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Formations of Terror
Formations of Terror
By

Simon Bell
Formations of Terror

By Simon Bell

This book first published 2017

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2017 by Simon Bell

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-4705-4

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4705-6
For the fearful, the oppressed and those lost in anxiety.
No condition of life is everlasting.

“The story is not in the words, it’s in the struggle.”

—Paul Auster. The New York Trilogy.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix

List of Tables .............................................................................................. xi

Preface ...................................................................................................... xiii

Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xix

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1

Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 31

(An Unavoidably Small Section of) the Fear Literature

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 87

Fear Research and Questions, Questions

Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 105

Questions and Answers

Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 155

Systems as a Means to Understand the Formations of Terror

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 199

The Formations of Terror

Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 241

Where Next? I Fear to Ask

Index ........................................................................................................ 251

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1 Motivation for how I (Simon) began to get to this book

1.2 An early spray diagram for this book
1.3 Influence diagram of the Formation of Terror Book
1.4 A Multiple Cause diagram for this book – in mid-2015
1.5 A ‘What-kind-of-diagram-is-this?’ of this books structure
2.1 Venn/ systems map of Aho’s propositions
2.2 Systemic cycle manifestation of fear
2.3 Influence diagram of the reinforcing loop of death terror
2.4 A systems map of (some of) fear’s major attributes
3.1 A communications systems paradigm
3.2 The communication paradigm as I experienced it concerning Ehrlich
3.3 An example of a group drawn Rich Picture
3.4 The Kolb Action Learning Cycle
4.1 Occupational breakdown of the respondents to my questions
4.2 Response to Question 1: ‘are you aware of fear?’.
4.3 Continua of Fear – one version
4.4 Rich Picture of themes emerging from Question 1
4.5 An Influence Map of the Question 2 summary
4.6 Influence Diagram of Question 3 summary
4.7 Rich Picture of Question 4 summary
4.8 Influence diagram – an update to the cycle of fear – summary of
Question 5
4.9 Reinforcing systems diagrams of despair and hope
5.1 The Eras of analysis and design method
5.2 The SDLC / waterfall model
5.3 Systems map of contemporary causes of fear
5.4 Paradigms of Knowledge
5.5 Systemic insights Systems Map
5.6 Influence map of insights and issues
5.7 Influence map of three levels of understanding
6.1 Spray diagram of my understanding so far – literature issues mirror
people concerns?
6.2 The Formal System Paradigm
6.3 The Paradigm of Fear
6.4 The Fear Attenuating Response System
x List of Illustrations

6.5 The Formations of Terror System

6.6 The Terror System
6.7 Influence diagram of the Terror System – attenuating response.
6.8 The Terror System
7.1 Dynamic modes of thinking
 LIST OF TABLES

6.1 Literature, People and mirror

6.2 Mirror qualities
6.3 Mirror Paradigm qualities
 PREFACE

“Why is there a fault line, an edge, between the world that we see and the
world that physicists know really exists beneath its surface?”

(Al-Khalili & McFadden 2014 page 34)

I am not a lover of the use of peculiar, ‘deep’ and/ or apparently out of

place/ head-scratching quotations at the start of chapters but the relevance
of this quote will, I hope, become apparent very quickly.

This is a book about understanding fear using systems methods to look

below the surface. In this book I suggest that human beings are ‘edge
dwellers’, living constantly on the edge of possible oblivion and unknown
changes and by and large we are pretty good at it.

I try to make some sense of our experience of the edge and, more
importantly, our understanding of the fear of the edge. I am trying to
understand fear and to do this I am to some extent and to one degree or
another attempting to do research. As a life-long user of what can be
called “systems approaches” (dealt with in some detail in Chapter 5) I am
convinced that the researcher is always and essentially part of what is
being researched. In our research we cannot avoid affecting (and of course
being affected by) our object of study. I am studying fear and if I am to
understand fear I need to take into account that I may be a producer of fear
in others and also that I may well be a victim, affected by fear. We touch
and are affected by what we study. A more physical example of how
researchers affect their study may be useful.

It’s obvious (right?) that a social scientist is also part of society? That a
psychologist is human and brings human thoughts into their work? But
this goes further and deeper. Even the ‘hard’ sciences are affected by us,
the doers of the science.

I remember as an undergraduate spending a couple of days during a

long slow summer studying river flow dynamics. We had a number of
items in our learning itinerary but key to our research was to understand
the variable flow rates of the river across its profile, that is to say the
xiv Preface

different rates of flow in the core/ centre of the river as opposed to the rate
on the periphery/ bank side, and other points in the river. In a more
philosophical moment during a lecture our professor went to some
considerable pains to tell the class that a researcher cannot measure a thing
without interfering with it and thus altering the object of measurement.
This was in the late 1970’s and a long time before scholars such as Lanza
and Berman would begin to take the consequences of innovations in
physics to draw our attention to the impact of consciousness on matter
(Lanza & Berman 2010). At the time I recall thinking this was a pretty
irrelevant thing to be telling us. I mean sure a sociologist might influence a
focus group but how could I impact in a meaningful or material way on
the river I am studying? I am going to put a float in the river with a
propeller on the end. This will lie on the surface of the water and the
propeller will pick up the flow and spin and this in turn will alert me to
how fast the river current is flowing. But how will this impact the river?
Well hardly at all. But arrogance and ignorance are contained in these
words. The ‘hardly’ is the interesting part of my denial and is key to the
importance of my reflection. ‘Hardly’ implies a little but how much is a
little? I am conceding the point that my measurement will have an impact
but I have no idea how much. I minimise and dismiss the issue by saying
‘hardly at all’. Truth is, I have no idea. I don’t have a clue beyond the
assumption that my impact will be very small and that it will make little if
any material difference to the river. But I cannot know this because I
cannot know what the river flow would be if my float were not there. I
cannot compare and contrast my measured and unmeasured flow although
some pretty amazing mathematics would allow me to make a reasonable
guesstimate.

Now, you may think that this is a pretty irrelevant thing to worry
about. You may share my early-twenties mindset that the effect of my
measuring device can have little if any impact on the river I am trying to
study but now, in my late fifties I don’t share this relaxed response. When
I move and act in the world, as a researcher or just as another human
being, I affect the objects of my actions and this in turn impacts on other
things and I have no idea what impact will emerge. The butterfly effect
seems appropriate but oblique and hard to tie down1. It is an intriguing
suggestion of depth within depth rather than a means to gauge what the
depth means. Back to the river. I assume my impact is minimal because
my means of measurement is so small and the river so large but I do not

1
The idea first coined by Edward Lorenz that the movement of a butterfly’s wings
might have deterministic effect on the nature of a storm weeks later.
 Formations of Terror xv

know this in a measurable way. Take this a step further, to the quantum
world and it gets very perplexing. I am no physicist but Jim Al-Khalili and
Johnjoe McFadden are and they write:
“down in the microscopic quantum world, particles can behave in these
strange ways, like doing two things at once, being able to pass through
walls, or possessing spooky connections, only when no one is looking.
Once they are observed, or measured in some way, they lose their
weirdness and behave like the classical objects that we see around us’
(page 28).

I am not qualified to comment on the scientific veracity of this

statement from Jim and Johnjoe but if I accept it then my measurement has
a deeper issue: I affect what I measure but quite often I do not know the
extent of the effect and, at a micro level, when I undertake measurement
the stuff I measure may act differently when I am not measuring. Well,
that’s the implication as I see it (for the fuller and much more erudite
version of the argument around consciousness and reality I recommend
reading Lanza & Berman 2010).

I thought my measurement of the river was straightforward but

suddenly my river becomes very perplexing to me.

But back then, 30 or so years ago, I acted like 99.9% of other

researchers, I kept calm and carried on. The intellectual oddness and
perplexity of measurement remains but in the end I have a job to do and
actually I am not comparing the river against the unmeasured river, I am
comparing it against other people’s measurements of the river and their
measurement of other rivers. My science is not really to understand the
nature of the river in a totally accurate way. No, my objective is to apply
tools that are agreed to be accurate and to compare my results with those
of others who have already used the tools.

It seems to me that this rather begs the question are we prepared to

question the nature of our tools? What if the effect they have on the river
is more than we supposed? Maybe our global impact on our world is more
(or less) than we suppose? It may be that the ‘normal’ way of doing
science is robust for measuring change but does it allow us to understand
surprises outside the frame of business as usual? J B S Haldane is noted to
have said (and I make no apology here for quoting him in the original as
he wrote it):
“I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising
than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is
xvi Preface

not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”
(Haldane 1927 page 286).

Haldane has a point but that was not my concern back then as I stood
in waders in the river. My issue was to swallow any assumptions that
might perturb me, remain ignorant of intellectual oddities and do my
research in the same manner as others had done research before me. I
would compare my results with the results of others who had done similar
things. I would apply the methods that they had previously applied and
compare my work to the work that they had already done.

In this process the river tends to disappear and strangely my

measurement becomes more closely linked to the reported measurement of
others than to the river being measured. But it worked.

Thirty years later I can see that despite my ignorance about worries in
measurement and “queerness” the world did not end, I gained a pass for
my assignment and my results are now long lost in the vast and echoing
halls of undergraduate projects completed and moldering to dust.

But I remember my Professor’s injunction about the poorly understood

nature and impact of measurement and it has stayed with me throughout
my career.

Back to ‘the edge’. This book is not about measuring river flows it is
about understanding fear and fear can never be a purely objective field of
study. I am not trying to measure fear but if I am to be able to say anything
useful about fear I will be relating it to different appreciations of fear,
different intensities of fear and different experiences of fear in different
contexts. Much of our fear is below the surface of our conscious
appreciation. In pondering the nature of fear I will be engaged in implicit
measurement because I will be comparing and contrasting different views
and experiences of fear. In comparing and contrasting there is assessment
and also forms of measurement. In measuring fear, I will be experiencing
it, often second hand, and allowing fear ‘in’. Allow me to make sure that
the import of this is put across. In allowing fear in I am opening my mind,
my cognition, to the causes and results of fearful things. I know that I get
scared and I know that when I am suffering from fear I do not act as I
would if I was not afraid and this confuses me. All of this probably has
implications for my assessment of fear, but I don’t know, I am guessing,
as I cannot run my research twice. Once with me in it and experiencing the
fear of others and once without me being so involved. Clearly I cannot do
this, it is nonsense.
 Formations of Terror xvii

Nevertheless I find this nonsense very interesting. If the scientist/

rational observer affects the river flowing, or a leaf photosynthesizing, or a
stakeholder group forming, or a field of maize growing then when I
research fear do I affect the fear I observe? It is obvious (and probably
true!) to say that every human being alive has felt fear at some point in
their lives but I think it is useful to state the obvious now and then. I am
writing about fear and I have felt fear of one sort or another on many if not
most of the days of my life. If we are honest we can probably all say
something similar. Exactly what I mean by fear and how I can understand
it is a large part of the content of this book but before I come to that I want
to set out some of the obvious assumptions on which my assessment of
fear is based. I need to set them out early on because they probably affect
my study, the content and conclusions of this book and my arguments
throughout.

1. I am and have been fearful.

2. I fear many things including the research I was involved with to
write this book.
3. My expertise in fear is partial, there is always more to know.
4. But fear gets in the way of knowing. It is an impairment to the
learning process as it tends to mess with the cognitive process.
[I need to be aware of the last statement and keep it in mind as I write
this book]
5. I am assuming that there is one thing called fear.
6. I fear that this may not be the case.
7. I think that our experience and understanding of fear will be
changed by this book.
8. I recognize that this is arrogant of me, and this is worrying.
9. This rather takes me back to point 1 above.

One last thing…

Well, two last things. A lot of what you will read is conversational in
tone. This is deliberate and accurate. I have had a lot of conversations over
the last two years and I think it most honest and most representative of the
story that will emerge if I keep to this. I hope you won’t find this too
annoying or too much of a departure from the business as usual, distant
and aloof tone of much academic writing.

Secondly, this book represents something of a systemic thought

experiment and if the process and conclusions I come to surprise you as
xviii Preface

much as they have surprised me in their writing then I shall be delighted

and pleased to hear from you.

Simon Bell, December 2016.

simon.bell@open.ac.uk

References
Al-Khalili, J. & McFadden, J., 2014. Life on the Edge: The coming age of
quantum biology, London: Bantam.
Haldane, J., 1927. Possible Worlds, London: Chatto and Windus.
Lanza, R. & Berman, B., 2010. Biocentrism: How life and consciousness
are the keys to understanding the true nature of the universe, Dallas:
Benbella Books Inc.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are so many to thank in the gestation, creation and production of

a book. I am deeply indebted to my wife Rachel for her love, support and
copyediting. Ken Eason and Sr. Nicola DiMino provided me with
wonderful and insightful comment. So many others should be mentioned
but, in no particular order I remain deeply grateful to John Ashton, David
Nussbaum, Sarah Parkin, Adam Corner, Brian Cuthbertson, Chris Rapley,
Ian Christie, George Marshall, Ro Randall, Paul Hoggett, Ken Giller, Jeff
Sayer, David Bell, Steve Morse, Kevin Collins, Andrea Berardi, Nigel
Watson, Robert Fish, Rupert Read, Emily Blyth, Martin Reynolds, John
Naughton, Dale Vince, Richard Heeks, Robbie Breadon, Paul Pule,
Matthew Clarke, Ray Ison, Peter Newham, Stephan Lewandowsky,
Sandra Caeiro, John Mark Mwanika, Lars Henriksson, Lynne Pettinger,
Tomas Ramos, Alana Dave, Ulf Jarnefjord, David Uzzell, Jeanette
Muhlenkamp, Steve Lydenberg, Mark Lemon, Bob Flood, Rupesh Shah
and Andrew Reeves.

To Andrea, Luciano, Anette and Sami of Neros coffee shop in

Norwich. This book would not be without those triple espressos at 7am.
 CHAPTER ONE

SYSTEMS AND FEAR:

HOW THIS BOOK EMERGED

“I think the absence of love is fear.

Wider perspectives are needed now”.
David Hockney.
[From 'Hockney' 2014. Documentary directed by Randall Wright.]

1.1 The Personal perspective of fear

An academic friend asked me about my motivation for writing this
book. In a moment of lucidity, I said something like the following
(although it was not as succinct or tidy):
“I think I have had three significant epiphanies in my professional life. I
have been working as an academic and a practitioner for 30 years or so.
When I started out I was an international development specialist with an
interest in systems thinking working with information technology. In the
light of my practice and following reading the thoughts and ideas of the
socio-technical systems thinkers I rapidly figured out that the technology
was rarely the issue, what really messed up systems were the social and
psychological issues in organisations and communities. I also figured out
that the Geographic Information Systems or GISs that I was working on
were less important than the environment that they monitored so in-
expertly. Epiphany 1. So I turned to the environment and was given my
chance to test my new mind-set working around the Mediterranean on a
number of coastal management research projects. My focus on the
environment, like my earlier focus on technology, led me to ponder other
variables in the research context, my bewitchment and befuddlement with
the motivations and decisions of people in community surfaced. Epiphany
2. The focus on the motivations and perceptions of people, or the multiple
and often confused and conflicting perceptions of people became more
intense. I moved from my research in the Mediterranean to working for a
psychodynamic research agency in London and focused more acutely on
the psychological issues that underlay social decision-making. Epiphany 3.
2 Chapter One

In all my work I came to realize that some level of anxiety and fear
was often a driver of activity and decision-making. From the arid lands of
North West Africa to the decision-making offices of the UK Health
service, fear was actually key to what we did. I think it was then that I
decided I needed, at some point in my life, to give fear the attention it
deserved and to try to make systemic sense of it.”

A lot of people have suffered acute and chronic fear in their lives,
probably the vast majority of us, probably you. I do not want us to forget
this state of fear and for this reason you will find that I have liberally
sprinkled the book with vignettes of fear. I want to ground the thinking
here in the personal and at times overwhelming reality of fear. For many
people fear is daily, personal and painful.

My Fear #1. Academic fear

James is a success. He is intelligent, in his early 50’s, married with two

children and holds down a senior academic post at a very good University
in the UK. His wife works part time now as both children are attending
universities and there is time to focus on making additional money.
Income is greater than expenditure and there is a pension pot building up
nicely. James is good at his job. Not crazy good but good enough to be
safe and, as I have already said - a success. How do we judge or measure
success in academia? Well it is a bit of a movable feast. Early on, back in
the 1990’s when the sector was just learning about ideas like ‘impact’ and
‘performance’ measurement, success was judged by pretty random
measures in line with teaching, research and administration. But that was
before metrics took off and higher education became a business. James
sometimes thinks back to those days with a degree of nostalgia. Of course
the system was open to abuse. Academics could and did have a very nice
life. Lots of time for reading books, doing unpaid research and travelling
to distance places on nebulous and unclear ‘visiting professor’ tickets. All
of that changed over the 2000’s. The ratcheting up of the assessment of
academics has progressed from Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to
Research Effectiveness Framework (REF) and what seemed impossible,
absurd at first, the comparative measurement of the qualities of the work
of academics. The ‘impossible’ happened, committees of compliant
academics figuring out league tables of value. This took some doing but
once the sector applied its vast talents to the exercise it proved remarkably
versatile and creative at the task. The lengthy process of assessing
comparative value meant that every academic output was weighed in
scales. In this measured world getting journal papers published is ‘worth’
more than writing books. Getting published in some journals is worth
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 3

more than getting published in others (this is figured out by reference to

another metric called the journal ‘impact factor’ and quite how that is
measured is the subject of a book in its own right). Chapters in books are
worth very little. Conference papers are worth almost nothing and non-
refereed articles (articles in journals where the submitted article is not
subject to the review of peers) are worth less than nothing, so James is
told to avoid at all costs! This is Metrics Measurement Land and in this
strange and multiply assessed country money too is graded. Some money
is worth more than other money. Research Grants are good but research
grants from the Research Councils (e.g. the ESRC (Economic and Social
Research Council and the NERC (Natural Environment Research Council)
are ‘very good’. Money from the European Union is OK but not so good
as RC money. Money from non-governmental organisations like the Gates
Foundation is ‘so so’ but money from consultancy agencies is really not
worth having even if you have a lot of it. In the land of metrics
measurement some apparently good things are, counter-intuitively, to be
avoided. James has a story that he talks through with himself and others
when they listen. He tells himself that he is in a jungle and he is learning
to identify the ‘big beasts’ that can hurt him. He is learning to distinguish
between a harmless grass snake and a poisonous viper. In the jungle
essential administrative duties are to be avoided at all costs (as these take
time that could be allocated to RC research grant writing or ‘good’
journal article writing) and tend to be given to a second-class set of
academics now emerging. A teacher/ worker support colony created to
attend to the superior ‘research active’ academics. Teaching is important
but an encumbrance, time for reading and thinking is strictly to be done in
ones own time and not interfere with the day job. Things have changed a
lot since the 1990’s.

James has seen the system change and has learned to survive. As of now
James is not really aware of it but lives with a degree of background fear
most of the time. Things have been worse. His old university was a
managerialist nightmare of constant mini-evaluation, rule by algorithm
(yearly quotas of ‘good’ publication and successful research grants
required) and overt bullying heavily disguised as assessment. He is now at
a kinder place but there is still the background pressure to achieve. He
does not think of it as fear. Rather, if he were to reflect upon it he might
think of it as being habituated to pressure and measurement. Part of his
success is that he is reasonably good at giving the ‘system’ what it wants.
He makes ‘OK’ money and he publishes in ‘OK’ journals. He is ‘OK’ in
the eyes of his line-manager (a term unknown in academia when he
4 Chapter One

started in the 1970’s) but he knows that he could do better. His success is
tinged with a constant awareness that he is not ever ‘safe’. The jungle is in
constant change and is full of new traps and new predators that emerge to
threaten him. His colleagues are also his competition. To be successful,
prominent and to bray ones success is vital. If success is not current it is
best to hide in the long grass. He is beset with worries, real and (much
worse) imagined. His research may fail, his papers may not publish, his
university management may change and become like that at his old
university. He lives with a constant and gnawing background of fear. He
has learned to hide his failure, not to trust his colleagues, to be ever
vigilant and to watch for every opportunity to succeed. And this is also
part of his success. He does it rather well.

[To learn more of the fear and anxiety oppressing the academic world
and the depression and suicides that can follow from it, I suggest taking a
look at the paper on anxiety in universities at https://www.academia
.edu/19714927/Producing_Anxiety_in_the_Neoliberal_University].

Fearful beginnings
Before you suggest it, the ‘James’ of the vignette is not me but I share
many of his anxieties. At the time of writing I hold the position of a
Professor in a UK University. Professors in Universities tend to have a
public persona as being professionals and ‘achievers’. Surely they are
clever, sure of themselves (arrogant?) and un-emotional, creatures of mind
and rationalism? Well that is how I saw them when I was an
undergraduate. Professors are not the kind of people who you might
expect to confess to feelings of fear and anxiety. But this is not the case, as
the true story vignette above indicates, fear is as common to those in
academia as it is to grown-ups in all diverse fields of life and work. And
the fear we feel in our adult lives is just the latest manifestation of a life-
long affliction.

A confession. I needed to write this book because the formations of

terror have been in my mind since I was a small boy and that boy has
never gone away, and would like to understand why he was so frightened.
As a child and young man it was fear rather than ambition or heroism that
was the metre of my life. I was scared to be late, scared to be fat, scared to
be stupid. When I was a young person the UK had an odious apartheid
education system which was designed to segregate the early, clever child
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 5

from the so called late or never developer1. The system was called the 11
plus and the exam that was its ugly manifestation was taken, as you will
see at the age of 11. This youthful intellectual apartheid was intended to
allow a minority of early “clevers” to learn in the rarefied environment of
the ‘Grammar School’, whilst the majority (around 60%) intended for
other things went to the derisively labelled ‘Secondary Modern’. At age
11, dim as I was, it was very clear to me that I was in danger and might be
considered good only for the slow lane. Following the exam there would
be success and adulation to the Grammar School cohort, opprobrium and a
life in manual labour to the Secondary Moderners. Needless to say I failed
the 11 plus and went to a Secondary Modern School where my middle
class background marked me for special treatment. So, fear makes another
appearance. At my school I was scared to appear to be middle class, scared
to be useless, scared to be alone, scared to be at school but scared to
truant. I was scared of just about everything. Boys were bigger than me,
girls were frightening if beautiful and frightening if not. Early sexual
encounters were deeply worrying and in the struggle from childhood to
puberty and teenage spottiness I had few if any internal means to
comprehend or manage my reality. I truly know a very good visceral
definition of fear and vulnerability and it was the thirteen-year-old me at
the bus stop, waiting for the connector bus and hoping it would come
before I was humiliated and beaten up yet again by three or four members
of the local red-neck family of bullies in front of the amused watching
group of girls. The formations of fear have tracked me over my life but I
know now that my journey was not alone, even if most other people
appeared much more confident and untroubled.

If I can summarise the need for this book, I need to write this book
because fear is everywhere, we tend not to address it and yet it influences
us in immeasurable ways and therefore there is a clear need to gain some
kind of understanding of it.

I recognise that in explaining my reasons for writing this book I have

presented myself as the victim but I am also aware of the perfidy of the
history. I was bullied and fearful but this also led me to bully in turn. I
learned the power of fear and used it to my supposed advantage at times.
Those who know fear are also the imposers of fear on others. Fear is
personal and its use can be habit forming. Confession over.

1
Incredible to my mind, in 2016 the UK Government is considering re-introducing
selection at 11. Another generation of failed children is likely to emerge.
6 Chapter One

1.2 Wider perspectives on fear

Is this personal and historic justification adequate as a reason to write?
I don’t think so. My reason has to be amplified by the importance of fear
in all our lives. My boy-hood experience is not unique. I have lost count of
the number of conversations I have had over the last ten years with highly
successful people about the misery of high school. How any of us
managed to survive to adulthood remains a cryptic secret and how we
manage to present as reasonably well adjusted and rounded adults I find
mysterious, but maybe a mystery that also has a solution, it would seem
that the most important thing I learned at school was that important things
were rarely learned at school.

At a low level, often obscured by presenting frontages of confidence, I

note symptoms of fear in those around me. Fear occupies some of the time
of most people just about every day. It is in the news, projected in the
movies, amplified in literature and shared between friends. It can be the
quiet cause of a background sense of unease or it can be more significant.
At extremes fear galvanises our hectic action and stills us to inertia;
encourages us to shout and silences our screams. In this sense, as a
ubiquitous presence, it is an uber phenomenon creating effects and
counter-effects, causing action and the fruit of action taken. Fear is very
important but like all intangible or invisible things it is easy to forget how
it feels when you are not being affected. It is surprising to me to hear
people trying to help frightened people by saying things like “be
reasonable” or “calm down” or “try to gather yourself, things are OK.” As
if comments like this are going to work for someone who probably has a
very good reason to calmly and rationally be totally terrified of the things,
the non-phantasy things, which are bearing down on him or her.

To study social, psychological or cultural phenomena with others in

context is sometimes known as Action Research. To study fear it is an
advantage to have recent and personal knowledge of how fear feels. This
personal experience should help in the process of understanding the
experience for others and to note the various personal variations in
experience. Contrastingly, to write about fear as if from an objective
distance strikes me as being of less value. The objectivity that may be
gained by a form of disembodied curiosity is lost by a detachment from
the realities of the experience. Fundamentally fear is important because it
is personal.
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 7

Following the horror of the ISIS terror attacks in Paris in November

2015, Zoe Williams wrote in the UK Guardian:
“Admit to fear: it is more than a requirement of honesty. It is the
precondition for solidarity, since as much fanfare as you make about
standing shoulder to shoulder with the people of France, it is only when
you make a frank account of your own feelings that you can begin to
empathise. Stepping inside the skin of another is an impossible task if
you’re having first to clamber over the barriers of a constructed,
unreflective courage that you don’t really feel.”

I am in full sympathy with Zoe on this point.

To summarise, I am a life-long experiencer and learner from fear, I see

fear all around me at various levels of intensity and I believe that I need to
be aware of and in communion with a state of fear (if hopefully not
actually terrified) to have empathy for its victims.

I don’t want to use vignettes of fear like a kind of terror pornography

but I will continue to use examples of fear throughout this book because I
want to maintain a remembrance in the reader of the kinds, types and
intensities and results and outcomes of fear to keep this constant. I do not
believe that this book can work without this.

My Fear #2 Refugee fear

Jana’s Story

I was a teacher of Arabic in Aleppo. The war was awful. We could hear
bombs, but never saw them.

Then our house was hit and destroyed. Luckily we were out. It was a
shock. You have a house, with decorations, your things, and then you have
nothing. We had to leave. Everything in the street was destroyed.

It was not safe for Ahmed. I am a Sunni, and Ahmed, because of his father,
is a Shia. There was a time when it didn’t matter. Shia married to Sunni,
Sunni married to Christian. But now people came to the house trying to
take Ahmed away.

We left at night. It took three days, walking most of the way, hiding at
night, walking again. There was nothing left for us. My mother is still
there. It is not safe. But she is 70. Where could she go?
8 Chapter One

We were in Lebanon for two years. I made sure Ahmed went to school and
he started learning English. Then we learnt we would come to the UK. It
was a big surprise.

It is a good feeling being in the UK, but it is hard. I am alone with the
baby, alone taking care of Ahmed. The first day after the baby was born, I
went to my English class, with the baby!

I want to teach again, with refugees or in a school. But now with the baby
it will take some years.”

(http://www.refugee-action.org.uk/jana-ahmed/)

1.3 ‘Systems’ and fear

This is not just a book about fear; it is chiefly a book about the holistic
understanding of fear. About learning to understand fear and about
methods that I hope will help the reader to push back against it, not to
allow it to dominate life and infect decisions with its taint.

The methods I will describe are examples of the kind of ‘clear

thinking’ approach which was suggested (but with little detail of ‘how’) by
the Economist magazine in November 2015 (Economist 2015). To achieve
clear thinking this book is about systems ideas. My project and what I
hope will be the contribution of this book is to gain a clearer
understanding of fear by means of a systems methods approach. When I
talk about systems methods I am referring to the various and multiple
tools, techniques, frameworks and approaches which have their origins in
what is variously called cybernetics, general systems theory, complexity
theory, learning systems or systems approaches (for a much longer
discussion about these terms see Ramage & Shipp 2009). I will have a lot
more to say about systems approaches but it is useful if I briefly explain
what I mean by systems approaches at the outset as it is contested and
confusing, and develop this theme later in the book.

Systems approaches provide ways to think about complex situations.

But the word ‘system’ is one that has been used and applied in a wide
variety of manners and ways and this can cause confusion. For example, in
discussing how the Systems approach provides insight and addition to our
thinking I will often refer to the work of Daniel Kahneman (Kahneman
2011). Kahneman talks about two ‘Systems’ that all human beings employ
considering the experienced world. I want to talk more about Kahneman’s
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 9

‘System 1 and System 2’ later in this book but I need to make it clear that
Kahneman’s ‘Systems’ are labels he applies to describe the automatic (e.g.
our instinctive understanding of phenomena) and effortful (e.g. rational
and calculating understanding) ways of apprehending the world, they do
not refer to a deeper and more expansive Systems approach to understanding
the world. The word System is of such generic use in our world (e.g.
economic systems, global systems, heating systems, etc.) any specific use
of it needs to be carefully explained.

At this point I want to consider a potential dualism in our pondering

and problem structuring. Like Kahneman I think we can essentially
segregate the way we think about the world into two and these two are not
mutually exclusive but they are distinct. On the one hand there is the
reductive approach of conventional science and on the other the systemic.
The way we think has implications for the way we respond to fear.

Reductionism as an approach to the acquisition and representation of

knowledge is much better known and some would argue understood (and
easier to spell) than systemisism. Without going into the tortured
arguments of exponents and detractors I think most would agree that
reductive approaches represent our conventional, rational way of figuring
out issues in the world. It can be summarised as the reducing of
complexity to smaller components in order to understand the bits. Of
course there are criticisms and some of them go back a fair way, for
example Tolstoy noted in War and Peace:
“Human science fragments everything in order to understand it, kills
everything in order to examine it.”

Harsh maybe but there is some truth in Leo’s comment. Reduction is

concerned with knowing things by taking them apart, by reducing them to
their parts and by exploring how these parts work. Reduction is a great
way to find the essence of how a thing works. It might be thought of as
essential thinking. Looking for the meaning of things in isolation. By
adopting a reductive mind-set we can isolate phenomena, assess controlled
variables and deepen our understanding of confusingly complicated
wholes that appear too complex to be understandable any other way.
Mathematics could be said to be the ideal reductive method, a means to
isolate and explain units of phenomena by reducing them from phenomena
and representing them as abstract and disembodied quantities. And
reduction could be said to be natural and reflective of greater wholes.
There is an underlying maths to the world.
10 Chapter One

“The astonishing fact is that similarly mathematics applies so well to

planets and to clocks. It needn’t have been this way. We didn’t impose it
on the Universe. That’s the way the Universe is. If this is reductionism, so
be it.” - Carl Sagan, (Sagan 1996, page 258).

What Sagan attested Max Tegmark in his inspiring book: ‘Our

Mathematical Universe” amplified:
“our physical world not only is described by mathematics, but that it is
mathematics, making us self-aware parts of a giant mathematical object.”
(Tegmark, M, pages 2 - 3)

Reductive ways of thinking are great for taking things apart and
reducing them to their component parts. Pieces can then be re-assembled.
But, a problem in a complex natural or social world emerges when parts
are hard to reduce (like a human being or even a group), when parts
become confused, when relations between parts change and interpretations
of meaning are diverse. In such circumstances reductive approaches can be
inadequate. More than this, they can be fear inducing as the reductive
approach can, by focusing on the details, miss large and frightening
implications of wholes. Each of the parts of a system (e.g. a weather
system) may be fine, but when the parts are combined their interaction can
result in catastrophic floods or droughts. It is the high level implications of
the parts in relationship which reduction has trouble with.

Systemisism, on the other hand, is often seen, I think erroneously, to be

the reverse of reductionism, or even some kind of a cure for reductionism.
But is this the case? One of the legendary founders of the systems
discipline, an academic with the wonderfully memorable name of Ludwig
Von Bertalanffy is credited with making headway in establishing the
empiric study of systems.
“Before the 1940s the terms "system" and "systems thinking" had been
used by several scientists, but it was Bertalanffy's concepts of an open
system and a general systems theory that established systems thinking as a
major scientific movement.” Fritjof Capra (Capra 1996, page 46).

Systems approaches or systemisism is the understanding of complex

wholes as wholes by means of a focus on relationships. Systemic
approaches are concerned with the relationships between things, the lines
of connection which are discernible in combinations and which help to
define the resulting whole. The domain is not un-complex with a variety of
savants and gurus claiming greater and more arcane conceptualisations of
the systems idea, definitions scan from the mundane to the occult. To add
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 11

to the complexity, it can be argued that there are levels to systems

approaches. In this thinking Level 1 could be said to be to do with the
basic realisation that there is a systemic quality to ‘the world’. Examples
of nitrogen cycles and life cycle analysis and other such phenomena are
employed to evince the reality of systems. Level 2 or second order systems
approaches go deeper, recognising that systems are not so much in the
world as in our conceptualisation, in our consciousness. They are part of
human self-organising. At Level 2 systems are intelligible and intellectual.
We know via a lens or system that we see through to make sense of the
world. Systems are the medium for sense making.

Systems approaches are often exploratory and sometimes playful. If

maths is the backbone and sine qua non of reductionism, then
diagramming and visualisation could be said to serve the same purpose
and be the core disciplines of systems approaches. Maths breaks down and
segments, the systems diagram sweeps in and unites. It is a great way to
open up the complexity of a difficult reality. The Level 2 mode of systems
approaches is concerned with the eye of the beholder as well as the object
under scrutiny, it is reflexive. Reductionism tends to assume one viewer
on the world, one objective worldview. A systems approach is rather
different. West Churchman was a philosopher who had a particular interest
in ethical considerations. He noted:
“A systems approach begins when first you see the world through the eyes
of another.” C. West Churchman (1968) The Systems Approach, p. 23.

With the big and multiple-perspective of a systems approach big issues

can be addressed and matters of fiendish and fearsome complexity
considered.

However, other views remain and the claims of systems theorists have
been and continue to be challenged from a variety of sources. The systems
thinking critic Robert Lilienfeld (Lilienfeld 1978) argued that systemic
conceptions were fictions and that the reductive nature of reality could not
be denied:
“By now the reader may sense rightly, that the philosophical competence
of systems theory is not of a high order. And by now the vices of this way
of thinking are clear: Systems thinkers exhibit a fascination for definitions,
conceptualizations, and programmatic statements of a vaguely benevolent,
vaguely moralizing nature, without concrete or specific references to
historical, social or even scientific substance. They behave as camp
followers of “science,” not of the sciences, picking up whatever details
12 Chapter One

serve to illustrate their views, while disregarding others … But the most
telling objection, at least as far as we have gone, is that systems theory
achieves its all-encompassing “universality” only by its very abstractness:
All things are systems by virtue of ignoring the specific, the concrete, the
substantive; no evidence that systems theory has been used to achieve the
solution to any substantive problem in any field whatsoever has appeared.”
R. Lilienfeld. The Rise of Systems Theory, pp. 191 – 192.

In this view systems approaches are more a hope than a reality, they
are the product of imagination and occupy the space set aside for
optimistic ways of thinking about difficult stuff. This is actually quite a
hard line of attack to refute entirely and indeed in a Level 2 mode of
approach it could be argued to be partially accurate in terms of
abstractness. At Level 2 systems are sense making devices or heuristics
and are in our heads, they are not in the world but they are our mental
models of the world. If groups of people or communities agree and like to
use them then they have a certain authority derived from the common,
group fictions, but they remain primarily in our heads.

The contrast between systems and reductionist views has been much
noted and parodied in literature. On the one hand systemisists suggest that
reductionists miss the big picture whilst some of the more aggressive
reductionists characterise systems thinkers as loonies lost in the endlessly
deepening fog. The parody was self-demonstrated by the arch-reductionist
Richard Dawkin (Dawkins 1986) when he noted:
“To call oneself a reductionist will sound, in some circles, a bit like
admitting to eating babies. But, just as nobody actually eats babies, so
nobody is really a reductionist in any sense worth being against. The non-
existent reductionist - the sort that everybody is against, but who exists
only in their imaginations - tries to explain complicated things directly in
terms of the smallest parts! The hierarchical reductions, on the other hand,
explains a complex entity at any particular level in the hierarchy of
organisation, in terms of entities only one level down the hierarchy; entities
which, themselves, are likely to be complex enough to need further
reducing to their own component parts, and so on.” (Dawkins 1986, page
13).

But, much more recently the conundrum between reductive and

systemic thought has been commented on. Here are the pithy thoughts of
the authors of Biocentrism; Robert Lanza and Bob Berman on the subject:
“When it comes right down to it, todays science is amazingly good at
figuring out how the parts work. The clock has been taken apart, and we
can accurately count the number of teeth in each wheel and gear, and
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 13

ascertain the rate at which the flywheel spins. We know that Mars rotates
in 24 hours, 37 minutes, and 23 seconds, and this information is as solid as
it comes. What eludes us is the big picture. We provide interim answers,
we create exquisite new technologies from our ever-expanding knowledge
of physical processes, we dazzle ourselves with our applications of our
newfound discoveries. We do badly in just one area, which unfortunately
encompasses all the bottom-line issues: what is the nature of this thing we
call reality, the universe as a whole?” (Lanza & Berman 2010 page 12).

Since very early on in my academic life I have been sympathetic to

holistic or systems approaches and to the methods which are involved in
systems practice. This may be recognition of a neural or cognitive type. I
tend to lack discipline in matters of detail and love to think on big
landscapes and against the background of sweeping ideas. In this book I
am self-confessed as a user of systems ideas, a systems practitioner but not
of an equivalent ‘baby-eating’ type to be compared to Dawkins’ evil and
imaginary reductionist. I try to avoid my inner-baby-eating-systemist side.
My use of systems approaches is not mystical but practical and in response
of a need to think in a combinatorial manner, a manner which avoids the
confusion and ‘bricolage’ of reductive complexity. We can agree that the
world that we all severally and separately experience is a very complicated
place. It seems to me that reductionism as a tendency is involved in a
break down of complex levels in order to provide comprehension.

Systems approaches at their best are involved in relationship

identification between parts and / or scaling up in order to gain clarity of
overall vision.

In this view systemic and reductive approaches harmonize with and

balance each other.

Often the two are seen as opposed but actually and obviously they are
united and part of a thoughtful mindset seeking deeper and evidence-based
understanding. I might put systemisism and reductionism as the polarities
on a continuum of rational thought, as extreme examples of one thing?
Maybe our personal and subjective tendency to find comfort and clarity in
detail or entirety determines our tendency for reduction or system?

But fear is a common experience and state of being from across many
and diverse experiences and contexts. If I am to make sense of fear I need
to make sense of it in diverse and various places, those with which I have
experience and those with which I do not. In this pursuit I am trying to
combine perspectives on realities that are not usually combined and I am
14 Chapter One

trying to assess what I witness as narratives across disciplines and world-

views that are rarely combined. This means I am looking for patterns and I
do need, at least in passing, to note the dangers involved in this pursuit.
Apophenia, the human tendency to see patterns in data that might properly
be considered to be random, is an issue for me. In attempting to gain a
systemic view of the ‘big picture’ relating to fear, I am more than likely to
be engaged in a degree of wish fulfilment. I want to succeed. I want to see
patterns to fear and I want to write a successful book about this want2. In
his novel ‘Pattern Recognition’ William Gibson has one of his characters:
Cayce Pollard, note concerning the assessment of film clips or footage by
another character, the unfathomably wise Parkaboy:
“Parkaboy says you should go to new footage as though you've seen no
previous footage at all, thereby momentarily escaping the film or films
you've been assembling with, consciously or unconsciously, since first
exposure. Homo sapiens are about pattern recognition, he says. Both a gift
and a trap.” (Page 23).

While I would be disingenuous to claim to be free of tendencies to

apophenia I do recognise the issue of the trap, of looking for and finding
the pattern I am seeking. My counter to this issue is to own up to not being
able to impose Parkaboy’s method. I cannot forget what I know as I
encounter new information but I have tried to be as precise as I can be in
amassing evidence from diverse sources, to be mindful with regards to
previous patterns when looking at new evidence and leaving it with you
the reader to assess whether I am a fantasist or not.

If pattern recognition is an issue for the systemist then it could be

argued to be even more present in the mind-set of a reductionist tendency.
Part of the success of reductionism has been to segregate and differentiate
the world into countries, disciplines, orders, sequences, currencies,

2
As an immediate example of this trap – when writing this chapter I attempted to
combine systemic and reductive thinking with Kahneman’s automatic and effortful
thinking. I made a matrix of four quadrants, each representing one of the four
qualities, system, reduction, effort and automatic. I was trying to layer pattern onto
the four. What I ended up with was puzzling but confusing. It did not work. I could
imagine and provide quick examples of effortful and automatic systems and
reductive thinking but the matrix did not work. I could not make the x and y axis
make sense. If I put Kahneman’s automatic to effort on the x axis it would give me
effort to reduction (or system) on the y axis. If I put system to reduction on the x
axis again the y axis made no sense spanning from system to effort. I had a sense
of what I was trying to achieve but the pattern would not come and I gave up. An
example of and partial victory for apophenia.
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 15

ethnicities, races and climates. The list goes on. I have no issue with this
sanity-assisting segregation but it is less helpful to us if we are trying to
understand a phenomenon that occupies all this space, which crosses over,
mingles and interchanges across all boundaries indeed, as fear does. In this
book I will explore a number of areas and try to make sense of the whole.

1.4 Structure of the book

This is a book that has been written in order to arrive at a suggested
systemic interpretation of fear and I want to employ systems approaches
throughout. But that does not mean that I am going to avoid sequence and
order, structure and process.

The book is conventional in structure with a beginning, middle and

end. It contains arguments, discussions and conclusions. Four points can
be made about the overall structure:

First, this book is not written from faux objectivity. I write from where
I am, including my subjectivity and personal history and I do not try to
disguise this.

Secondly, my aim is to develop a systemic method to understand fear.

Whenever I think it useful I will employ systems diagrams to help me to
establish the outlines of method and to make my point. I will use diagrams
to explore systemic concerns and deliver systemic assessments. I will
describe and explain each form of systems diagram as I go.

Thirdly I will not avoid unwelcome links and relationships between

unlikely associations. I will also try to be scrupulous in explaining such
links and relationships in systems terms.

Fourthly, I have a specific focus for assessing fear. To emphasise the

consequences of fear my point of focus is highly significant and represents
a major source of terror. In recent years I have been involved in
environmental research and this has involved or referenced climate change
as an existential fear of contemporary concern and global significance.
Climate change is therefore a point of focus. This said, it could just as
easily have been the culture wars behind terrorism, anxieties around
nuclear proliferation or the unknown consequences of artificial
intelligence. All can be argued to pose existential questions of threat to
humanity but the point of focus I chose was climate change.
16 Chapter One

In terms of the structure and beginning from where I stand, I set out in
the first part of this chapter and the preface why fear is important and how
it is important to me.

In chapter 2 I review some important elements of the copious literature

on fear. I can claim to have been thorough but not exhaustive, the
literature on fear is limitless and (in systemic terms) almost impossible to
scope by conceptual line or boundary. Correspondingly, I have allowed
my literature search to wander and pursue points that may not always
seem to be obviously related to climate change. I will discuss the main
themes emerging in what others have had to say about fear.

In my review of the literature and the subsequent assessment of the

interviews which I have carried out I make use of systems diagrams to
capture the complexity of what I am experiencing and make sense of this
complexity.

I will go into a little detail in the next section in describing the main
systems diagrams I will employ, they are in ascending sequence of
ordering:

x Rich Pictures
x Spray diagrams – similar to and confused with mind maps
x Systems maps
x Influence diagrams and
x Multiple cause diagrams.

I will use the systems diagrams to frame the literature and to draw
from it five emerging themes.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of the approach I adopted in pursuing

these themes, chiefly but not exclusively in the domain of climate change.
The chapter sets out the method and five questions which I asked relating
to the five themes.

In chapter 4 I set out the responses to the questions. Throughout 2015

and 2016 I interviewed a number of experts in climate change,
environmental issues and a range of related (and a few less clearly related)
topics. In chapter 4 I explore and contrast responses and draw/ provide
provisional observations and systemic assessments.
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 17

One of the virtues of a systems approach is to provide insights into

complex realities. In chapter 5 I provide a more thorough explanation of
the systems approach and examples of systemic insights. Following this I
provide an assessment of what a systemic analysis can provide in the
understanding and elucidation of the Formations of Terror or FoT.

Chapter 6 brings together the literature and the results of the research
set out in chapter 3 within a systems framing of the main elements. I
develop a systemic analysis and describe what I mean by the Formations
of Terror, the Paradigm of Fear and Fear Amplifying and Attenuating
Systems. My concern at this point is to set out how fear can be managed
more systemically and what advantages might emerge from such handling.

Chapter 7 is my conclusion and also a new beginning. All books, to

some extent, end at their beginning. I want to finish with a review of my
original motivation and some comment on how the systemic exploration
of that which terrorises us can enhance personal sanity.

1.5 A few words on Systems diagrams

A non-specialist book which nevertheless explores the universe using
mathematical ideas as its key heuristic, probably needs to explain this
early on and, in this explanation, attempt to reassure those without
mathematic expertise that the book is still relevant to their needs (see for
example the very accessible book by Max Tegmark 2015). In this book I
use systems diagrams and I really need to explain them in brief at least to
reassure you that they should not be a barrier to your comprehension and
to encourage you to practice them yourself. From personal insight to
gaining a better view of complexity they offer a means to improve
understanding.

As already noted, in this book I make use of five systems diagrams:

Rich Pictures, Spray diagrams, Systems maps, Influence diagrams and
Multiple cause diagrams. What are they, what do they do and how are they
helpful? Why do I use diagrams of any kind? Most books that contain
diagrams make use of them as descriptive and/ or for expositional
purposes. In this book I use diagrams for analysis as well as exposition.
Why is this? I will respond to each of these questions in turn. First, what
are the diagramming types I make use of?
18 Chapter One

1.6 Gaining vision of complex and difficult stuff –

Rich Pictures
Rich Picture. This is a diverse and unstructured diagram that is usually
used by groups and individuals in order to make preliminary explorations
of diverse and complex realities. So, what does that mean in practice? The
Rich Picture has few rules and requires the practitioner to use visual
metaphors instead of words. The expectation is that by framing ideas as
images the individual or group may find surprises and challenges that had
not previously emerged in more conventional approaches. The Rich
Picture can act as a vehicle for serendipity and creativity. It allows what
has been referred to as ‘optimal indiscretion’ to emerge and in this
indiscretion new seeds for fresh thinking can and often do occur 3 .
Examples of rich pictures might be thought to be worthless in terms of
improving understanding as no two are the same but the loose set of rules
for their development is consistent, and I and some of my colleagues nurse
a belief that Rich Pictures can be compared, contrasted and learned from.
An example of a Rich Picture that sets out my personal journey is shown
in Figure 1.1.

Rich Pictures are all about visualising ideas. Visualisation is key to my

systemic enquiry. Nancy Marguiles notes in her book on Mapping Inner
Space:
“Before we establish language, we visualize pictures in our minds and link
them to concepts. Throughout our lives the inner knowing that we
sometimes call intuition appears as an image or sensation long before we
can articulate it in words.” (Marguiles & Maal 2002 page 12).

Rich Pictures allow us to draw sensations and to find ideas and the
articulation of concepts prior to being able to find the words that will
eventually convey the clear meaning. Possibly the knowledge the picture
contains is a bit too indiscrete. This is a picture I drew early on in my
progress with the current book back in 2013. I show myself with fear
antenna, caught at a crossroads but assessing past, present and future.
Fearful ghosts of the past, many related to school and difficult learning
experiences, represented as Dementias as first described in Harry Potter.
Dark spirits of the night that suck the soul from the living. Creatures of
despair. The Dementias infest my past, present and future, no escape then.

3
For a much more detailed discussion of Rich Pictures I recommend you look at a
dedicated text I co-authored with Tessa Berg and Steve Morse (Bell et al. 2016).
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 19

Figure 1.1 – Motivation for how I (Simon) began to get to this book.

Not a very encouraging representation but illustrative of my mind-set at

that time. This is an important point. Looking again at this image in 2017
as I read and re-read the chapters I have trouble finding that version of me,
that me, which was so concerned. I know that he/ I was and to some extent
still is but I find it hard to find him/ me in the words I have written. The
same is true for my diary of the time. The diagram on the other hand
brings it back and allows me access to a precious memory of how this felt
back in 2013. At that time, I was in some pain over the notion of this book
and was having a lot of trouble locating how I would address fear. What I
wanted to do and the emotions it raised in me conflicted. I see this in the
diagram. In talking about the ‘gift of pain’ Stephen Grosz says:
“At one time or another, we all try to silence painful emotions. But when
we succeed in feeling nothing we lose the only means we have of knowing
what hurts us, and why.” (Grosz 2013 page 22).

The Rich Picture can provide therapy. It helps me to remember the

painful emotions that were very live in me at the time when I set out on
this publishing project. Again, quoting Grosz:
20 Chapter One

“At one time or another, most of us have felt trapped by things we find
ourselves thinking or doing, caught by our own impulses or foolish
choices; ensnared in some unhappiness or fear; imprisoned by our own
history.” (Ibid page 8).

The Rich Picture captures the nature of the prison and the sense of fear.
In this Rich Picture I also can still commune with the feelings of 2013 in a
manner much more intimate and accessible than any words can say.

1.7 Spray diagrams – centering-out our ideas

Spray diagrams are very similar to and also often confused with mind
maps. For the purposes of this book I will treat them a being essentially
the same thing. Tony Buzan has referred to mind maps as:
“a graphically and visually interlaced thinking tool for storing, organising,
prioritising and outputting information … a ‘Swiss Army Knife for the
brain’.” (Buzan 2010 page 109).

As already noted, spray diagrams and mind maps are similar to look at
but have slightly different functions. Both were developed by Tony Buzan
in original work which began in the 1970’s (Buzan 2010). They are
considered together because I find their form and structure almost
identical. Spray diagrams are often applied in order to represent the
structure of an argument or to summarize the relationships between ideas.
Mind maps, as distinct from spray diagrams, are often used to provide the
same function as brainstorming in a group or, more usually on your own.
Sprays in this sense are applied when someone is trying to get their ideas
down on paper in a relatively unstructured way. Both spray and mind map
are a simple, rapid techniques for expressing ideas without being
concerned too much by repressing notions of structure. The diagrams can
be used to show connections in trains of thought and can indicate
groupings of ideas or thoughts. They are less useful when they become
very complex and there are numerous cross-connections to consider.

I find them useful as ways of centring out or allowing an idea to

blossom. Both spray and mind map are a means to begin to organise and
structure ideas and processes, people and politics, analyses and
conclusions. If the Rich Picture is there to map this complexity and
prioritise it then the spray diagram can be an excellent means to expand on
the insights obtained by a Rich Picture and put some distance between the
raw emotion that is often contained, expressed or occluded in the
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 21

representation. Here is a spray diagram (Figure 1.2) I made of the present

book relatively early on and building off my Rich Picture.
Figure 1.2. An early spray diagram for this book
22 Chapter One

In this spray diagram the central point of reference is my early

conception of the initial notion of the Formations of Fear/ Terror (at this
point the phrase had not been finalised). Around this central concern a
number of themes and ideas emerge, some of which are developed in this
book and some which never made it. You can see that my concerns were
with the subjectivity of fear, the history of terror, the various domains in
which fear is highlighted, and the being of fear, is it one thing or are there
many things combined to make some form of composite? Most of these
areas are included in this volume but some have been lost as my ideas
have progressed and changed.

The spray diagram can be a reformulation of the Rich Picture or it can

be a more advanced point to begin a process of thinking. But, it is flexible
and in a graphic form is structured in a manner which is more akin to our
blossoming, centre-out thinking process than the lines on the page writing
which is the more conventional way of recording ideas.

1.8 Map and Terrain/ Terrain and Map –

Systems maps and Influence diagrams
The next step in many systemic diagrammatic enquiries is often a
systems map. The systems map can be used to define major collectives of
concern, themes or systems in the complexity explored in the spray
diagram. Systems diagrams usually involve clustering ideas into blobs that
represent collectives or combinations of similarity. Academics at the Open
University suggest of a systems map that it is essentially a:
“snapshot. It shows components of the systems and the environment at a
point in time.” (Lane et al. 1999, page 65).

This is critical. If there is a system or if there are systems represented

by blobs or ellipses, then there is also (by default) an environment in
which these systems ‘are’. The distinction between systemic entities and
surrounding environment is a crucial step in the coherent examination of
any complex reality. As Andy Lane from the Open University puts it, the
value of a systems map snapshot is to:
“clarify thoughts at an early stage of analysis, decide upon structural
elements for a detailed diagram, experiment with trail boundaries, decide
upon the level of your system of interest (‘focusing’), communicate to
others the basic structure of the system you are describing.” (Lane et al.
1999 pages 65 - 66).
 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 23

I will demonstrate a systems map in a moment but first I want to

progress to the next diagramming type which I will employ in this book,
the influence diagram.

Influence diagrams as I apply them are essentially elaborations and

developments of systems maps. A systems map with influence diagram
braided is demonstrated in Figure 1.3. Influence diagrams function to
indicate relations between mapped systemic groupings, casting light and
mapping as part of deeper understanding of the early stages of complexity.
Figure 1.3 is a systems map developed into an influence diagram and it
builds off the spray diagram I used in Figure 1.2.

This early systems map elaborated as an influence diagram shows my

early thinking about the book you are reading. The FoT book plan is the
core system and this influences (influence is usually shown by means of
lines of connection, often with arrow heads to show the direction of
influence) and this sets up ‘3 themes’ as the next level of system. The
three themes are shown here as ellipses 4 and projected as separate but
related systems and these refer to segments of the book in outline: ‘Why
another book on fear?’ ‘Emergence of fear, interviews supported by
literature,’ and ‘the systemic assessment of the FoT.’ From these main
systems more emerge and are linked by further lines of influence. Some of
the systems represented are descriptive of content (‘chapter style, themes’)
and some are assessments of the likely style of a segment (‘diversity of
generalizable themes,’ ‘interview narrative.’) In a sense they are the sub-
systems that help to define and describe the nature of the main systems.
Take away the lines and you have the systems map. Add the lines and the
influence diagram emerges. Both are more organised and more procedural
than the spray diagram or the rich picture.

4
The use of clouds or ellipses for representing systems is long-standing in the
discipline of systems diagramming and one that has puzzled me for a long time.
The main reason for ellipses is the value in demonstrating that a system is not a
definite or finished artifact of thought. In technical drawings entities are usually
shown as boxes. Processes tend to be shown as circles or ellipses. The
diagrammatic convention is a means to visually indicate a reduction in formalism.
The ellipse is not formal when compared to the formalism expressed in the box/
rectangle or square. The entity or noun is more formal than the process or verb. In
my drawings I used to make use of ellipses as means to represent systems (as is the
convention) but I tend increasingly to see systems as fleeting and transient process
collectives and think that the cloud is a more accurate visualization.
24 Chapter One

Figure 1.3. Influence diagram of the Formations of Terror book

 Systems and Fear: How this Book Emerged 25

The systems map allows the main components of the overall scheme to
be realised in relation to each other. On some occasions the systems
elements will be seen overlapping and on some occasions the environment
in which the systems exist is also labelled. I have not made use of either
convention in this case as the systems and their influence over each other
are distinct and the overall environment is the conceptual space in which
the book idea has formed.

1.9 Assembling a map of causality –

Multiple Cause Diagrams
When I began this book I was not sure if I was going to progress my
diagramming beyond influence diagrams but as the book developed so I
needed to attend to causality. Causality is an issue for academics. In lay
terms and in our everyday experience we ascribe cause all the time, for
example:

x My anger caused your tears,

x The car turning left unexpectedly caused the pedestrian to be
injured,
x The industrialisation of European nations led to the increased
carbon production that in turn has been a significant cause of
climate change.

These are the usual expressions of causality that we might hear every
day and they are often contested and problematic. Politicians find endless
reasons to challenge the direction and origin of a causal property, or even
its existence (a recent example at the time of writing is provided by the
heat and muddle of the climate debate in the USA Republican Party in the
2016 caucus debates). In academic circles causality is a very difficult
phenomenon to tie down. Academics talk about issues in assessing
causality, concepts of exclusion, anomalism and externalism. Most of
these relate to the validity of suggesting or evidencing that a noumenal or
mental cause (an idea for example) can be seen to unambiguously result in
an effect. Closely related to these issues are those pertaining to the
confusion of cause with correlation. In this case the problem is attributing
causality between two variables that are actually unrelated. This confusion
can be counter to our patterning minds. I am constantly tripped up by
correlation, mistaking it for causation. For example, I will often find that
two or three things go wrong on my computer at the same time. I will look
for causal relationship and even find it. Again and again I have found that
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Courtesy Assoc. First Nat’l Exhibitors, Inc.
A Tête-à-Tête With a Lion.
Note that the lioness is looking not at the actress opposite her, but at the
motion-picture camera that annoys her with its clicking.
Courtesy Assoc. First Nat’l Exhibitors, Inc.
Acting With a “Tame” Lion.
There is always enough danger in playing “opposite” a lion to make it easy
for any actor to “register fear.” Note how the lion is baring his teeth.

There, in a nutshell, is one of the big difficulties that anybody who

wants to help along the moving-picture industry, either by making
better pictures or by encouraging better pictures, is up against.
Between the public on the one side and the big distributors and
producers on the other side stand the exhibitors, who must be “sold”
on a money-making basis, before any great change can come about.
In the long run, to be sure, audience value counts. In the long run
you and Andrew McGinnis and George Lenox and Fuller Westcott
have to be satisfied with the pictures you see, or you will quit going
to see what your local exhibitor-man has to offer. But remember,
that’s in the long run.
Now, with this explanation of what a good picture has to overcome
to find its way into the movie palaces, let us see how good it can be,
and still “get by.”
First, it must be good enough to make an impression on the
distributors who buy it from the producer and sell it to the movie-
theater owners who exhibit it. They must think, at least, that it is
good. And to make them think that, it has got to have good selling-
points such as were suggested a little way back, so that they can
brag about it to the exhibitors and make the re-selling or renting of
the prints easy.
Second, it must be good enough so that when the exhibitor sees it,
he will decide that his audiences will like it—or at least that enough
people will like it to more than compensate him for the price he has
to pay in rentals.
Third, it must be good enough to satisfy the people who pay to get
in to see the show, or they will be apt to stay away next time, so that
in the end the exhibitor will lose money unless he shows better films.
And in each one of these cases it mustn’t be too good, or at least
too good in a “highbrow” sense.
It must have enough popular appeal, so that, collectively, millions
of people will like it, in order to make it profitable for the exhibitor,
and the distributor, and the producer.
A picture was made in England from a story by Sir James Barrie,
who wrote “Sentimental Tommy” and so many other fine books and
plays. It was called “The Will.” It showed an old firm of lawyers in
London, and a young couple that came to the office to be married.
There was a “Little black spot” in the character of the young groom—
a streak of mean selfishness. Throughout the lifetime of that couple it
grew and grew, because it wasn’t weeded out, until in the end it
made them both very unhappy, and even spoiled all their children’s
lives. When he was a very old man, the fellow who was married at
the beginning of the picture came back to the old lawyer’s office to
make his will, and admitted that he had spoiled his life, and the lives
of all those about him, through his failures to weed out “The little
black spot” in time.
 You can see how different that picture is from most of those that
you see, month after month, at your nearest movie-house. For one
thing, it didn’t have any particular love-story, which more people like
to see than anything else. For another thing, it has a sort of unhappy
ending, which, in this country, relatively few people like to see. So,
although the picture was beautifully produced, and although it was
interesting as it went along and pointed a big moral quite without
being “preachy,” no one bought it for this country. It was sent back to
England. The distributors, who could have bought it for a song
compared to what they have to pay for even the poorest pictures that
are made here in America, were afraid of it, because they felt it
would be hard to sell to exhibitors, who wouldn’t think enough people
in their audiences would like it to make it profitable.
Think a moment. Would you have liked it, just because it was a
worth-while story, beautifully produced? Would you have liked it even
though it had no particular love-story, and no thrilling adventure, and
no particularly unusual scenes, and did have an unhappy ending?
You would have admired it, undoubtedly, if you had seen it, and
admitted it was good; but you wouldn’t have liked it particularly.
Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation.
An Elephant on a Rampage.
When animal pictures are being taken there is always a chance for things to
go wrong. Animals almost always seem to be irritated by the clicking of the
camera.
Courtesy Universal Pictures Corporation.
Human Brains Against Brute Strength.
Whenever possible, scenes that “go wrong” are turned to account. This
entire episode was photographed and eventually used in a “nature” film.

It was too good a picture for the American market, at this stage.
On the other hand, if a picture has certain fundamental points of
popular appeal, a romantic love-story or a thrilling climax or a
wonderful setting of unusual beauty or charm, and good selling-
points as well, such as a famous author or a great star, it can be just
as good as anybody is able to make it. Under those circumstances it
cannot be too good. Look at the best Griffith pictures, or the best
Rex Ingram pictures, or the best pictures that Douglas Fairbanks has
made, like “Robin Hood,” or the best that Mary Pickford has made, or
Charles Chaplin, or Harold Lloyd.
So far, there has been one great stumbling-block in the way of
better pictures. It has even affected such great producers as Griffith
and Ingram. They have been afraid of doing the very best they were
capable of, for fear of being “too good.” They were afraid of being
“over the heads” of too many people in the audience. They were
afraid of not having enough “popular appeal.”
That is why, in “Way Down East” Griffith stooped to cheap “slap-
stick” comedy that was really beneath, and incidentally really less
funny than, what he might have done. It was why Rex Ingram, in
“Turn to the Right” made a picture that was about down to the level
of an eight-year-old child, in spite of its beautiful production. It was
why such pictures as Universal’s “Merry-go-’Round” drop to cheap
and overdrawn sentimentality in places, instead of sticking to the real
thing.
The danger with distributors and exhibitors as well as producers, is
that they are afraid of losing money on pictures that are “too good.”
What they are afraid of is a real danger: it is true that pictures may
be “too good.” That is, not interesting enough in a popular sense, in
spite of their artistic excellence.
If only producers and distributors and exhibitors could all get
pictures that were just as good as they could possibly be without
being “too good,” we’d be all right.
It’s safer, though, from a money standpoint, to have pictures a little
below than a little above the line that marks the limit of popular
appreciation. At least, for a while.
There we have the whole problem of how to get better pictures:
daring to keep right on the border line of popular taste, without trying
to play too safe by sagging away down below it, in an effort to appeal
to greater numbers of people.
There’s a curious thing about this problem. Great numbers of
people will keep away from pictures that seem to them too
“highbrow” to be interesting. But on the other hand, unless pictures
are good enough to keep people feeling that they are getting
something worth-while, after a while they will stop going to that kind,
also.
Have you ever played tennis with a man you could always beat? If
you did, you found that after a while it wasn’t half so interesting as
playing with a man who could give you a rattling good game, and
whom, if you were at your very best, you might beat. For some
reason there is a great stimulus in progress; we like to play tennis
best with people who are so good that to play with them means
continually improving our own game.
Nobody would ever think of going to school if the teachers didn’t
know more than their pupils. That would be worse than forever
playing tennis with a man who could never hope to ever equal your
own game.
Do you see what we are getting to? Leadership!
Motion pictures, are, in a certain sense, a part of the great
publishing business of the United States. They publish stories in
picture form. And in those stories they publish ideas, and ideals, and
rules of conduct, and good taste, and good sense,—or the lack of all
those things.
It is through the publishing business—the movies as well as books
or magazines or newspapers—that we get the information and ideals
by which we live. The publishing business is the main channel, aside
from schools and conversation and churches, through which we get
the information and ideas that enable us to make progress, that
enable us to get ahead.
Accordingly, the publishing business—and the movies with the rest
—has to have in it the element of leadership.
It’s as though we were going to school when we go to see motion
pictures. In a sense, we are. And just as, if we really were not
learning anything there, we wouldn’t go to school, so, with motion
pictures, if we don’t find anything worth while in them, after a while
we get tired of them and lose interest, and stop paying money to
watch them.
In one year, when motion pictures got too far below the line of
popular appreciation, enough people stopped going to them to drop
the total box office receipts in the country more than a hundred
million dollars.
 So, while for a time there is more money in playing the public
down than there is in playing it up (since more people come, at first
at least, to see pictures that are too cheap for their taste, than come
to see pictures that are a little too good for their taste), in the long
run, playing the public up pays best.
In other words, if the leadership element is present at a motion
picture, if it is a picture that is thoroughly worth while, and yet is not
too good to “get across,” it will both make money and build business,
while a cheap sensational picture, though it may make more money
than a better film at the time it is released, will in the end lose
business for the firm producing it, because in the long run it drives
away business instead of bringing it in.
When you go to see pictures, look for something worth while. If
you find it, particularly in a picture that you like very well, don’t be
afraid to let the local exhibitor or theater manager in charge of the
movie-palace where you saw the show know that you liked it and
thought it was good.
That will help him just that much in deciding what kind of pictures
his audience likes.
Remember; while a picture must be financially profitable for the
producer, and so can’t be above popular appreciation, it still must be
good enough to be right at the upper edge of that popular
appreciation, and trying to push it always a little bit higher.
Courtesy United Artists Corporation.
One of the Big Scenes in “Robin Hood.”
While it usually costs an enormous amount to film the so-called big “mob”
scenes in elaborate productions, they are often very effective. Notice how
well trained the “extras” are here.
Courtesy Assoc. First Nat’l Exhibitors, Inc.
Spending Money on a “Spectacle.”
It used to be thought that “great” pictures could be made by unlimited
expenditure in “mob” scenes and “big sets.” This scene, however, is from
one of the films that helped disprove it; costing nearly half a million, it
proved to be a comparative failure.
 CHAPTER IX
AMERICAN MOVIES ABROAD

Have you ever happened to think: the world has at last found a
universal language!
The men who created Esperanto, or any of the other so-called
“universal” languages, little imagined that before their product even
reached its twenty-fifth birthday the old world would have
unconsciously accepted an entirely new method of interchanging
ideas—and that the “new” method would be the oldest language of
all. “Say it with pictures.”
Long before the Romans began to roam—even before the
Athenians settled down in Greece—men talked to each other in
pictures. The Eskimos scratched their tales on bone, and the
Egyptians carved pictures of eagles and lions into solid rock, and
from such crude beginnings, little by little, the various languages
evolved.
Now, we have a chance, in a way, to go back to the beginning,
without losing the later developments.
The human face is a document that all may read. An expression of
sorrow is not confined to any one language. A smile goes round the
world. Fear—anger—hope—excitement—can readily be recognized,
whether the face that expresses them is white or black, man or
woman or child, long or thin, or round and slant-eyed.
A boy laughing in Southern California may make a Hindu in India
smile in sympathy, when that laugh appears upon a Bombay screen.
Tears are universal. So is a grin.
Motion pictures made in one country may be shown in any other,
and find appreciation. Films produced in America may go to all the
countries of the world, and do.
But America is not the only country producing motion pictures.
French films or German, or Italian, or English, or Scandinavian, or
any other, may also be shown in any of the countries of the globe,
including America.
To be sure, there are changes that have to be made, here and
there. The leaders or captions—now usually called titles in this
country—have to be translated into the required language;
sometimes the action in the pictures has to be cut to meet the
requirements of differing customs and conventions. And the
audiences of the globe do not all like the same things, or see them in
the same way.
A missionary returning from one of the island groups in the South
Seas recently told me of the first “movie-palace” to be established in
his vicinity. “Shows” were given only at irregular intervals, and were
talked of for days in advance, and attended like country fairs, by all
the villagers able to walk, from miles around.
As the job of translating the titles on the film into the native dialect
would be altogether too expensive for such limited audiences, a
native interpreter, able to guess at the meaning of the foreign titles
here and there, stood in front of the screen and told the story as he
imagined it ought to be, as it flickered along. The highly emotional
audience was always greatly excited, and the enthusiasm and
shouts of the natives gradually grew louder and louder, as the action
progressed, often drowning out altogether the shouted explanations
of the interpreter. Not infrequently the excitement grew almost into
hysteria, so that it was nothing unusual for the show to wind up in a
free-for-all fight.
But the most interesting thing was the attitude of the native
audience toward the characters of the photoplay.
Their virtues were not the civilized virtues, nor were their vices
those of the film producers, so that they saw the hero as a good-for-
nothing, and the villain, often enough, as a hero. When the
melodramatic “heavy” pulled out his knife and plunged it into the
trusty guard, they cheered him on, and when he next dragged the
beautiful heroine into his refuge in the hills by the hair of her head,
they were more enthusiastic still. But when the hero appeared on the
scene in the nick of time, to help the girl escape and foil the villain’s
plans, they hissed like good fellows, and nearly broke up the show.
Let us see for a moment just what the world market in motion
pictures means to America.
Not in dollars and cents, because, alone, the money side of the
picture industry is neither exceptionally important nor particularly
interesting. The film industry is now, I believe, the fifth largest in the
country, and its exports and imports run to millions of dollars
annually. American pictures for the whole world would mean more
dollars coming our way, and more prosperity in this country; but that
is neither more nor less than can be said of half a dozen other
industries. Money is not the only thing we need to make America the
greatest country in the world.
Indirectly, the movies mean more, even from the money
standpoint, than the tremendous direct returns from the industry itself
give any idea of. The citizens of Rio de Janeiro, let us say, watch
American films and become acquainted with the interiors of
American rooms, American furniture and all the rest. When they
have to furnish a home of their own those Brazilians have to choose,
let us say, between German-made furniture and American. If they’re
already accustomed to the American designs and styles, through
seeing them on the screen, they will take them, unhesitatingly, in
preference to the German. For what people have already accepted
unconsciously as a standard—what they see others using in
countries they look up to—inevitably appeals to them for their own
use. And as with furniture, so with all the host of other things
American, manufactured for export as well as home use.
The really big thing about American films abroad—in Europe, in
Asia, in Africa and South America—is that they carry American
ideas, and American ideals and American influence, around the
world.
 To-day the American girl is known all over the globe. The faces of
our screen actresses—Mary Pickford, Constance Talmadge, Lillian
Gish, and many more—are watched in Calcutta and Petrograd,
Cape Town and Budapest.
Doesn’t that make it seem a fortunate thing that Mary Pickford,
with her charming smile, has come at least as near as she has to
representing the real heart of America—all that is cleanest and
kindest and best in us? For, when all is said and done, she more
truly, perhaps, than any other one living person represents America
in foreign lands.
And on the other hand, doesn’t it seem a pity, and more than a pity
—yes, a great misfortune, a terrible calamity—that so many films,
made by commercial-minded producers with apparently no spark of
the real spirit of service or patriotism, go forth across the face of the
world and spread abroad their idiocies, and meannesses, and lack of
idealism, and even uncleannesses, as representatives of America?
Think of that, next time you happen to pay money to watch a
worthless movie; it may be representing America abroad!
To-day the country that sends its films into foreign lands is leading
the thought of the world.
It is probably not too much to say, although the bare thought itself
is a staggering one, that to-morrow the country that excels in the
production of popular motion pictures will dominate the world.
Fortunately, in the early days of the picture industry in this country
there was a man known as David Griffith, who was something of an
actor, a little of a writer, and possessed no small measure of real
power as a story-teller.
From the very start, the mechanical and inventive end, as well as
the commercial and organization end, of the industry in this country
outstripped competition. Combined with Griffith’s story-telling ability,
this technical supremacy and commercial organization put American
films in front of those produced elsewhere.
American movie-palaces mushroomed into existence by the
hundreds, and we developed a huge domestic market that made
possible extravagant spectacle-productions costing first tens of
thousands, then hundreds of thousands of dollars. The name of
David Wark Griffith became known all over the world; the supremacy
of American films became everywhere acknowledged; pictures from
the United States went to every corner of the globe, carrying
American prestige and influence, increasing American commercial
prosperity and development.
When the World War ended—and though this may seem so
exaggerated that it sounds like a joke, it is not—no little degree of
America’s influence and predominant position, during the early
weeks of the Peace Conference at Paris, was due to the fact that
through the preceding decade our pictures had circled the world.
But that is not the end of the story. Since then there has been a
big change.
Even Griffith, for that matter, as a leader of American picture-
makers, has by no means been universally popular outside this
country, although as a whole his pictures have received almost as
great acclaim as they have here.
Once, for instance, the popularity of his films induced one of the
foreign agents to pay some thousands of dollars for the “Far
Eastern” rights on “Intolerance”—including China and Japan. The
Chinese did not think much of it, and the distributor lost money. But
in Japan the exhibitors were smarter. Having secured the picture
“sight unseen” for the Islands, they had to play it to get their money
back. But they felt, after seeing it, that possibly their Japanese
audiences would not particularly care for it—so they prepared
carefully an exploitation campaign worthy of the best advertising
brains in this country. “Intolerance,” they said, was at once so artistic
that it appealed to the highest intelligence, and so simple that any
man of good sense could appreciate it. To fail to be moved by its
beauty and artistry would mark anybody as being—well, stupid.
“Intolerance” was a great picture, but it was too long, and too hard
to follow, for the average Japanese audience. The Japanese did not
really like it any better than the Chinese did, but because of the
clever advertising beforehand, each person who was bored by the
big foreign film was slow to admit it, because of the fear of labeling
himself stupid. Many people praised the picture, whether they liked it
or not, to show how wise and clever and cultured and intelligent they
were. So “Intolerance” made money in Japan. But then, too many
people who had seen it began comparing notes, and found that it
really was possible to have what passed for good sense, and yet not
like that particular film.
Since nobody likes to be laughed at, there wasn’t any great fuss
made about the matter one way or the other, but I am told that the
word “Intolerance” has been incorporated into the slang (if we can
call it that) of the Japanese language; when a man stretches the
truth too far, or tried to “put on too much dog,” as they might say in
Arizona, his Japanese companions merely smile and perhaps shrug
their shoulders a trifle, and murmur “Intolerance.”
The fact is, American films, from the very start, have lacked the
inner value, the idealism, the spiritual vision and far-sightedness that
make for real leadership. The result is that at the present time films
from half a dozen countries are competing successfully with ours,
and to a considerable extent driving them from the foreign field.
In Germany, after the War started, the making of motion pictures
developed as plants might in an enclosed garden. Shut off from the
rest of the world, and the influence in particular of American motion-
picture methods, Germany developed methods of her own. Chief of
all these was the tendency to tell the story for the sake of the story
itself, with a real story-teller, the dramatic author, in full charge of the
production. Of course this has not always been the case, nor has it
been particularly evident, but on the whole it has meant a great deal.
It meant that the author brains, instead of the glorified director
brains, or the irresponsible star brains, have been the predominating
influence in the pictures.
Over here it has been Charles Ray or Bill Hart, Lasky or Ince,
deMille or Neilan. Only comparatively recently, largely through the
Goldwyn organization, have authors—Rex Beach, and Mary Roberts
Rinehart, and Rupert Hughes, and so on—come into any particular
prominence or influence in picture making.
 The result of this has been that our films have been too highly
commercialized. The making of movies is of necessity very largely a
commercial proposition, but here it has been overdone.
Since the very first, Griffith has remained almost the only one of
our real story-telling producer-directors who has put individuality and
authorship above the box-office returns. Even he doesn’t do it
consciously; he tries, I suppose, to make pictures, as all the rest do,
that will attract the largest audiences. But he has ideas and
prejudices and opinions of his own—the things that make for
individuality and leadership—and he would rather lose every dollar
he has ever made than give them up.
While abroad the work is commercialized, too, just as ours is,
there is a little more vision in it, and in some ways the films are
better.
“Gypsy Blood,” “Deception,” “The Golem,” the “Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari,” “Our Mutual Friend,” “Carnival,” “I Accuse,” “Theodora,”
“Hamlet,” “Peter the Great,” and a good many more have made
tremendous records for themselves in this country. German,
Norwegian, French, Italian, English.
Almost as if in reply, Douglas Fairbanks and Griffith made
respectively “Robin Hood” and “Orphans of the Storm.” They gave us
a good chance to compare our best home product with the foreign-
made article.
The Fairbanks and Griffith pictures show that we can at least
equal the German and other foreign films, if we try. Both these
American pictures have a pictorial beauty that no foreign picture has
ever equaled. The Fairbanks film has a suspense, and the Griffith
picture both feeling and excitement, that no picture made outside of
this country has ever shown.
So, we can lead the world, if we will. But unfortunately, those two
pictures are exceptions. One can name a few more, like “Little Lord
Fauntleroy,” “Humoresque,” and “Over the Hill,” that are good
enough to hold their own with the best producers elsewhere; but that
is about all. The run of our American-made pictures are not good
enough, to-day, to deserve world supremacy.
That is something to think about.
The German pictures, as well as those of some of the other
foreign countries, have certain qualities, resulting from an
unwillingness to compromise with ideals, that allow them, as a class,
to outrank ours. For instance, while the Germans desire beauty, just
as we do, and would like to have their heroine as beautiful as ours,
they also desire a real ability to act. If they can not have both, they
will let the beauty go, and take the real acting. We will not; we let the
ability go, and stick to the pretty flappers. Accordingly, in American
pictures, our leading actors and actresses are almost always good-
looking—and frequently poor at acting.
It is the same about truth, or the sense of reality. We sacrifice
convincingness—fidelity to life—truth—to our desire for youth and
beauty. If we could have both, well and good; but it is impossible.
Accordingly, on the American screen, we see, again and again, our
beautiful little flapper friends playing parts that should be taken by
older women—not so young and pretty, perhaps, but true to life,
instead of childish caricatures of truth.
Even with Griffith’s “Orphans of the Storm,” we see still another
sacrifice of an ideal—one might almost say principle. That is the
giving up of historical value, and big things, for excitement, and little
things. The French Revolution is a tremendous story in itself; in the
foreign made films it is made the backbone of the whole story; in
Griffith’s film, it is merely a background, while the “main” story is
centered about one or two appealing characters, that mean, except
for momentary entertainment, little or nothing. It is a question of
Lillian and Dorothy Gish being more important, on this side of the
Atlantic, than the French Revolution; but on the other side, when the
French Revolution is filmed, it is more important than the great
actress who plays in the picture—Pola Negri.
Also, in the mad “run to the rescue” in “Orphans of the Storm,” the
main dramatic value of the story is sacrificed in order to have the
mechanically produced excitement of horses galloping across Paris
in time to save the beautiful Lillian from the guillotine. And who leads
the headlong, melodramatic dash across the city? Why, Danton
himself, leader of the Revolution! That’s putting it on pretty thick!
There is the whole trouble with our American pictures: in a single
sentence they are willing to sacrifice too much, to “tell a good story.”
For with our producers the “good story” means really the entertaining
or exciting or pretty story, which is in the last analysis the most
popular story instead of the really best story.
Roast beef and oatmeal are a better diet, in the long run, than
candy. Candy tastes better, perhaps, for the moment, and more
people will buy it—but in the end, too much of it makes you sick.
Our American motion-picture producers are specializing on candy,
because—for the moment—more people want it. But they’re over-
doing the thing. If they want to hold the world leadership in movie-
making, they must turn out more roast beef.
And we must help them, you and I, by demanding something in
pictures besides candy, and in learning to like and applaud the really
worth-while films that we can turn out, when they come along.