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   %FEAR GROW ABUSED VULNERABILITY RISK MASK VIRTUE+940904
 %HONESTY OPENNESS AUTHENTICITY RESPONSIVENESS LOVE+940904
%MISTAKE TRAGEDY FAULT BLAME CONDEMN REJECTED LEGAL 940904

     We  fear vulnerability,  risk,   honesty,   openness,
authenticity,     responsiveness and their likes---because
we have been abused when we have been vulnerable,   risky,
honest, open, authentic or responsive.   We are taught  by
our failures, mistakes,  and by how we are abused.  We may
confuse  our  failures,   mistakes and how  we  have  been
abused;  and so impute all the pain to our own fault---and
vow not to be at  fault again by being vulnerable,  risky,
honesty, open, authentic, or responsive.

     We  put  cloaks of respectability upon our  fears  to
hide our fears and make them look wise.   We invent rules,
regulations,   prohibitions,  commandments and other masks
which  we put upon our fears to make our fearful  behavior
appear  to  be  conventional  conformity  which   everyone
respects.      When   fearful  behavior  appears   to   be
respectably  conformal---it is often respected and  we are
accepted.

     We seek to achieve acceptability through our  fearful
conformal behaviors---because we were not accepted when we
were being vulnerable,  risky,  honest,  open,  authentic,
responsive  or  otherwise being true to ourselves  and  to
each  other.   We require each other to be acceptable  and
affirm   such   requirements   by   trying   to    achieve
acceptability  in terms of such requirements imposed  upon
us by others.  To recover our health and integrity we need
to stop trying to achieve acceptability in terms of  other
people's  requirements,   and  we need to  stop  requiring
others   to   achieve  acceptability  in  terms   of   our
requirements.

     We will do well to ask  how often we are motivated by
fears  of dangers which are under the control  of  fearful
people.   When fearful people  motivate  each other to  be
fearful---then fear escalates in proportion to how    much
fear is  already  present---and grows geometrically, which
is  to say,  exponentially.  Such growth leads to personal
and  communal  disintegrations which become  invisible  as
they become catastrophic.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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