I’m continuing my reporting on the current installment of Conservative Estimate, the recently founded website that is devoted to demolishing Conservatism.
Yesterday Alfred George showed how the Major Myths of Conservatism increase, rather than dampen, the primary fears of existence.
Today he shows us why eliminating the primary fears sets us on the path to Freedom.
Join me on the other side of the lilting orangeries.
Mr. George begins by noting that all astoundingly creative people share one secret. They know how to be fearless.
But he cautions us not to take the world fearless inappropriately.
The term fearless tends to conjure up unnecessarily heroic notions. Being fearless doesn’t mean walking through active battlefields casually. It doesn’t mean always and everywhere responding with heedless abandon to dangerous situations.
What it means to be fearless is simply not being controlled by your feeling of fear. It means choosing not to respond in the way the fear wants you to respond.
He also points out that being fearless does not necessarily mean not feeling the fear, but only not responding to its dictates. One could feel the fear quite palpably and still fall into the category of not being controlled by the fear. “[T]he person who has the fear and ignores it," he says, "is just as free of fear as the other.”
The Mr. George goes on to explain the connection between fearlessness and creativity:
When you refuse to respond as the fear wants you to respond, you leave many choices open for yourself. Or, to put it the other way around, when you respond as the fear wants you to respond, only one thing can happen—namely, you will pull away. But when you refuse to respond that way, many things can happen. You can just stand still, you can get closer to the problem rather than back away, you can observe the problem minutely, you can go around the problem, or you can simply walk away from it. In short, refusing to react to the fear opens up a new realm of possibilities, all of which are closed off to someone who lets the fear have its way. When you see many possibilities to choose from, creative response is likely. When you see only one, creative response is impossible.
That is to say, you are freer when you don’t respond to the fear than when you do, just because you have more options.
You can read the whole post here.
After the weekend, Mr. George will describe the reciprocal nature of the relationship between Creativity and Freedom, and he will show how improving in either area also creates improvement in the other.
I’ll be reporting back each day as a new installment appears.