992 ). Thus, a logical future direction is to continue refinement in measuring courage and subject such scales to rigorous psychometric evaluation.

Obviously, the gender distribution in this study was significantly skewed, with all but one participant in the second phase of the study being women. Consequently, the results of this study should not be generalized to men, particularly given that some (e.g., Barlow, 2002 ) have hypothesized that societal and sex-role pressures may lead to, on average, differences in how one confronts (or not) feared stimuli. As such, replication of this study with a sample of men, or with a more gender-balanced sample, is clearly warranted. In addition, future studies using a BAT paradigm for assessing courage should obtain physiological data (e.g., heart rate, skin conductance) in addition to self-report and behavioral measures.

The results of this study support the ability to quantify courage, as measured by actual behavioral approach to a feared stimulus, using a self-report instrument incorporating an explicit behavioral definition. Findings from this study can serve as a starting point from which anxiety researchers interested in a behavioral definition of courage can evaluate its utility in predicting approach/avoidance in clinical samples. Furthermore, ongoing research should strive to better understand the relationships between courage, behavioral approach, physiological indices of fear, and other possibly related constructs such as experiential avoidance.

1 Inclusion of the one male who participated in the experiment did not alter the results in any appreciable way; however, data for this male participant was removed from analyses.

2 Of those eligible for T2 participation, no differences in age, sex, courage, or phase 1 spider fears, were noted between those who did or did not attend the phase 2 session, F ’s = 0.07 to 1.92, p ’s = .17 to.79.

3 The analyses were recomputed controlling for STAI-S scores, reported immediately prior to the BAT, and for peak SUDS scores during the BAT. The pattern of results held consistent with those reported above with T2 CM, but not T1 CM, showing a significant unique association to approach distance.

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Contributor Information

Peter J. Norton, University of Houston.

Brandon J. Weiss, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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AHA Activities

Embracing Fearlessness

An Interview with New AHA President John R. McNeill

Allison Miller | Jan 11, 2019

When current AHA president Mary Beth Norton turns over the Association gavel to him at the 2019 annual meeting in Chicago, Georgetown University historian John R. McNeill will begin his year-long tenure as AHA president. A pioneer in environmental and global history and the recipient of a raft of fellowships and prizes, he is the author of Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914 , which won the AHA’s 2010 Albert J. Beveridge Award, and, most recently, co-author (with Peter Engelke) of The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene since 1945 . Serving as a historian on the multidisciplinary Anthropocene Working Group , McNeill has even contributed to our understanding of geologic time and, in a broader sense, to the urgency with which we must consider the fate of the planet we call home.

John McNeill at the 2018 AHA annual meeting, in Washington, DC. Marc Monaghan

McNeill is a third-generation academic historian. His father was William H. McNeill of the University of Chicago, who was also elected AHA president, serving in 1985. And his grandfather, John T. McNeill, was an esteemed church historian and authority on John Calvin.

Cerebral yet down to earth, McNeill is known in the AHA headquarters for dropping by one hot day last summer to talk with staff members in an aloha shirt. Still savoring a student’s successful dissertation defense earlier in the day, he spoke with Perspectives at length about inspiration, mentorship, and how global forces shape historical inquiry.

You’ve written about mosquitoes, but I’d like to know how you got bitten by the history bug.

I was bitten by the history bug, I would say, during my undergraduate years, but it took some time. I was originally mainly interested in mathematics and physics, and I was briefly a mathematics major, until the professor who, in my freshman year, told me that I absolutely had to be a math major, at the end of my sophomore year told me that I should probably reconsider. And he was right!

So in my junior and senior year, I was doing mostly anthropology and history. I believe in the fall of my senior year, I decided to apply to history graduate school, for want of a better idea.

“I would expect that there are or were hundreds of historians in the US for whom military experience in World War II was important.”

In going into history, were you influenced by your father?

Certainly, in ways that are not always that easy for me to recognize—that is to say, he neither encouraged nor discouraged my migration into the field of history. He would answer questions if I asked them, but he would not offer advice or opinions.

If I were to indulge, and I will do this only reluctantly, in self-examination, I would say that I could tell when I was 20, which is when I made this decision [to become a historian], that if I wanted to have a lot to talk about with my father in the years and decades to come, the only reliable way to do it was to become a historian.

Your father was also a veteran of World War II. And right now, we’re seeing that generation of historians passing away. Do you have any thoughts about how that cohort of historians shaped history as a field of inquiry and what we might be losing now that they’re leaving us?

In my father’s case, the fact that he was a veteran of the US Army from 1941 to ’46 was a huge influence on his mind. In much of his work, he took military [life] seriously, and I won’t say necessarily sympathetically, but [with] a greater understanding than otherwise could have belonged to the subject. I think his experiences in the military, which took him to Hawaii, took him to the Caribbean, took him to North Africa, took him to Greece, helped him develop his global perspective.

And I would expect that there are or were hundreds, maybe more than hundreds, of historians in the US for whom military experience in World War II was also important, although probably in different ways. I would say that in several cases, [these] historians learned a language for military duty; they spent a lot of time, particularly after the war, as the US military occupations took shape, in one country and developed a basic familiarity and also an interest in, let us say, Japan. I think there’s probably a dozen or more US historians of Japan whose lives took that particular trajectory.

Who were your first mentors?

In my undergraduate days, I would say the most important example for me was a professor at Swarthmore [College] named Paul Beik, who was a specialist in French history but also taught Russian history. I admired him lavishly for his manner, his very gentle soul, very encouraging soul, but also one with severe standards.

When I got to graduate school [at Duke University], the most important figures for me were probably Charles Maier, who was at Duke between his [years] at Harvard, and John Cell. What was important for me about Maier was the depth of his engagement with 20th-century European history. I never took a class from John Cell, but he invited me to team-teach with him around my fourth year. It was a very interesting and intense experience for me. He was a specialist in British and British imperial history, but we were teaching about ancient China and pre-Columbian America—things that neither of us knew anything about.

“I do try to encourage students to be fearless and to be ambitious in what they take on, to avoid writing the definitive work of trivial subjects.”

That was a great experience for me. He legitimized exploration of fields that I had no credentials in, because he had no credentials in them, and yet we were teaching about these things. And that was a liberation for me. I have since taught several things that I know very little about. I tell my students it’s a mutual voyage of discovery.

As regards to mentorship, I do try to encourage students doing senior theses, master’s theses, and PhD theses to be fearless and to be ambitious in what they take on, to avoid writing—particularly PhD students—the definitive work of trivial subjects, which is an inclination that many scholars have.

What was your first AHA annual meeting like?

I actually went to one session of an AHA meeting when I was an undergraduate, because one of my professors was presenting a paper. I went only to this one session. I have to admit, I didn’t find it terribly exciting.

My first one after that was probably, as it is for many, the occasion of my first job interviews. My experience of the AHA was colored by the fact that I had high-stress, hour-long engagements with total strangers, and my whole life and career seemed— seemed —to hinge on the outcomes of these. I know that one of those early ones was in Washington, held, as is often the case, in the two hotels in Woodley Park, because I remember vividly going to the wrong hotel for one of my interviews.

I vaguely, vaguely remember going to see some of the big-name historians in those days—Philip Curtin, Eugene Genovese—and one of the things I learned from that is that even the really big, famous, successful historians are just people like anybody else.

What goals should the AHA have for the next year?

An AHA presidency lasts only one year, and it’s very hard for any president to have much impact on any institution such as the AHA or any profession such as ours in the span of one year. And my observation from my three years as the vice president of the Research Division [2012 through 2014] suggests to me that whatever ambitions a given president might have for doing X, Y, or Z while in office for a year are likely to be overtaken by events. So the position turns out to be much more reactive than one might imagine if one has not witnessed the Council and the AHA mothership in operation.

Climate change “is likely to have an impact on historians’ understanding of causation, by which I mean the array of forces that drive history.”

But if nothing unexpected were to come up in the year 2019, I think that the main agenda that I would like to see the AHA attend to is to broaden its activities and attention more than it has been able to do in years and decades past, so as to include historians operating in all kinds of institutional settings. The AHA just prepared this magnificent [database], Where Historians Work , [which] tells us in detail things that we knew in a fuzzy sort of way [about where history PhDs get jobs]. But the implication of that is that the AHA as a professional organization and as an institution needs to take account of these findings and attend to the interests—intellectual and professional interests—of all these historians in all these different settings. I have been a beneficiary of the AHA’s focus on academia. And I don’t for a moment suggest that the AHA neglect academia. But the fact of the matter is that historians are found in all different settings.

Given your expertise, how you think climate change will affect us in the future—“us” meaning historians—whether in the short term or long term?

Climate change is going to affect everybody. It already is affecting everybody to some extent, but some people around the world much more than others. Beyond that, I think it’s already begun to affect historians by inviting them to take climate shifts and climate shocks more carefully into account when thinking about, teaching about, and writing about history.

I also think that it’s likely to have an impact on historians’ understanding of causation, by which I mean the array of forces that drive history in one direction or another. It is likely to broaden our sense of what the driving forces behind history are. I think it will likely have the effect of broadening our conception of what is relevant to the trajectory of history. History has always been shaped by the world in which historians currently operate, and insofar as climate looms larger in the world in which we operate, then it’s going to loom larger in our understandings of the past.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length .

Allison Miller is editor of Perspectives . She tweets @Cliopticon.

Tags: AHA Activities Global History Environmental History

The American Historical Association welcomes comments in the discussion area below, at AHA Communities , and in letters to the editor . Please read our commenting and letters policy before submitting.

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J.R. McNeill | Mar 8, 2016

J. R. McNeill | Dec 1, 2014

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Better Habits, Better Life

Why Fearlessness Is More Important Than Confidence

Some of the benefits of confidence are the ability to be yourself, possessing greater courage, speaking your mind, feeling good about yourself, staying calm despite unfavorable circumstances, and having greater appeal as a friend or a mate. But there is one thing that’s even stronger than confidence. Fearlessness.

Why Fearlessness Is So Powerful

Fearlessness and confidence are related. If you don’t fear anything, you will naturally be confident, because a lack of confidence is primarily caused by fear of rejection, danger, or failure. So you could say that confidence is a byproduct of fearlessness.

Fearlessness enables people to do unbelievable things like climb skyscrapers, launch their body across the goal line (in football), and most importantly, boldly live their ideal life!

Most people wanting to be more confident will aim directly for confidence, but I think they could have better success by aiming for fearlessness. In many ways, it’s a more direct approach to being more confident. When you try to be confident, you’re attempting to build yourself higher than your fears in a “I can do this” kind of way.

How Fearlessness Becomes Confidence

Imagine you see an attractive person and want to talk to him/her, but you aren’t confident enough. To try to gain confidence at this point is going to be very difficult. Confidence comes from within, so it takes time to improve your baseline confidence. Though there are some in the moment strategies like confident body language that can physiologically increase your confidence.  But what if you attempted to conquer your fears as a way to become more confident?

Once you identify your fears, you can find some weaknesses in their “armor.”

First, you’d address your fear of rejection: The person might respond negatively to you. If you ask him/her out, they might say no. He/she could laugh at you and embarrass you. Ack!

However, these rejection scenarios are only scary or embarrassing for like 5 seconds. Can’t you handle that as a worst case scenario? Are you going to let yourself be scared of 5 seconds of awkwardness or discomfort? This applies to any possible rejection scenario, from asking for a raise, to asking for a job, to asking for a girl’s number.

Second, you’d address the fear of failure. The fear of failure is a level above the fear of rejection, and involves longer term evaluation of what the rejection means. You might feel that this one instance of rejection is representative of your general relationship with the opposite sex. You might feel like this person is the ambassador for their gender, and if they vote you out, then all hope is lost.  I’ve had this fear before . 🙂

The fear of failure can be dissolved with some logic. There are 7 billion people on earth and every single one of us has different tastes and preferences. If you’re a good and honest person, then most people are going to at least like you as a friend. People tend to be irrationally scared of approaching strangers. The logic is that any single case of rejection is just that – a single instance. If you’re willing to keep trying , you’ll find success.

Jia Jiang decided to experience 100 days of rejection to conquer his fears. And he found that most people were nice and receptive to him (a complete stranger), but not all. What if he tried once, got rejected, and assumed that everyone would be that way? He would have held on to false beliefs. In statistics, the sample size is very important. The lower the sample size, the less reliable the data. Why can’t we see that this is true for our lives as well? And why can’t we see that for most things, all it takes is ONE successful result – for marriage, in business, and even investing. Investing in Apple stock in the year 2000 would be enough to overcome the collapse of the rest of your portfolio, as it has increased 80-fold since then!

What Happens When You Remove Fear

When you remove fear, confidence tends to emerge. Confidence is believing in a positive result, while fear is worrying about the potential of a negative result. Once fear of a negative result is gone, it’s easier to believe in a positive result (i.e. be confident).

Fearlessness means nothing is holding you back. 100% fearlessness isn’t healthy though. The L.A. Times interviewed Michael P. Ghiglieri about deaths in the Grand Canyon, and here was one Q&A that shows the consequences of careless fearlessness.

“ LA Times: Is it true that somebody once fell to his death in the canyon because he slipped while pretending to fall to his death? Ghiglieri: Sad to say this is true. In 1992, 38-year-old Greg Austin Gingrich leaped atop the guard wall and wind-milled his arms, playing-acting losing his balance to scare his teenaged daughter, then he comically “fell” off the wall on the canyon side onto a short slope where he assumed he could land safely. As his daughter walked on, trying not to fuel her father’s dangerous antics by paying attention to them, Gingrich missed his footing and fell silently about 400 feet into the void. It took rangers quite a while to locate his body — and to determine that his daughter was an orphan only due to his foolishness.” ( source )

The key in life seems to be knowing which fears are healthy and helpful to have (a fear of heights isn’t such a bad thing to have) and which fears simply hold you back (asking a question, trying something new, being embarrassed). Some people’s fear is so crippling that they can’t function normally. Others die because they don’t have enough fear. As with many things, balance is ideal. Be fearful of things that are worthy of your fear, but don’t ever let the word “no” scare you. Don’t ever let it hold you back from pursuing opportunities.

Opportunities only pay off if you’re willing to take them, which you can do by losing your fear and picking up confidence. The next time you’re struggling with confidence, think about what you’re most afraid of, and attack that root. Then you can move forward!

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The legacy of audre lorde, arts & culture.

The art and life of Mark di Suvero

Audre Lorde. Photo: Elsa Dorfman. CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).

There is this thing that happens, all too often, when a Black woman is being introduced in a professional setting. Her accomplishments tend to be diminished. The introducer might laugh awkwardly, rushing through whatever impoverished remarks they have prepared. Rarely do they do the necessary research to offer any sense of whom they are introducing. The Black woman is spoken of in terms of anecdote rather than accomplishment. She is referred to as sassy on Twitter, maybe, or as a lover of bacon, random tidbits bearing no relation to the reasons she is in that professional setting. Whenever this happens to me or I witness it happening to another Black woman, I turn to Audre Lorde. I wonder how Lorde would respond to such a microaggression because in her prescient writings she demonstrated, time and again, a remarkable and necessary ability to stand up for herself, her intellectual prowess and that of all Black women, with power and grace. She recognized the importance of speaking up because silence would not protect her or anyone. She recognized that there would never be a perfect time to speak up because “while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.”

In 1979, for example, Audre Lorde wrote a letter to Mary Daly, and when Daly did not respond, Lorde made her entreaty an open letter. Lorde was primarily concerned with the erasure of Black women in Daly’s Gyn/Ecology , a manifesto urging women toward a more radical feminism. In her open letter, Lorde wrote: “So the question arises in my mind, Mary, do you ever really read the work of Black women? Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted connection between us? This is not a rhetorical question.” The letter is both gracious and incisive. What Lorde is really demanding of Daly and white feminists more broadly is for them to seriously engage with and acknowledge Black women’s intellectual labor.

In the thirty years since Lorde wrote that open letter, Black women have continued to implore white women to recognize and engage with their intellectual contributions and the material realities of their lives. They have asked white women to acknowledge that, as Lorde also wrote in her open letter to Daly, “the oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences.” One of the hallmarks of Lorde’s prose and poetry is her willingness to recognize, acknowledge, and honor the lived realities of women—not only those who share her subject position but also those who do not. Her thinking always embodied what we now know as intersectionality and did so long before intersectionality became a defining feature of contemporary feminism in word if not in deed.

Lorde never grappled with only one aspect of identity. She was as concerned with class, gender, and sexuality as she was with race. She held these concerns and did so with care because she valued community and the diversity of the people who were part of any given community. She valued the differences between us as strengths rather than weaknesses. Doing this was of particular urgency, because to her mind, “the future of our earth may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference.”

But how do you best represent a significant, in all senses of the word, body of work? This is the question that has consumed me as I assembled The Selected Works of Audre Lorde . Lorde is a towering figure in the world of letters, at least for me. I first encountered her writing in my early twenties, as a young Black queer woman. She was the first writer I ever read who lived and loved the way I did and also looked like me. She was a beacon, a guiding light. And she was far more than that because her prose and poetry astonished me—intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible.

When I read her books, I underlined and annotated avidly. I whispered her intimately crafted turns of phrase, enjoying the sound and feel of them in my mouth, on my tongue. Lorde was the first person who actively demonstrated for me that a writer could be intensely concerned with the inner and outer lives of Black queer women, that our experiences could be the center instead of relegated to the periphery. She wrote beyond the white gaze and imagined a Black reality that did not subvert itself to the cultural norms dictated by whiteness. She valorized the body as much as she valorized the mind. She valorized nurturing as much as she valorized holding people accountable for their actions, calling out people and practices that decentered the Black queer woman’s experience and knowledge. Most important, she prioritized the collective because “without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression.” As a reader, it is gratifying to see the legacy Lorde has created and to see the genealogy of her work in the writing of the women who have followed in her footsteps. Without Lorde’s essay “The Uses of Anger,” we might never have known Claudia Rankine’s manifesto of poetic prose, Citizen .

In one of her most fiery essays, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Lorde asks, “What does it mean when tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy?” She quickly answers her own question: “It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable.” Lorde gave these remarks in 1979 after being invited to an academic conference where there was only one panel with a Black feminist or lesbian perspective and only two Black women presenters. Forty years later, such meager representation is still an issue in many supposedly feminist and inclusive spaces. The essay is pointed, identifying pernicious issues marginalized people face in certain oppressive spaces—having to be the sole representative of their subject position, having to use their intellectual and emotional labor to address oppression instead of any of their other intellectual interests as if the marginalized are equipped to talk about only their marginalization.

This is a reality we often lose sight of when we surrender to assimilationist ideas about social change. There is, for example, a strain of feminism that believes if only women act like men, we will achieve the equality we seek. Lorde asks us to do the more difficult and radical work of imagining what our realities might look like if masculinity were not the ideal to which we aspire, if heterosexuality were not the ideal to which we aspire, if whiteness were not the ideal to which we aspire.

In Lorde’s body of work, we see her defying this idea of the dominant culture as the default, this idea that she should write about only her oppression, but while doing so she never abandons her subject position. She is empathetic, curious, critical, intuitive. She is as open about her weaknesses as she is about her strengths. She is an exemplar of public intellectualism who is as relevant in this century as she was in the last.

We are rather attached to the notion of truth as singular, but the best writing reminds us that truth is complex and subjective. The best writing reminds us that we need not relegate the truth to the narrow perimeters of right and wrong, black and white, good and evil. I have thought about how narrow the perimeters of change really are when we insist on using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house. This narrow brand of thinking has only intensified since the 2016 presidential election, when Donald Trump was elected. Whatever progress it seemed like we were making during the Obama era has retracted sharply, painfully. We live in a very fractured time, one where difference has become weaponized, demonized, and where discourse demands allegiance to extremes instead of nuanced points of view. We live in a time where the president of the United States flouts all conventions of the office, decorum, and decency. Police brutality persists, unabated. Women share their experiences with sexual harassment or violence but rarely receive any kind of justice.

It seems like things have gotten only worse since the height of Lorde’s career, when she was writing about the very things we continue to deal with—the place of women and, more specifically, Black women in the world, what it means to raise Black girls and boys in a world that will not welcome them, what it means to live in a world so harshly stratified by class, what it means to live in a vulnerable body, what it means to live. There are very few voices for women and even fewer voices for Black women, speaking from the center of consciousness, from the I am out to the we are , but Lorde was, throughout her storied career, one such voice. In her poem “Power,” Lorde wrote about a white police officer who murdered a ten-year-old Black boy and was acquitted by a jury of eleven of his peers and one Black woman who succumbed to the will of those peers. She captured the rage of such injustice and how futile it feels to try to fight such injustice, but she also demonstrated that even in the face of futility, silence is never an option.

A great deal of Lorde’s writing was committed to articulating her worldview in service of the greater good. She crafted lyrical manifestos. The essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” made the case for the importance of poetry, arguing that poetry “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde examines women using their erotic power to benefit themselves instead of benefiting men. She notes that women are often vilified for their erotic power and treated as inferior. She suggests that we can rethink and reframe this paradigm. This is what is so remarkable about Lorde’s writing—how she encourages women to understand weaknesses as strengths. She writes: “As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all aspects of our lives and our work, and how we move toward and through them.” In this, she offers an expansive definition of the erotic, one that goes well beyond the carnal to encompass a wide range of sensate experiences.

Rethinking and reframing paradigms is a recurring theme in Lorde’s writing. As the child of immigrants who came to the United States for their American dream only to have that dream shattered by the Great Depression, Lorde understood the nuances of oppression from an early age. It was poetry that gave her the language to make sense of that oppression and to resist it, and she was a prolific poet with several collections to her name, including The First Cities , Cables to Rage , From a Land Where Other People Live , Coal , and The Black Unicorn .

Her work took other forms—teaching; cofounding Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press; public speaking; and a range of advocacy efforts for women, lesbians, and Black people. During her time in Germany, she gave rise to the Afro-German movement—helping Black German women use their voices to join the sisterhood she valued so dearly. She also demanded that white German women confront their whiteness, even when it made them defensive or uncomfortable. In an essay about Lorde’s time in Germany, Dagmar Schultz wrote that “many white women learned to be more conscious of their privileges and more responsible in the use of their power.”

Lorde was not constrained by boundaries. She combined the personal and the political, the spiritual and the secular. As an academic she fearlessly wrote about the sensual and the sexual even though the academy has long disdained such interests. Her erotic life was as valuable as her intellectual life and she was unabashed in making this known. This refusal to be constrained was notably apparent in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name , which she called a “biomythography.” In her definitive biography of Lorde, Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde , Alexis De Veaux describes Zami  as a book that “recovers from existing male-dominated literary genres (history, mythology, autobiography, and fiction) whatever was inextricably female, female-centered.” In Zami and much of her other work, Lorde expressed the radical idea that Black women could hold the center, be the center, and she was unwavering in this belief.

At her most vulnerable, Lorde gave the world some of her most powerful writing with her work in The Cancer Journals , which chronicled her life with breast cancer and having a double mastectomy. “But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women. If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other.” With these words, she assumed as much control as she could over a body succumbing to disease and a public narrative that, until then, allowed a singular narrative about what it meant to live with illness. She made herself visible and gave other women permission to make themselves visible in a world that would prefer that they disappear, stay silent.

In all of her writing, Audre Lorde offers us language to articulate how we might heal our fractured sociopolitical climate. She gives us instructions for making tools with which we can dismantle the houses of our oppressors. She remakes language with which we can revel in our sensual and sexual selves. She forges a space within which we can hold ourselves and each other accountable to both our needs and the greater good.

All too often, people misappropriate the words and ideas of Black women. They do so selectively, using the parts that serve their aims, and abandoning those parts that don’t. People will, for example, parrot Lorde’s ideas about dismantling the master’s house without taking into account the context from which Lorde crafted those ideas. Lorde is such a brilliant and eloquent writer; she has such a way of shaping language that of course people want to repeat her words to their own ends. But her work is far more than something pretty to parrot. In The Selected Works of Audre Lorde , you will be able to appreciate the grace, power, and fierce intelligence of her writing, to understand where she was writing from and why, and to bear witness to all the unforgettable ways she made herself, and all Black women, gloriously visible.

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014 , Best American Short Stories 2012 , Best Sex Writing 2012 , Harper’s Bazaar , A Public Space , McSweeney’s , Tin House , Oxford American , American Short Fiction , Virginia Quarterly Review , and many other publications. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times . She is the author of the books Ayiti , An Untamed State , the New York Times best-selling Bad Feminist , the nationally best-selling Difficult Women , and New York Times best-selling Hunger: A Memoir of My Body . She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel and the editor of Best American Short Stories 2018 . She is currently at work on film and television projects, a book of writing advice, an essay collection about television and culture, and a YA novel entitled The Year I Learned Everything .

Reprinted from The Selected Works of Audre Lorde . Copyright © 2020 by Roxane Gay. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

SECTION II : Extracts From Letters

[ from selected works of mahatma gandhi : vol - 4 ].

• Gandhi Books
• Online Books
• Selected Letters

SELECTED LETTERS from Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Volume IV

Table of contents.

• Publisher's Note

SECTION I : LETTERS

• 1. To Dadabhai Naoroji
• 2. To G. K. Gokhale
• 3. To G. K. Gokhale
• 4. To Tolstoy
• 4A. From Count Leo Tolstoy
• 5. To Count Leo Tolstoy
• 6. To Leo Tolstoy
• 6A. From Count Leo Tolstoy
• 7. To Leo Tolstoy
• 7A. From Count Leo Tolstoy
• 8. To Maganlal Gandhi
• 9. To Maganlal Gandhi
• 10. To Narhar Shabhurao Bhave
• 11. To Mr Maffey, Private secretary To Viceroy
• 12. To W. B. Heycock
• 13. To Shankarlal on Ideas About Satyagraha
• 14. To Vinoba Bhave
• 15. To C F Andrews
• 16. To C F Andrews
• 17. To C F Andrews
• 18. To Kasturba Gandhi
• 19. To Kishorelal Mashruwala
• 20. To Sarojini Naidu
• 21. To Srinivas Sastri
• 22. To Srinivas Sastri
• 23. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 23A. From Rabindranath Tagore
• 24. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 25. From Rabindranath Tagore
• 25A. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 26. From Rabindranath Tagore
• 26A. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 27. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 28. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 29. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 30. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 31. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 32. From Rabindranath Tagore
• 32A. To Rabindranath Tagore
• 33. From G S Arundale
• 33A. To G S Arundale
• 34. To Every Englishman In India
• 35. To Viceroy
• 36. To Jawaharlal Nehru
• 37. To Jawaharlal Nehru
• 38. To Jawaharlal Nehru
• 39. To Jawaharlal Nehru
• 40. From Jawaharlal Nehru
• 41. To Jawaharlal Nehru
• 42. To Konda Venkatappayya
• 43. To T Prakasam
• 44. To Hakim Ajmal Khan
• 45. To Jamnalal Bajaj
• 46. To Mohomed Ali
• 47. To Motilal Nehru
• 48. To Motilal Nehru
• 49. To C Rajagopalachari
• 50. To C Rajagopalachari
• 51. To Kakasaheb Kalelkar
• 52. To A Friend
• 53. From Madeleine Slade or Miraben
• 53A. To Madeleine Slade
• 54. To Romain Rolland
• 55. To Romain Rolland
• 56. To Shri Shankaran
• 57. To Hermann Kallenbach
• 58. To Gulzarilal Nanda
• 59. To Dr Kailas Nath Kaju
• 60. To Dhan Gopal Mukherjee
• 61. To Henry S Salt
• 62. To The Viceroy
• 63. To Lord Irwin
• 64. To Reginald Reynolds
• 65. To Richard B Gregg
• 66. To Sir Samuel Hoare
• 67. To Ramsay MacDonald
• 68. To Pandit Malaviyaji
• 69. To The Secretary To The Government of Bombay, (Home Dept.), Poona
• 70. To Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru
• 71. To Carl Heath
• 72. To Carl Heath
• 73. To Carl Heath
• 74. To M A Jinnah
• 75. To M A Jinnah
• 76. To M A Jinnah
• 76A. From M A Jinnah
• 77. To M A Jinnah
• 78. From Subhash Chandra Bose
• 78A. To Subhash Chandra Bose
• 79. To Herr Hitler
• 80. To Every Briton
• 81. To Every Briton
• 82. To Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek
• 83. To Every Japanese
• 84. To American Friends
• 85. To Lord Linlithgow
• 86. To Lord Linlithgow
• 86A. From Lord Linlithgow
• 87. To Lord Linlithgow
• 87A. From Lord Linlithgow
• 88. To Lord Linlithgow
• 88A. From Lord Linlithgow
• 89. To Lord Linlithgow
• 90. To Agatha Harrison
• 91. To Winston Churchill
• 92. To Shriman Narayan
• 93. To Lord Pethick Lawrence
• 94. To Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
• 95. To The Viceroy
• 96. To The Viceroy
• 96A. From Lord Mountbatten
• 97. To Abdul Ghaffar Khan
• 97A. From Abdul Ghaffar Khan
• 98. To A Friend
• 99. To Madame Edmond Privat
• 100. To The People of Gujarat
• Appendix I: Who Should Be Provincial Governors?
• Appendix II: A Psychological Explanation
• Appendix III: The Gandhian Constitutions for Free India

SECTION II : EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS

• Faith in God
• Religions and Scriptures
• Value of Prayer
• Truth and Non-violence
• The Science of Satyagraha
• Fasting in Satyagraha
• Unto This Last
• Khadi and Village Industry
• East and West
• Hindu-Muslim Unity
• Upliftment of Women
• The Good of All
• India's Freedom
• Caste System and Untouchability
• Brahmacharya
• Fearlessness
• Health and Hygene
• Self-restraint
• Self-development
• Selfless Service
• Voluntary Poverty

About This Volumes

Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi comprises of Five volumes.

• Vol-I: Autobiography
• Vol-II: Satyagraha in South Africa
• Ethical Religion
• Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule
• From Yeravada Mandir
• Discourses on the Gita
• Constructive Programme
• Key to Health
• Vol-IV: Selected Letters
• Vol-V: Voice of Truth

This book, Selected Letters, is volume-4.

Written by : M. K. Gandhi General Editor : Shriman Narayan Volume Selected Works of Mahatma Gandhi : A set of five books ISBN: 81-7229-278-3 (set) Printed and Published by : Jitendra T. Desai Navajivan Mudranalaya, Ahemadabad-380014 India © Navajivan Trust, 1968

• Vol-IV: Selected Letters. [PDF]

Chapter 17: Fearlessness

All fear is of the nature of a moral weakness and, so long as we are subject to it, we shall always have to face such misfortunes.

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XII, p. 93, 30-5-1913

Death should make us think of our duty and fill us with contempt for the body, but inspire no fear. It seems that a man does not suffer excessively even when he is burnt to death. When the pain becomes unbearable, he loses consciousness. Those who cling to the body so very tenaciously only suffer the more. One who knows the truth about the atman will have no fear of death.

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XII, pp. 365-66, 1-3-1914

I have not got rid of the fear of death, despite much thinking. But I feel no impatience. I keep on trying and I am sure I shall get rid off it one day. We should not let go a single occasion when we may try. That is our duty. It is for God to produce or will the result. Why worry then? When feeding her baby, the mother has no thought of the result. The result does follow, though. To get rid of the fear of death and to drive away desire, make the effort and keep cheerful; and they will disappear. Otherwise, it will be the same with you as with the man who, resolving not to think about a monkey, kept on thinking of one. We are born in sin, and we are enslaved in the body, because of our sinful deeds; how can you hope to cleanse yourself of all the impurity just in a minute? You may live as you like, Realize God anyhow. This is the teaching of Akha Bhagat. 1 Tulsidasji says: Whether in adversity or no, repeat over again the name of Rama and you will achieve all there is to be achieved.

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XII, pp. 375, 7-3-1914

No man can hasten or delay my death even by a minute. The best way of saving oneself from death is to go seeking it. It is no doubt our duty to take care of our life in a general way. More than this we need not do. We should rather welcome death whenever it comes.

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XII, p. 386, 14-3-1914

Death should cause no fear in us, if we have lived in the fear of God and have done nothing in violation of the voice of our conscience. Then, indeed, is death but a change for the better and, therefore, a welcome change which need not evoke any sorrow.

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. XII, p. 390, 18-3-1914

The man who knows in his heart of hearts that this mortal frame is liable to perish any moment will be ever ready to meet death. That he might be so, the householder will limit his external activities and expand the inner and live accordingly.

To A Gandhian Capitalist, XIII, p. 30, 27-2-1915

The more I observe and study things, the more convinced I become that sorrow over separation and death is perhaps the greatest delusion. To realize that it is a delusion is to become free. There is no death, no separation of the substance. And yet the tragedy of it is that though we love friends for the substance we recognize in them, we deplore the destruction of the insubstantial that covers the substance for the time being. Whereas real friendship should be used to reach the whole through the fragment. You seem to have got the truth for the moment. Let it abide forever.

Bapu's Letters to Mira, p. 41, 27-4-1927

To wish to see the dearest ones as long as possible in the flesh is a selfish desire and it comes out of weakness or want of faith in the survival of the soul after the dissolution of the body. The form ever changes, ever perishes, the informing spirit neither changes nor perishes. True love consists in transferring itself from the body to the dweller within and then necessarily realizing the oneness of all life inhabiting numberless bodies.

Bapu's Letters to Mira, p. 156, 6-7-1931

Death as such leaves little impression on me; I only feel for the bereaved relatives. There can be no greater ignorance than to mourn over death.

The Diary of Mahadev Desai, Vol. I, p. 213, 5-7-1932

So long as we wear this vesture of clay, let us keep it clean, pure and healthy, and when we have to cast it off, let us discard it without any regret. It was given to us for use. Let the Giver take it away when He pleases. We have to use it for service only, and not for enjoyment.

The Diary of Mahadev Desai, Vol. I, p. 276, 7-8-1932

The human body is less durable even than a glass bangle, which, if we preserved, may continue to exist for hundreds of years. But our bodies, no matter how carefully preserved, cannot last beyond a certain period, and may be destroyed at any time during that period. We may not put our trust in them.

The Diary of Mahadev Desai, Vol. I, pp. 276-77, 7-8-1932

The spirit which you love is always with you. The body through which you learned to love the spirit is no longer necessary for sustaining that love. It is well that it lasts whilst there is use for it. It is equally well that it perishes when there is no use for it. And since we don't know when it will outlast its use, we conclude that death through whatever cause means that there was no longer any use of it.

Bapu's Letters to Mira, p. 210, 20-9-1932

I have personally ceased for years to grieve over death at all. The shock is felt when a comrade is torn away from me, but that is purely due to personal attachment which in other words is selfishness. But I immediately recover and realize that death is a deliverance and has to be welcomed, even as a friend is welcomed, and that it means dissolution of the body, not of the indwelling spirit.

Selected Letters-II, p. 28, 24-11-1932

We are born only to die and we die only to be born again. This is all old argument. Yet it needs to be driven home. Somehow or other we refuse to welcome death as we welcome birth. We refuse to believe even the evidence of our senses, that we could not possibly have any attachment for the body without the soul and that we have no evidence whatsoever that the soul perishes with the body.

Bapu's Letters to Mira, p. 260, 4-5-1933

The frank admission of one's proved helplessness does not make one a coward but may be the beginning of bravery.

Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, p. 29, 19-6-1935

So long as God wants me to work on this earth in this body, He will take care of it. Not all the physicians in the world can save me, when the hour strikes.

Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, p. 99, 16-10-1936

We die to live once more, even as we live only to die at last. Life therefore is not an occasion for joy nor death an occasion for sorrow. But there is one thing needful. We must ascertain our duty in life and continue to discharge it till we die.

Selected Letters-I, p. 18

To be afraid of death is like being afraid of discarding an old and worn out garment. I have often thought of death and have the intellectual conviction that it is sheer ignorance which makes us afraid of death.

Selected Letters-I, p. 24

I am engaged in my present activities as I look upon them as essential to life. If I have to face death while thus engaged, I shall face it with equanimity. I am now a stranger to fear.

Selected Letters-I, p. 32

"Death is but a sleep and a forgetting." This is such a sweet sleep that the body has not to awake again, and the dead load of memory is thrown overboard.

Death is an event to be celebrated and much more so than birth. For birth is preceded by nine months of life in a solitary cell and is also followed by much unhappiness. But death for some of us spells the attainment of the end of life. To qualify for such a death one should devote one's life to work done in a spirit of detachment.

Selected Letters-I, p. 49

• 1. A mystic Gujarati poet of the 17th century known for his satire; a devotee and vedantist.

Remembering Gandhi Assassination of Gandhi Tributes to Gandhi Gandhi's Human Touch Gandhi Poster Exhibition Send Gandhi Greetings Gandhi Books Read Gandhi Books Online Download PDF Books Download EPUB/MOBI Books Gandhi Literature Collected Works of M. Gandhi Selected Works of M.Gandhi Selected Letters Famous Speeches Gandhi Resources Gandhi Centres/Institutions Museums/Ashrams/Libraries Gandhi Tourist Places Resource Persons Related Websites Glossary / Sources Associates of Mahatma Gandhi -->

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Examples Of Fearlessness In Antigone

Show More After reading Antigone, many people have the idea that Haimon is the character that has the most strength of will. He stands up to his father, defends the woman he loves and risks his home and his father's trust to save her. Although Haimon does attempt to save Antigone from her death, Antigone is fearless, independent and determined during her mission to let her brother rest in peace. At the time the play was written, a person who died would not be fully at peace without a burial ceremony. Antigone wants a proper burial for her brother and is willing to risk her life to accomplish it. In the past, our society believed that a woman needs to depend on a man to protect her. Today, many of us are aware of the sexist beliefs that made up our history. …show more content… An example of Antigone’s fearlessness is her bravery after being taken by Creon 's men. According to Sentry, Antigone “was not afraid,/ Not even when we charged her with what she had/ done./ She denied nothing./ And this was a comfort to [him],/ And some uneasiness; for it is a good thing/ to escape from death, but it is no great pleasure/ To bring death to a friend” (207). Antigone did not deny the accusations nor was she scared of what might happen to her. Another example of Antigone’s fearlessness is her respnse when she is thrown in front of Creon's questioning stare. Antigone stated her wish boldly, “ I beg you: kill me/ This talking is a great weariness: you words/ Are distasteful to me, and I am sure that mine/ Seem so to you. And yet they should not seem so:/ I should have praise and honor for what I have/ done” ( 210). Antigone is not afraid of Creon. She sticks to what she believes in, showing her couragousness. Lastly, Antigone is brave in the face of her own impending death. Before she dies she states, “To me, since it was my hand/ That washed him clean and poured the ritual wine:/ And my reward is death before my time!/ And yet, as men’s heart know, I have done no/ Wrong” (227). After that scene, Antigone kills herself. She doesn’t do it for a man nor does she have anyone else's feelings in mind besides hers and Polynices’. She does what she knows is …show more content… After being denied help she still goes through with her plans. She responds to the refusal by saying, “You have made your choice, you can be what you/ want to be./ But I will bury him; and if I must die,/ I say that this crime is holy: I shall lie down/ With him in death, and I shall be dear/ To him as he to me” (pg 192). In this scene, Antigone goes to her sister, Ismene, asking for help. Ismene is afraid of what Creon might do to her and tells Antigone she won't assist her. Following being pushed away by her sister, she continues on with her mission. After being unsuccessful at the first attempt of burying her brother, Antigone tries again. This time, the king's men are looking for the culprit. When Creon's men find her, they report back to Creon saying, “when this girl/ Found the bare corpse, and all her work/ wasted,/ She wept, and cried on heaven to damn the hands/ That had done this thing./ And then she brought more dust/ And sprinkled wine three times for her brother’s/ ghost” (pg 207). Antigone still shows up to cover Polynices’ body, even at the risk of being caught. Her actions of unbelieveable determinedness shows the heroism in her character. Lastly, Antigone accepts her punishment because she know that it is an honorable death. Right before being sent to jail, Antigone says, “Good-by to the sun that shines for me no longer; Now sleepy Death/ Summons me down to Acheron, that cold

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Subject verb agreement, 8th -  9th  , transitions, 9th -  12th  , women in aviation.

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23 Reading the following dictionary entry. Which definition most closely matches the use of the word clout in paragraph #3

Definition 1

Definition 2

Definition 3

Definition 4

24 Read this sentence from paragraph 16. In this sentence, the author is trying to show that Summitt --

frequently sought out opportunities to appear on television

was able to pick and choose which teams to play

took on a role in women's sports that went beyond coaching

compromised her standards occasionally

25 Why does the author end the article with a quotation?

To show how Pat Summitt will likely be remembered over time

To suggest that Pat Summitt's accomplishments may soon be eclipsed

To imply that female coaches will never win as many games as male coaches

To provide an opinion that differs from those expressed in the rest of the article

26 Which of these best summarizes the article?

Throughout her career, Pat Summitt has been an important figure in women’s sports. Although it was difficult for her to face the discrimination directed at female players and coaches, she managed to have successful seasons at the University of Tennessee.

The popularity of women’s sports today is largely the result of the enactment of Title IX in 1972. Before that, female athletes like Pat Summitt had little funding or support for their teams. Pat Summitt’s success is an example of how Title IX helped women athletes and

Although Pat Summitt had been a very successful basketball coach for many years, her primary accomplishment came after she developed Alzheimer’s disease. By refusing to hide her diagnosis from the public and vowing to continue coaching, she set a powerful example for others.

Through her determination to lead and succeed, Pat Summitt has become both a successful coach and an inspiration to female athletes. She applied the work ethic she learned as a child to her playing and coaching career, ultimately winning more games than any other college coach.

27 According to the author, Pat Summitt learning important lessons about how to face difficult circumstances from her time spent --

playing on the 1976 Olympic team

dealing with her Alzheimer's diagnosis

working on her family's farm

losing games as a new coach

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Dream Crazy Ethos Pathos Logos

Nike's Revolutionary "Dream Crazy" commercial ad that has the message of perseverance, determination, and fearlessness, saying quotes such as “don't believe you have to be somebody to be somebody.” is being spoken over by Colin Kaepernick. Colin Kaepernick is an American football player and social activist who played for the San Francisco 49ers but was also widely known for kneeling during the national anthem before games to protest racial injustice against African Americans. This ad was released in September 2018, causing action that led to lots of controversy and attracted lots of attention. The "Dream Crazy" commercial starts with a closeup of Colin Kaepernick's face, taking the audience's attention right away at the beginning and about …show more content…

Therefore, ethos is shown through its association with Colin Kaepernick, known for his social impact. Which increases Nike's brand credibility to viewers, especially those who know him or have heard of him, along with showing their audience that they are a diverse company. Pathos is shown by appealing to the viewers feelings of motivation, sympathy, and dedication, the ad creates an emotional bond with the audience and inspires us to see our own potential. Especially by using quotes such as “Don't be the fastest at your school, be the fastest in the world”. And “Don't be the best basketball player in the world, be bigger than that”. Showing clips of professional basketball player LeBron James. Nike also uses logic to support their message, emphasizing the importance of hard work in achieving …show more content…

Due to his controversial action, especially his choice to protest racial injustice by kneeling during the playing of the national anthem, Kaepernick caused a lot of discussion. Nike took advantage of this situation to launch an advertisement that matched his message and placed the company as a voice for social justice as well. This ad achieves an effective medium by reaching its target through a variety of media. It is widely visible and easily accessible because of its spread all over social media, streaming services, and TV. Nike makes the most of its audience and involvement through the use of the internet, allowing the advertisement to connect with a wide range of audiences easily. All things considered, the use of different kinds of media improves the ad's ability to connect and reach its target audience and actually win Nike an Emmy

More about Dream Crazy Ethos Pathos Logos

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Why Pauline Kael’s fight over ‘Citizen Kane’ still matters, whichever side you’re on

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Did Orson Welles get too much glory for “Citizen Kane”? Absolutely, New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael insists in this novella-length fire-starter about the making of the greatest movie of all time. (We can save that skirmish for another day.) As Charles Foster Kane, a sendup of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, Welles embodied the image of a vainglorious Great Man. But Welles’ success, according to Kael, meant he also needed to be taken down a peg.

The Ultimate Hollywood Bookshelf

“Raising Kane” ranks No. 40 on our list of the best Hollywood books of all time.

“Orson Welles wasn’t around when ‘Citizen Kane’ was written,” Kael chided. The 25-year-old prodigy was busy doing radio plays with the Mercury Theatre and promoting his forthcoming film debut with a studio that wanted only one name — by Orson Welles! — on the posters. RKO’s advertising campaign lauded “Citizen Kane” as the creation of “a one-man band.” Meanwhile, the actual author of the masterpiece — the movie’s co-screenwriter, Herman J. Mankiewicz — was tucked away in a rest home in Victorville, dictating the script to his secretary.

Kael’s Mankiewicz was a pitiable figure, a self-destructive alcoholic nursing a broken leg and an injured ego. She hoisted him up as one of Hollywood’s unheralded heroes, a brilliant quipster who quietly contributed his wit to everything from “Duck Soup” to “The Wizard of Oz.” Mankiewicz’s work often went unacknowledged, but he’d helped give the 1930s comedies the rat-a-tat rhythm of he and his friends ping-ponging jokes around the Algonquin Round Table. Much of the New York literary clique followed Mankiewicz to California when the industry shifted from silents to sound and filmmakers suddenly needed to hand their beautiful faces brilliant things to say. Together, this band of bohemians molded the modern movie business into what Kael hails as “wisecracking, fast-talking, cynical-sentimental entertainment.”

Decades later, David Fincher’s biopic “Mank” would back up Kael’s sympathetic sketch of Mankiewicz as the forgotten man. But pretty much everyone else considers her essay a hit job, a ferocious attack on a cinematic Goliath. “Raising Kane” took down Welles as handily as if she’d slipped a grenade in her slingshot. After the piece’s publication, Welles’ reputation tumbled — although the height from which he fell was his own fault. “Cinema is the work of one single person,” Kael quotes Welles as boasting, adding that he’d also bragged of making an easy transition from theater to film, as “there was nothing about camerawork that any intelligent man couldn’t learn in half a day.”

Such hubris put Welles in Kael’s crosshairs. (On his slighting of cinematographer Gregg Toland, she snarked, “Welles, like Hearst, and like most very big men, is capable of some very small gestures.”) Yet Kael’s real target was Village Voice film critic Andrew Sarris , her longtime rival who had staked his reputation on the auteur theory — the exaltation of the director über alles . To pull off her thesis, she refused to interview anyone who might have disagreed with her, including Welles himself. Anyone reading “Raising Kane” for the first time should remember that it’s merely one side in an intellectual tug-of-war.

Subsequent counter-essays flung darts at Kael’s biased research. (“How the hell do you call out a lady movie critic at dawn?” Welles groaned in a letter quoted in Peter Bogdanovich’s rebuttal, “The Kane Mutiny.”) But “Raising Kane’s” value transcends the question of whether Kael was correct. (She kinda was, she kinda wasn’t.) What matters is she started a fight that forced all film fans to consider, and defend, their definition of a great director: Is it a big boss enforcing their will upon a set, or a humble collaborator who brings out the best in their team?

For the peacemakers, it’s possible to twist “Raising Kane” into a defense of Welles’ later career, often waved off as not living up to the promise of his first film. If the boy genius puffed himself up too much, then it’s a kindness to forgive him for not measuring up to artificially inflated expectations. And despite the outrage, it’s clear that Kael admired “Citizen Kane” and the man who marshaled it into existence. “Orson Welles brought forth a miracle,” she wrote. Bless his heart.

Nicholson is a film critic and the host of the podcast “Unspooled.” Her first book, “Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor” was published by Cahiers du Cinema, and her second, “Extra Girls,” will be published by Simon & Schuster.

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The NMU Department of History Human Rights Essay Competition - NMU Events and Announcements

The NMU Department of History Human Rights Essay Competition

First Place: $500 | Second Place: $250 | Third Place: $100 Deadline: April 15, 2024 at 5pm

The Essay Competition aims to encourage engagement with the issues of human rights at all levels. We invite all NMU students to enter an essay competition on the following question: 

• “How will you create awareness in your present community about human rights?”

All submissions must be prose non-fiction. Entries should be a minimum of 500 words.  Winning entries will be posted on the NMU History Department’s website and will be announced at the Marquette Interfaith Holocaust Memorial event on Thursday, 25 April.

More information can be found here.

Please submit your 500 word essays to [email protected]

• Subject Line: “Human Rights Essay Competition Submission”
• Include in the body of the email (NOT in the essay itself) the following: o    Your Name o    NMU IN Number o    Address o    Phone Number o    E-mail Address

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What Solar Eclipse-Gazing Has Looked Like for the Past 2 Centuries

Millions of people on Monday will continue the tradition of experiencing and capturing solar eclipses, a pursuit that has spawned a lot of unusual gear.

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By Sarah Eckinger

• April 8, 2024

For centuries, people have been clamoring to glimpse solar eclipses. From astronomers with custom-built photographic equipment to groups huddled together with special glasses, this spectacle has captivated the human imagination.

Creating a Permanent Record

In 1860, Warren de la Rue captured what many sources describe as the first photograph of a total solar eclipse . He took it in Rivabellosa, Spain, with an instrument known as the Kew Photoheliograph . This combination of a telescope and camera was specifically built to photograph the sun.

Forty years later, Nevil Maskelyne, a magician and an astronomy enthusiast, filmed a total solar eclipse in North Carolina. The footage was lost, however, and only released in 2019 after it was rediscovered in the Royal Astronomical Society’s archives.

Telescopic Vision

For scientists and astronomers, eclipses provide an opportunity not only to view the moon’s umbra and gaze at the sun’s corona, but also to make observations that further their studies. Many observatories, or friendly neighbors with a telescope, also make their instruments available to the public during eclipses.

Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen, Fridtjof Nansen and Sigurd Scott Hansen observing a solar eclipse while on a polar expedition in 1894 .

Women from Wellesley College in Massachusetts and their professor tested out equipment ahead of their eclipse trip (to “catch old Sol in the act,” as the original New York Times article phrased it) to New London, Conn., in 1922.

A group from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania traveled to Yerbaniz, Mexico, in 1923, with telescopes and a 65-foot camera to observe the sun’s corona .

Dr. J.J. Nassau, director of the Warner and Swasey Observatory at Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland, prepared to head to Douglas Hill, Maine, to study an eclipse in 1932. An entire freight car was required to transport the institution’s equipment.

Visitors viewed a solar eclipse at an observatory in Berlin in the mid-1930s.

A family set up two telescopes in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1963. The two children placed stones on the base to help steady them.

An astronomer examined equipment for an eclipse in a desert in Mauritania in June 1973. We credit the hot climate for his choice in outfit.

Indirect Light

If you see people on Monday sprinting to your local park clutching pieces of paper, or with a cardboard box of their head, they are probably planning to reflect or project images of the solar eclipse onto a surface.

Cynthia Goulakos demonstrated a safe way to view a solar eclipse , with two pieces of cardboard to create a reflection of the shadowed sun, in Lowell, Mass., in 1970.

Another popular option is to create a pinhole camera. This woman did so in Central Park in 1963 by using a paper cup with a small hole in the bottom and a twin-lens reflex camera.

Amateur astronomers viewed a partial eclipse, projected from a telescope onto a screen, from atop the Empire State Building in 1967 .

Back in Central Park, in 1970, Irving Schwartz and his wife reflected an eclipse onto a piece of paper by holding binoculars on the edge of a garbage basket.

Children in Denver in 1979 used cardboard viewing boxes and pieces of paper with small pinholes to view projections of a partial eclipse.

A crowd gathered around a basin of water dyed with dark ink, waiting for the reflection of a solar eclipse to appear, in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 1995.

Staring at the Sun (or, How Not to Burn Your Retinas)

Eclipse-gazers have used different methods to protect their eyes throughout the years, some safer than others .

In 1927, women gathered at a window in a building in London to watch a total eclipse through smoked glass. This was popularized in France in the 1700s , but fell out of favor when physicians began writing papers on children whose vision was damaged.

Another trend was to use a strip of exposed photographic film, as seen below in Sydney, Australia, in 1948 and in Turkana, Kenya, in 1963. This method, which was even suggested by The Times in 1979 , has since been declared unsafe.

Solar eclipse glasses are a popular and safe way to view the event ( if you use models compliant with international safety standards ). Over the years there have been various styles, including these large hand-held options found in West Palm Beach, Fla., in 1979.

Parents and children watched a partial eclipse through their eclipse glasses in Tokyo in 1981.

Slimmer, more colorful options were used in Nabusimake, Colombia, in 1998.

In France in 1999.

And in Iran and England in 1999.

And the best way to see the eclipse? With family and friends at a watch party, like this one in Isalo National Park in Madagascar in 2001.