To Fear or Flourish, That is the Question - July 2023

This article was published in the July 2023 issue of the Youngstown Buckeye Review, a locally owned black publication.   

Quick Review:  Humans are Producers!  To overcome our economic, psychological, sociological, educational, political, and spiritual problems we must abolish the consumer (and its language) and begin using Producer language to think and talk about everything in life -- past articles introduced Producer words Inputs, Outputs, FARTs (feelings, actions, reactions, and thoughts), and Vectors. 

Fear is a strong motivation.  There’s fear of failure, fear of the unknown, and many other mild to serious fears and phobias.  Anger, stress, frustration, anxiety, depression (all of which are forms of negative FARTs) are connected to fear.   

Producer Language on Fear:  Your brain-mind “produces” an assessment of the Inputs you get from people, places, things, and ideas.  The assessment is either 1) low to high threat to survival; 2) low to high contribution to survival; 3) low to high threat to flourishing; or 4) low to high contribution to flourishing.  A threat (or contribution) to survival assessment is for Inputs that harm (or benefit) your physical body.  A threat (or contribution) to flourishing is about harm (or benefit) to your emotional, intellectual, or spiritual wellbeing.  When your brain-mind assesses an Input as a threat to survival or flourishing, it “produces” a negative FART.  Positive FARTs are produced for Inputs assessed as contributions to survival or flourishing.  Hence, fear is assessing something as a threat to survival and producing negative FARTs. 

Human Dilemma 1:  We fear many things we shouldn’t.  Meaning, we assess things as threats to survival when they are not.  Name calling, being disrespected, being shamed, public speaking, test taking, and bad manners from people are just a few examples of things we assess as threats to our survival (causing us to produce negative FARTs) when we shouldn’t. 

Human Dilemma 2:  We don’t fear things we should.  Things like processed foods, illegal and legal drugs, reckless driving, poorly performing educational systems, corrupt politicians, and false preaching should be assessed as threats to survival and flourishing.  Ironically, sadly, we produce positive FARTs for these things when we should be producing negative FARTs.

Solution to unnecessary fears:  When you sense any degree of fear, one Producer’s practice is to say: “I’m a Producer.  I’m now producing negative FARTs.  What am I assessing to be a threat to my physical survival?  Which of my Vectors are involved in producing this threat assessment?  Is what’s going on really a threat to my physical survival?”

Another Producer’s practice is to turn negative FARTs into positive FARTs.  Instead of assessing people, places, things, and ideas as threats to survival when they are not threats, try thinking about them as contributions to your emotional, intellectual, or spiritual flourishing.

Producing accurate assessments of things in your life and producing appropriate FARTs for things help all of us to begin effectively thinking and talking about the big issues of our time (e.g., Black on Black mental and physical violence, white supremacy, corrupt criminal justice system, corrupt corporate capitalism, and other forms of inhumanity toward us human Producers).