Book review: The Gift of Fear
The Gift of Fear, by Gavin deBecker. 300 pages long, published in 1997. I highly recommend it. Put with Taking the War out of our Words and Trauma and Recovery, this goes huge strides towards explaining life and people to me.
I like the way the book opens, with a “Note: Men of all ages and in all parts of the world are more violent than women. For this reason, the language in this book is mostly gender-specific to men. When it comes to violence, women can proudly relinquish recognition in the language, because here at least, politically correct would be statistically incorrect.”
My response to that: Thank Fucking God someone whose business is assessing threat and danger recognizes that! The author's credibility went way up and stayed there throughout the whole book. He doesn't idolize women in any way, but he sees the statistics and knows what they mean.
My primary take-away from this book is the importance on trusting one's instincts along with a great deal of information about how to recognize such instincts and what they mean. He reiterates the shared characteristics of people who are dangerous to you, whether as an employee in the workplace or a partner in intimacy. The overwhelming sign of a problem man for a woman is one who doesn't accept 'no'. I find that fascinating in how this, published in 1997, matches up with the last five years of research on rape (when it happens and when it doesn't), rapists (and what they look for in targets), and men's communication (that they know exactly what 'no' means even when it's implied or expressed as disinterest, yet they push anyway).
Here's a standard opener that every woman should know: The man asks to do something for the woman; the woman declines; the man does it anyway, or insists; the woman accepts his gesture. That right there is it in the nutshell - you have clearly and unequivocally communicated to the man that your 'no' is meaningless and that he can bully you into things. This starts a sequence of pushiness - have this drink, have another, let me drive you home, let me walk you to your door, let me come in to use the bathroom, let's talk a little before I leave, let me sit next to you on the couch, let me put my hands on you, let me kiss you, let me fuck you. Several times in this sequence you might say 'no' and you might say so very strongly, but the guy knows or thinks he can just keep pushing. At some point, it suddenly flashes in the woman's head that her options are very limited - she's tipsy in an empty house with a guy who is not taking no for an answer and wants to fuck her. She might start saying yes to minimize danger to herself and get it over with, or maybe she'll keep saying the useless word 'no' right through the rape.
Gavin deBecker's suggestion is to say no from the start and mean it utterly. If that means you come off as a bitch, fine, because the guy has already designated himself as a complete asshole by questioning your word. You are not out of line (in the author's opinion) to yell, snarl, become violent yourself, and make it embarrassingly (for the man) clear to everyone in hearing distance that this idiot didn't take no for an answer. You might even manage to train the man to listen when a woman turns him down.
Pg 65 - “At core, men are afraid that women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Intimate partner violence follows a very predictable course. My ex showed most traits on the list. I really think that any human sexuality class should review these. All of them reflect a basic lack of respect for the other person as a person, rather than as an object to be won or controlled.
The man accelerates the pace of the relationship, pushing for commitment, living together, marriage. He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and threats. He is verbally abusive. His threats might include to lie about you, embarrass you, cut you off from information, disclose your secrets, or to commit suicide. He relies on excuses for his behavior (drugs, alcohol, his upbringing, your behavior). He does not work well with outside authority (police, in-laws, his parents, etc.) He's been violent in the past (and is usually proud of it). He tries to dictate activities, purchases, and behavior of his partner. He's jealous (not just of possible other partners, but of exes, parents, friends, hobbies, etc.) He won't allow his partner to end the relationship. He says the relationship is forever.
It goes on. It reminds me of when my ex asked, shortly after being served with divorce papers, what he could do to get me to stop the divorce. I told him, “Stop being an asshole.” He didn't understand it. The list above is a detailed list of 'being an asshole', at least the way I define it. My ex would not stop any of those things. Even the request, “Stop calling me a cunt” wasn't something he was able to do, because instead of stopping calling me that, he instead wanted to argue about how my behavior deserved it. That's exactly it, women, self, girls - if the guy can't take a simple direction like that, then dump him. Immediately. He's an asshole. He may or may not escalate to violence, but he's certainly never going to learn his lesson as long as you enable him by putting up with him.
Something about abuse that he pointed out on pg 104 - “The threat means that at least for now (and usually forever), he favors words that alarm over actions that harm.” As long as a guy is threatening you, he's not all that interested in doing anything. Because if he was, then you can bet your last dollar that he WOULD be doing something to you. Instead, at this particular moment, the guy thinks his interests are better served by blathering at you. The smart thing to do, per the author, is to remove yourself from the man's presence as quickly as possible and then cut all ties with him as completely as possible. He does not advocate moving or abandoning your phone number. Just set something up to file or automatically skip his messages so it seems like he's sending emails or leaving voice messages that you don't respond to. Keep the messages; don't read or listen to them.
He does not advocate restraining orders. As he points out, “they work best on the person least likely to be violent anyway.” Essentially, anyone who can be talked into staying away from you through a firm, no-nonsense, blunt directive, doesn't need a restraining order. Anyone who can't be, isn't going to stay away because of a restraining order. And in fact, odds are that he'll be incensed by the woman imposing any manner of control on him. This will often cause him to escalate to violence. So if you think he's dangerous, don't get a restraining order. That said, call the police on him at every illegal thing he does.
On pg 244, he talks about assassins in a section I found useful for characterization (mostly Sylar, but some also for Peter): “He wants … recognition, and he wants what all people want: significance. People who don't get that feeling in childhood seek ways to get it in adulthood. It is as if they have been malnourished for a lifetime and seek to fix it with one huge meal. The same search for significance is part of the motivation for the young gang member who kills, because violence is the fastest way to get identity. Murderer Jack Henry Abbott describes the 'involuntary pride and exhilaration all convicts feel when they are chained up hand and foot like dangerous animals. The world has focused on us for a moment. We are somebody capable of threatening the world.' Ernest Becker writes, 'The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest.'”
On pgs 249-50, “Our culture presents many role models, but few get as much hoopla and glory as the assassin. Those who have succeeded (and even some of those who failed) are among the most famous people in American lore.”
Sylar didn't fall into any of the previous categories of scary people. He wasn't someone pissed off in the workplace or trying to control and enslave his lover. He wasn't a stalker obsessed with a celebrity. He wasn't violent because of immediate turmoil in his childhood. Nor was he deranged. His killings were impersonal and goal-oriented, as are those of most assassins. The author recounts how several assassins or would-be assassins he had followed the careers of had given up on one or another target, moving on to an easier kill. Security deterred them. Pg 243 - “Assassins, you see, do not fear they are going to jail - they fear they are going to fail.” It matched up a lot with Sylar's pattern, as did the reasons and motivations for assassins - they want power and killing people is a shortcut to it. I wonder if, to get Peter to understand him, Sylar would have to find a way to link Peter's desire for importance with Sylar's, to get Peter to see them as the same drive, both stemming from emotional malnourishment? It would require Peter to believe that if he were in Sylar's position, that he'd have accepted a route to significance that involved successively murdering people. That's going to be a hard sell, but I think it's the only way.
If you're looking for the secret of survival signals, maybe for a checklist of behaviors to look for in those intending violence, this book is and isn't a good source. That's because it tells you things you already know - if someone is acting like an asshole, looks dangerous, is setting off your warning bells, making you uncomfortable - they probably ARE dangerous and you should get the hell out of dodge. Don't hang around to see if things will get worse. Just leave. Or if you can't leave, take what precautions you can to make it difficult, expensive, or dangerous for the person to attack you (and make these clear); while at the same time giving the other party anything expendable that might appease them.
Also, don't bother with being on guard all the time. Pg 279 - “... many people believe - and we are even taught - that we must be extra alert to be safe. In fact, this usually decreases the likelihood of perceiving hazard and thus reduces safety. Alertly looking around … replaces perception of what actually is happening with imaginings of what could happen. We are far more open to every signal when we don't focus on the expectation of specific signals.”
pg. 293 - “... creativity is linked to intuition, and intuition is the way out of the most serious challenges you might face.” He suggests when disaster strikes, instead of worrying about how it could get worse, brainstorm about how it might get better.
An interesting parallel:
8 Weeks to Optimum Health, by Andrew Weil, promotes the idea that people will be healthier if they tune out of the news cycle. He said on pg 84, “I note that paying attention to news commonly results in anxiety, rage, and other emotional states that probably impede the healing system.” He recommends 'news-fasts' where a person stop attending to the news for increasing periods of time.
A friend sent me a link a while back that focused on people of the effect of easy access to porn. The short, ever-variable film clips jog something in our brain, creating a short-lived feedback loop in regards to novelty. It stimulates the reward center of our brain, creating an actual addiction. I can't recall if the article or I made the leap to people who do the same thing with the news - flipping channel to channel in search of the latest juicy tidbit, surfing, scrolling, or scanning, searching for that tiny hit of interesting information that will fill the hungry void. It's not just the sex stuff. I do the same thing with scrolling through idiotic aggregator sites looking for something 'interesting' to read. Facebook is based on this phenomenon.
In The Gift of Fear, the author says: “... even though I have a professional interest in hazard and risk, I never watch the local television news and haven't for years. Try this and you'll likely find better things to do before oing to sleep than looking at thirty minutes of disturbing images presented with artificial urgency and the usually false implications that it's critical for you to see it.”
I've been trying to wean myself away from these insidious and counterproductive attention-sucks.
An unexpected lesson of reading about stalkers and those obsessed with various celebrities has been to discourage me from ever sending a celebrity a letter professing my adoration or congratulations to them. They are a stranger and my attention will be unappreciated. Not that it should be appreciated, and that's my point - they don't know me and my positive regard for their accomplishments is meaningless. They don't want a relationship with me and for the most part, I don't want one with them. Sending them a letter would be a request for attention on my part, asking for them to recognize my existence and respond to it. I am not entitled to their time or awareness - this thing the book made very clear without that being at all intentional.
I like the way the book opens, with a “Note: Men of all ages and in all parts of the world are more violent than women. For this reason, the language in this book is mostly gender-specific to men. When it comes to violence, women can proudly relinquish recognition in the language, because here at least, politically correct would be statistically incorrect.”
My response to that: Thank Fucking God someone whose business is assessing threat and danger recognizes that! The author's credibility went way up and stayed there throughout the whole book. He doesn't idolize women in any way, but he sees the statistics and knows what they mean.
My primary take-away from this book is the importance on trusting one's instincts along with a great deal of information about how to recognize such instincts and what they mean. He reiterates the shared characteristics of people who are dangerous to you, whether as an employee in the workplace or a partner in intimacy. The overwhelming sign of a problem man for a woman is one who doesn't accept 'no'. I find that fascinating in how this, published in 1997, matches up with the last five years of research on rape (when it happens and when it doesn't), rapists (and what they look for in targets), and men's communication (that they know exactly what 'no' means even when it's implied or expressed as disinterest, yet they push anyway).
Here's a standard opener that every woman should know: The man asks to do something for the woman; the woman declines; the man does it anyway, or insists; the woman accepts his gesture. That right there is it in the nutshell - you have clearly and unequivocally communicated to the man that your 'no' is meaningless and that he can bully you into things. This starts a sequence of pushiness - have this drink, have another, let me drive you home, let me walk you to your door, let me come in to use the bathroom, let's talk a little before I leave, let me sit next to you on the couch, let me put my hands on you, let me kiss you, let me fuck you. Several times in this sequence you might say 'no' and you might say so very strongly, but the guy knows or thinks he can just keep pushing. At some point, it suddenly flashes in the woman's head that her options are very limited - she's tipsy in an empty house with a guy who is not taking no for an answer and wants to fuck her. She might start saying yes to minimize danger to herself and get it over with, or maybe she'll keep saying the useless word 'no' right through the rape.
Gavin deBecker's suggestion is to say no from the start and mean it utterly. If that means you come off as a bitch, fine, because the guy has already designated himself as a complete asshole by questioning your word. You are not out of line (in the author's opinion) to yell, snarl, become violent yourself, and make it embarrassingly (for the man) clear to everyone in hearing distance that this idiot didn't take no for an answer. You might even manage to train the man to listen when a woman turns him down.
Pg 65 - “At core, men are afraid that women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid that men will kill them.”
Intimate partner violence follows a very predictable course. My ex showed most traits on the list. I really think that any human sexuality class should review these. All of them reflect a basic lack of respect for the other person as a person, rather than as an object to be won or controlled.
The man accelerates the pace of the relationship, pushing for commitment, living together, marriage. He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and threats. He is verbally abusive. His threats might include to lie about you, embarrass you, cut you off from information, disclose your secrets, or to commit suicide. He relies on excuses for his behavior (drugs, alcohol, his upbringing, your behavior). He does not work well with outside authority (police, in-laws, his parents, etc.) He's been violent in the past (and is usually proud of it). He tries to dictate activities, purchases, and behavior of his partner. He's jealous (not just of possible other partners, but of exes, parents, friends, hobbies, etc.) He won't allow his partner to end the relationship. He says the relationship is forever.
It goes on. It reminds me of when my ex asked, shortly after being served with divorce papers, what he could do to get me to stop the divorce. I told him, “Stop being an asshole.” He didn't understand it. The list above is a detailed list of 'being an asshole', at least the way I define it. My ex would not stop any of those things. Even the request, “Stop calling me a cunt” wasn't something he was able to do, because instead of stopping calling me that, he instead wanted to argue about how my behavior deserved it. That's exactly it, women, self, girls - if the guy can't take a simple direction like that, then dump him. Immediately. He's an asshole. He may or may not escalate to violence, but he's certainly never going to learn his lesson as long as you enable him by putting up with him.
Something about abuse that he pointed out on pg 104 - “The threat means that at least for now (and usually forever), he favors words that alarm over actions that harm.” As long as a guy is threatening you, he's not all that interested in doing anything. Because if he was, then you can bet your last dollar that he WOULD be doing something to you. Instead, at this particular moment, the guy thinks his interests are better served by blathering at you. The smart thing to do, per the author, is to remove yourself from the man's presence as quickly as possible and then cut all ties with him as completely as possible. He does not advocate moving or abandoning your phone number. Just set something up to file or automatically skip his messages so it seems like he's sending emails or leaving voice messages that you don't respond to. Keep the messages; don't read or listen to them.
He does not advocate restraining orders. As he points out, “they work best on the person least likely to be violent anyway.” Essentially, anyone who can be talked into staying away from you through a firm, no-nonsense, blunt directive, doesn't need a restraining order. Anyone who can't be, isn't going to stay away because of a restraining order. And in fact, odds are that he'll be incensed by the woman imposing any manner of control on him. This will often cause him to escalate to violence. So if you think he's dangerous, don't get a restraining order. That said, call the police on him at every illegal thing he does.
On pg 244, he talks about assassins in a section I found useful for characterization (mostly Sylar, but some also for Peter): “He wants … recognition, and he wants what all people want: significance. People who don't get that feeling in childhood seek ways to get it in adulthood. It is as if they have been malnourished for a lifetime and seek to fix it with one huge meal. The same search for significance is part of the motivation for the young gang member who kills, because violence is the fastest way to get identity. Murderer Jack Henry Abbott describes the 'involuntary pride and exhilaration all convicts feel when they are chained up hand and foot like dangerous animals. The world has focused on us for a moment. We are somebody capable of threatening the world.' Ernest Becker writes, 'The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest.'”
On pgs 249-50, “Our culture presents many role models, but few get as much hoopla and glory as the assassin. Those who have succeeded (and even some of those who failed) are among the most famous people in American lore.”
Sylar didn't fall into any of the previous categories of scary people. He wasn't someone pissed off in the workplace or trying to control and enslave his lover. He wasn't a stalker obsessed with a celebrity. He wasn't violent because of immediate turmoil in his childhood. Nor was he deranged. His killings were impersonal and goal-oriented, as are those of most assassins. The author recounts how several assassins or would-be assassins he had followed the careers of had given up on one or another target, moving on to an easier kill. Security deterred them. Pg 243 - “Assassins, you see, do not fear they are going to jail - they fear they are going to fail.” It matched up a lot with Sylar's pattern, as did the reasons and motivations for assassins - they want power and killing people is a shortcut to it. I wonder if, to get Peter to understand him, Sylar would have to find a way to link Peter's desire for importance with Sylar's, to get Peter to see them as the same drive, both stemming from emotional malnourishment? It would require Peter to believe that if he were in Sylar's position, that he'd have accepted a route to significance that involved successively murdering people. That's going to be a hard sell, but I think it's the only way.
If you're looking for the secret of survival signals, maybe for a checklist of behaviors to look for in those intending violence, this book is and isn't a good source. That's because it tells you things you already know - if someone is acting like an asshole, looks dangerous, is setting off your warning bells, making you uncomfortable - they probably ARE dangerous and you should get the hell out of dodge. Don't hang around to see if things will get worse. Just leave. Or if you can't leave, take what precautions you can to make it difficult, expensive, or dangerous for the person to attack you (and make these clear); while at the same time giving the other party anything expendable that might appease them.
Also, don't bother with being on guard all the time. Pg 279 - “... many people believe - and we are even taught - that we must be extra alert to be safe. In fact, this usually decreases the likelihood of perceiving hazard and thus reduces safety. Alertly looking around … replaces perception of what actually is happening with imaginings of what could happen. We are far more open to every signal when we don't focus on the expectation of specific signals.”
pg. 293 - “... creativity is linked to intuition, and intuition is the way out of the most serious challenges you might face.” He suggests when disaster strikes, instead of worrying about how it could get worse, brainstorm about how it might get better.
An interesting parallel:
8 Weeks to Optimum Health, by Andrew Weil, promotes the idea that people will be healthier if they tune out of the news cycle. He said on pg 84, “I note that paying attention to news commonly results in anxiety, rage, and other emotional states that probably impede the healing system.” He recommends 'news-fasts' where a person stop attending to the news for increasing periods of time.
A friend sent me a link a while back that focused on people of the effect of easy access to porn. The short, ever-variable film clips jog something in our brain, creating a short-lived feedback loop in regards to novelty. It stimulates the reward center of our brain, creating an actual addiction. I can't recall if the article or I made the leap to people who do the same thing with the news - flipping channel to channel in search of the latest juicy tidbit, surfing, scrolling, or scanning, searching for that tiny hit of interesting information that will fill the hungry void. It's not just the sex stuff. I do the same thing with scrolling through idiotic aggregator sites looking for something 'interesting' to read. Facebook is based on this phenomenon.
In The Gift of Fear, the author says: “... even though I have a professional interest in hazard and risk, I never watch the local television news and haven't for years. Try this and you'll likely find better things to do before oing to sleep than looking at thirty minutes of disturbing images presented with artificial urgency and the usually false implications that it's critical for you to see it.”
I've been trying to wean myself away from these insidious and counterproductive attention-sucks.
An unexpected lesson of reading about stalkers and those obsessed with various celebrities has been to discourage me from ever sending a celebrity a letter professing my adoration or congratulations to them. They are a stranger and my attention will be unappreciated. Not that it should be appreciated, and that's my point - they don't know me and my positive regard for their accomplishments is meaningless. They don't want a relationship with me and for the most part, I don't want one with them. Sending them a letter would be a request for attention on my part, asking for them to recognize my existence and respond to it. I am not entitled to their time or awareness - this thing the book made very clear without that being at all intentional.