THE PLAY   ::   INTERVIEW   ::   SUMMARY 

A play by
R. Michael Fisher (Introduction: Excerpt from my Doctoral Dissertation, © 2003)

In the summer of 2000, I attended the grade 12 graduation ceremony of my daughter in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. We had lived apart since she was five years old, due to divorce. My life partner and I showed up a day before the rite of passage. On arrival at my daughter's apartment I saw her friends hanging around and drinking. To mix with the genYs so easily was hard. To break the ice my daughter said, "Let's watch The Matrix." I looked at the video cover of The Matrix and was rather doubtful this would be a good use of my time. Black leather, dark sunglasses, mean hip dudes with guns and cyber-fiction narrative did nothing for my natural desire for something "deep." My daughter quickly assured me with the unforgettable predestined phrase: "It's a story about life dad. It's the most real of any movie-- it's like life really is." I couldn't follow the fast pace and sci-fi turned me off but I asked to take the video home and I'd watch it again. The rest is history. I've now watched it about 15 times. My life policy has been to never watch any movie twice, except Gandhi. Now, that's square!

Hang on! You are about to ride the aftershocks of the question that drove me for years since the summer of 2000: "What is the 'Fear' Matrix?" A play about a found object, Fearless Leadership takes many turns around and around the spiral of violence in our world, inbetween simple categories, precious scientific theories, or so much common sense. Fiction is non-fiction and back again. Characters flow and flex their muscles around the ever rich and unknowable concept of 'fear.' Rebels and Authorities ceaslessly battle for sensibilities of blue stability and red-green deconstruction. If any "War on Terror(ism)" is valid then shit is equal opportunity. Pressing eyes to stick to the topic releases new hormones made for color in black and white (con-)texts [that's codified subvertising]. There has been a SECURITY Breach!

Beyond the daze of flashing lights. Sirens calmed. Smoke lifted. Now, passed the 'Fear' Matrix codes of surveillance and control, you qualify if you have the correct Password to this world outside and inside the 'Fear.' Don't know your way? That's OK! Merlin is here. This play is Not magic-- it is certainly art-- undubitably sculpture-- a studio event that took four years. Take a topic like 'fear' and allow it to lead the thread-- past, present and future. Take a play and blow away everything you think you know about 'fear.' Sit back and belt in, then click on the button from the web page that reads 1994 THE PEAK YEAR

"Fear is no stranger to major metropolitan newspapers in the United States.... The use of fear in headlines and text increased from 30 to 150 percent for most newspapers analyzed over a seven- to ten- year period, with 1994 the peak year..." (Altheide, 2002, p. 65).

Afraid to ask more? Of course who wouldn't be afraid, to ask, to know, to be, more aware, to share, to care, that daily life is virtual(ly) inhabited in 'fear.' This dissertation unfolds a play of words, images, and scenes that make up the first curriculum for travel in and out of the 'Fear' Matrix. It is of course, a trail blazed by fearless leaders often without their big houses, land investments, insurance policies, tenures, and RRSPs. I think the field of education and our global village would benefit from such a curriculum, don't you?

THE PROGRAM & PLAYERS

Important Notice: For those viewers/readers who wish to forego the excessive discussion of heady-male dialogue and academic monologue, just bypass Parts One and Three respectively, and click onto Part Two for the real feminist performance. If you wish, after experiencing Part Two, click on Parts One and Three which may be of some complementary value. For those who like to know the reasons behind art, click onto Part Three first and then proceed to either Part One or Part Two depending on your mood.

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION(S)

The topic of Philosophy of Education for Rebellious Times (or Assault on "Invisible" Adultism) is pursued blustfully for 90+ pp. of performative dialogue and non-performative technical endnotes. The dialogue consists of a fictionalized engagement between the author of this dissertation and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, primarily concerned about the philosophy of Ken Wilber and appropriate education for the 21st century. The opening of Part One begins with 8.3 pp. of "Dispensations From A Beautiful Mind A La 'Fear'" which consists of running quotes back to back from Wittgenstein to Illich, from Roszak to Marx, from The Globe and Mail to Fanon, from June Callwood to Aung San Suu Kyi, and Pres. G.W. Bush Jr. to Osama bin Laden and many more!

  THE PLAYERS  

Daniel Cohn-Bendit - a real historical figure, leader and chief apokesman of the 1968 French student revolt centered at the ParisUniversity annex of Nanterre. He was interviewed by Jean-Paul Sartre for the Paris left-wing weekly Le Nouvel Observateur (May 20, 1968), giving a dazzling performance, for a 23 year old, on how to make a revolution. Ken Wilber- a rancorous Zen-Buddhist, contemporary American integral philosopher, thought by many to be the most published and widely read philosopher today. At age 23, he was washing dishes in a restaurant job plotting out, by hand, the written text that would lead to his first scholarly book A Spectrum of Consciousness (1977), and the demise of his pursuit of a masters degree in chemistry. He is author of over 30 books and hundreds of published articles and the 'star' of nearly 80 websites where one can learn all about him and those who follow his writing and critique it. He is currently President of the Integral Institute. R. Michael Fisher - a graduate student in his 12th season of post-secondary education and still trying to bridge the 'gap' between art and science, the secular and the spiritual. At age 23, a park naturalist, in Alberta's Cypress Hills Provincial Park, he made a name for himself amongst the tourists and his fellow naturalist colleagues by being able to give the scientific Latin name for every species of plant and animal that roamed every corner of the hills. His favorite species (virus) of all time, surprisingly, has turned out to be what he calls 'fear' (Fearus americanus).

Figure 1:

The Program & Players cont'd

PART TWO: SCREEN PLAY

    If you have something to say, I suggest you say it to Morpheus. -Trinity
    History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. -James Joyce, Ulysses

Written as a standard screen play script, Part Two takes the viewer/reader on a journey into a sci-fi cyberlandscape where the virtual, the dream, and the real implode-- where humans and cyborgs move in and out of the 'Fear' Matrix, where time and space collapse upon each other, and searching for linearity in the narrative is enough to drive one mad. The real film, The Matrix (1999) needs a sequel, and one written from a feminist lens. Here we are to follow three female characters in a powerful act of transformation in the landscape of a war-torn nation known for having the longest running historical war of nearly 800 years. Set in contemporary Ireland, the world of terrorism comes up front and centre-- hits you in the face. The play, the author's first, is written not for production as a movie, but as a textual performance of many of the important concepts of this dissertation. It is highly recommended one views the real film first, or to have read the original script (Wachowski & Wachowski, 2000).

  THE PLAYERS  

Trinity- (played by Carrie Ann Moss in The Matrix) is maintained in this intertextual sequel, but is upgraded to star protagonist, comrade, and second in command, on the spaceship of the rebel crew, led by Morpheus and Neo. Girls kick ass! e-Trinity- is the mysterious unknown aspect of the trinity-collage. Mackie - the most real character of the trinity-collage. An IRA volunteer, age 19, with fearless spirit, she takes on more than she could ever have imagined in her battle for freedom. She is named after Fiona Mackie, an Austrailian feminist researcher of the sociology of everyday perception and the role of the "fear barrier" in life and education (Mackie, 1985).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Mick- an IRA volunteer, young male computer- geek; Mackie's best friend, and a mirror' of the author. Tab- an IRA volunteer, older male, clever and tough leader of the group that Mackie and Mick believe in. (The other characters need no introduction as they play subordinate roles)

Figure 2:

Artist & Sponsors

    R. Michael Fisher - producer, director, artist, researcher of Fearless Leadership In And Out Of The 'Fear' Matrix, began his artistic research into the nature of 'fear,' unconsciously, as a teenage drummer in rocks band. Having to get up on stage to perform, when one is terribly insecure in adolescence, led him to write ethnographically of his band members' (and his own) experiences in 1968. At the age of 16 he wrote about his first band called the "Renegades": "There was one great problem the Renegades ran up against in their own minds. This was the tremendous fear of playing up high on a stage in front of an audience for the first scary time." Fisher had to be the leader of his band, because no one else would. Later, he was trained in the natural sciences at college and university and worked in the field as a biologist. He became aware that creatures in natural environments were not afraid (i.e., neurotic) like human beings and he wanted to know why. It occurred to him that this chronic 'fear'-state must be connected to the insanity of the human species being the only species that 'spoils its own nest.' By the late 1970s his environmental activism and career interests shifted to education, psychology and spirituality, where he was introduced to the writings of Carl Jung, William James and Jacques Maritain by a religious studies professor. The spiritual inquiry into the nature of the "shadow" (unconscious) and "evil" have long since been his passion. Why humans not only were so afraid but then afraid of being afraid, was a most curious phenomena to him, which led to publishing his first critique of a church Pasteur's article in a local newspaper (Fisher, 1984)-- challenging Christian fundamentalists and their Armagedon Biblical images, which use 'fear' to manipulate people. His reading of Alan Watts and non-dual philosophies, like Zen Buddhism (a la Ken Wilber), convinced him there must be other more "fearless" ways for humans to be religious without having dualism and 'fear'-mongering, paradoxically, as the basic motivation to finding "security" in life. His journey along the path of fearlessness has led him down many avenues and different ways to explore 'fear.' An accomplished professional fine art painter for nearly six years, led him to more abstract and spontaneous multi-disciplinary art forms. He has acted in several major roles in community theatre, and been a long-time teacher of spontaneous creation-making as healing. He has undertaken several art projects exploring the role of the arts in revealing the nature and role of 'fear' in our world. His most ambitious efforts in this regard included a 1996 installation at the Centre Gallery, Calgary, Alberta, entitled At-Tracking 'Fear' and a 2002 installation at the A.M.S. Gallery, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, entitled Platinum 'Fear': Plat du Jour. Several works from this latter installation are reproduced in this dissertation. Fisher's fondest research, ongoing since 1993, is the collection of hundreds of children's drawings of 'fear' and drawings of what their life would be like without 'fear.' He strongly believes we all need an expanded 'fear' imaginary-- this being of more importance since 9/11 and the American-led "War on Terror(ism)." Working with Dr. Fred Ribkoff (Fisher & Ribkoff, 2000), an English professor and tragedarian, Fisher wrote his first critical paper on the movie The Matrix, in which they saw the potential of a powerful new imaginary within this postmodern film narrative that illuminated the plight of living in and out of the 'Fear' Matrix.

Sponsors:

R. Michael Fisher Live Interview (Excerpt) Kootenay Coop Radio, by Wade Porter, Nov. 6, 2002

W: Joining me in the studio, I say a very good morning to you R. M. Fisher, soon to be Dr. R. Michael Fisher. Good morning.
M: Good morning Wade.

W: I’m so glad you could make it down.
M: Ya, it’s good to be here from Vancouver. It’s a little cooler out here….

W: You were in town last night and today. You are doing a performance. Let me say a marathon performance-- over a six hour read of a screen play, based on fear.
M: It’s part of my Ph.D. I am at the University of British Columbia. I’m 50 years old and I’ve done a lot of education, and I didn’t want to do a standard Ph.D. And so what I did is I basically churned out the theory the stuff I have been working on on fear and fearlessness and turned the major part of the thesis into a screen play. It’s kind of a take on a feminist perspective of The Matrix.

W: Now that’s and interesting twist in itself right there. It’s call Fearless Leadership In And Out Of The ‘Fear’ Matrix. Before we get into the whole Matrix tie in and the spin off on that. How did you get to this point that you are at right now.
M: I think it started a long time ago when I was little. And I noticed that world is pretty scary sometimes. My own particular background, my family is kind of poor working class, alcoholic family. So I was pretty aware of how fear moves things. And moves people around. And makes decisions. And then eventually I started into environmental biology and that was my first career.

W: Ooohh. And that’s scary.
M: Started studying all the environmental stuff, right, this is like in 1975-76. I started to see that wholly geez, these professors are all teaching that the world is going to fall apart by the year two thousand. Well. We’re here. And the world is sort of falling apart in a way. I think that more of what they were missing was the culture of fear that has been created, long before the real disasters, perhaps may hits us… 25-50 years or whatever down the road. I think what they were missing was the build-up that we’re seeing of a kind of toxic fear and culture.

W: Right. Now you speak a lot about fear in the media. Which of course, is probably the biggest influence in that sort of propaganda, I guess, between nations these days.
M: Ya. Let me give you a quick little example of the media and fear. There was a great CBC interview news session going on, and they were doing a live presentation down in Washington, right, with the sniper. And so all of a sudden they do a couple of on the street interviews with mothers, from the kindergarten in the area, going home with their children. Here’s the mic, the interviewer, walking along with the mother as she is rushing to her car, and they are interviewing her, “So what do you feel about the sniper?” And she says, “Well, I just want to get to my car, and get my kids and I’m not going to the parks anymore…”. So here is the media, doing this live presentation, basically a bunch of mothers were not going to the parks, and rushing their kids into their cars…. Then there was one interview of a mother, and they were in the park. The interviewers went over to the park and said “Wow. You are in this park. Don’t you know all the other parents are staying away. The sniper could be anywhere?” This mother says, “Well. I’ve decided that I don’t want to lay all my fears onto my children. So, if we all stay away from the parks what message does that give to our children?” She says, “I’m using cautious fear but I’m not going to go running every moment.”

W: So there are different levels of fear, of course, that you touch on. You mentioned cautious fear there. What would be extreme?
M: Extreme fear of course is terror, I guess, and terrorism. I think of 9/11. I was writing my Ph.D., typing away madly on the computer. And all of a sudden, my daughter comes up, 19 years old and says, “Dad, look it. What’s on the television.” That really struck me as an incredible moment. With all the tragedy and everything else, I have often said that but I was very excited as a fear researcher. I was very excited that is this an opportunity, and unbelievable opportunity… where we actually may get it right in the face, of the kind of controlling powers that work in this world. And what now is the weaponry for the greatest power… I see is fear. The use of fear. And so what came out of that 9/11, was fascinating to me as a researcher, in that the U.S. declared a world war, called “The War on Terrorism” but then the media, did something very interesting with that. Within days, all the press… I started collecting clippings and listening to radio reports… and this is what the media announcers were saying: “The War on Terror”. It was no longer a war on terrorism, it had all of a sudden it had shifted, to war on terror. Why? Does that get better press? Does that grab out attention more? Because terror is something right here [hits his chest].

W: Oh, yes.
M: It’s not terrorism out there or terrorists somewhere else. It was all of a sudden coming right home to us.

W: So did your paper, you Ph.D., take a dramatic twist after 9/11—or did it just confirm things that you had thought for years?
M: I don’t think it took a twist. I’m just trying to catch up to all the data I collected. So, the play really is a chance to take a really terrifying extreme situation like to study fear in this world, a culture of fear… The play really is a chance to use the arts in a kind of activist way… a creative way… and my committee was very cooperative in this terms. I said I wanted to create a piece of curriculum material that possibly could be taken around to schools or all kinds of communities, that kind of thing. To teach about this culture of fear. This way it reproduces itself. And its effects on us. But to do it in an artistic playful humorous way… with real characters embodying real lives… and so, that is kind of how I set the play up. It’s main character is a 19 year old IRA member and her buddies and she is going through this incredible transition. She is asking is this the kind of activism I want to keep fighting… blowing people away… etc. etc. And she finally has to go through this transformation with her buddies and this whole way of dealing with violence in the world and the British occupation and control of N. Ireland. And she really comes to some interesting conclusions about the way she wants to do it.

W: Right. Now it takes place in N. Ireland that’s where it’s at?
M: Ya. But then there’s the other set of context… is The Matrix film.

W: Ya. How do you spin that off?
M: Well very quickly, my daughter… I’ll just introduce how I got onto this film, because I don’t watch Hollywood pop movies for the most part. My 19 year old daughter said one day, “Dad watch this film, I think it is a very real film…” She showed me the cover and I went, “Oh, dear, you know… all this shoot ‘em up black leather sunglasses, I don’t know?” She said Dad, “This film is more like life than anything I know.” I said wowow I better watch it. So, ended up watching it, and couldn’t understand it the first time through. Too quick, too fast, too hot. Watched it a second time, a third time. All of a sudden I started to see in that film… is really what I would call a modern fairy tale narrative, for our times, for a postmodern kind of world where it is hard to tell between virtual reality, and real world. In that film the real world was actually scorched and burned, it is just that the humans had not wanted to admit it. And anyway, the whole idea of it was interesting to me because it is about revolutionaries. They are on this ship the Nebuchanezzar. They go in and out of the Matrix, basically trying to unplug people. I think trying to unplug them from the culture of fear.

W: And that’s how you take the spin and adapt it to your screenplay…. A pretty creative way to get a Ph.D., got some funding, and the whole nine yards. How did you get that passed them?
M: Well, of course, I think the first thing I focused on as an educator, I said, “What is the most important issue as an educator today—it’s got to be something to do with violence.” So, started along that line. I did my masters degree two years before this and studying conflict. Was interested in how conflict gets constructed and the biases in how we construct conflict. And of course all the schools and programs were all having conflict management, conflict resolution, anger management… tonnes of programs and huge amounts of money being spent on this all across, certainly North America. I was very curious about what are they really teaching? And what you really look at in what they are teaching is a lot about conflict but it is from a very conservative liberalist kind of view, in terms of not really looking at a radical kind of politics or activist stance or some of the early work that was done on non-violent kind of conflict resolution work, a little more political. So, they’ve really reduced the politics out of conflict management. And that really disturbs me, because I really see it as psychology, psychological approach to conflict taking over and being taught to our children. And so , after that I decided violence, conflict… what’s the next major concept that I’d have to study to come up with maybe some new theory or idea… you are supposed to do that when you do a Ph.D. – something original.

W: Well, definitely the way you put it together, is probably something that nobody else has done.
M: Ya. I think particularly, the study on fearless… the idea, it’s called “fearless leadership”—and that is what I am interested in encouraging in people—and certainly in young people-- particularly young women as this play focuses on.

W: Ya. We were talking just in the lobby and you have two daughters and they were very influential in how you took the spin on this and your studies.
M: You know when you live with a 17 and 19 year old, and I watch everyday the kind of pressures that they have to conform to mass media and the effect it has on them. I see my daughters as very aware people, but just an incredible amount of fear to not conform to not look a certain way still. I think also looking at the future. I talk a lot with them about what do you want to do in the future. Gen Y’s right. They don’t have that spirit, I find, the enthusiasm that we had, as Boomers, in the 60s. I’m 50 years old, so, I mean we used to think the world was going to change and it wasn’t going to be very long. Then in the 80s again, sort of the new age movement and transformation, and all the talk that was coming out of California, and Marilyn Ferguson all that good stuff.. we were really convinced it was going to change. My daughters are sure not that confident its going to change or fast.

W: Now, you have been an activist for a long time. Have you been a fearless leader when you were an activist?
M: Well some people called me a fearless leader. But of course deep inside I’m never free, from what I call that ‘gut wrenching terror’ sometimes… doing some of these crazy and outrageous things that I do. I think as an activist I’ve really struggled… I’ve struggled with… I’ve been in the environmental movement, anti-war and peace movements. I really struggled with what I saw was a lot of activists continuing to use some of the same strategies, understandably so, of battling the enemy, and unfortunately, a lot of those strategies, to me, started to become what I saw as other ways to build more fear. And I experienced that as a university student back in the 70s. I experienced it , watching it, this incredible terror. And maybe some would argue that the world is bad enough, that we should be terrified and that will make us doing something. I wasn’t convinced of that. I am still not convinced of that. I really believe that we need to think really creatively and open-mindedly. I would rather us not be motivated by fear as the way to make change. I think we are intelligent enough beings to know we have to change. I don’t think we have to be terrified into making those change. I think we are intelligent enough. But I don’t think that is what we have been taught. If you think about the ways of being raised as a child in schools, in many of the institutions, in families, there is always it seems there is always somebody else fear… just like I was talking about that mother in the park… there was somebody else’s fear-agenda that was really telling us this is how you ought to think, this is what you ought to do. And I think we just learned that. And as activists, we really have to check ourselves up on that. Are we following the same strategies of that’s how we should change… using again… basically entering the Fear Wars.

W: Ya. And when you say the Fear Wars, of course, I just... when you politically look at between Canada and the States, we’re influenced so much by south of the border and the media that is down there, and um, who really does control the fear of that? I know you would probably think it would be individuals… you know the level of fear… you’re going to adapt… but the fear and the media. What do you think is behind that?
M: Well fear sells. Fear is the great alarm signal. Humans are programmed to pay attention to something that is frightening. And so it is great when you can actually produce fear, and this is what the media started doing somewhere around 1994, studies were done, that the major news media in the States, began hiring entertainment consultants, and it is a well known fact—if you do any history of the media. So once you have the entertainment consultants in, 1994, 1993, this particular researcher studied all the major newspapers in the states… in 1994 the peak number of use of fear in headlines and leadlines in media, had peaked around 1994. And it is still high since that time. He basically correlated that they hired these entertainment consultants and up went all the use of … use that term… use that program. And you will get people watching. Why? Because once you produce fear like that… produce and market fear… basically people are afraid, right? Tomorrow, stay tuned for the next virus that possibly could come along…

W: In light with the whole sniper situation, south of the Border, I mean, I find myself glued to the television waking up everyday, geez, have they caught this guy yet… what’s going to happen, you know. Then all of a sudden when it all comes together, is this just a patsy, did they catch the real person? What? I trust the gov’t south of the border, let alone the one up here. You gotta wonder when they do instill that kind of fear. The public is outcrying, um. gezz sometimes you wonder, when you think of that whole J.F.K. conspiracy… any kind of conspiracy can happen at that level I guess…
M: What really got me going, as soon as you enter media, and I studies of media a little bit. You start to really wonder what is reality. What is the actual reality I’m living daily, if I listen to much media daily. If I check out the daily papers and things. You really start to wonder. Because it is an accumulative effect. And it starts accumulating. And I talk about it,… some people talk about manufacturing fear. Chomsky talked about manufacturing consent. And you could talk about manufacturing consent through manufacturing fear.

W: And I think they do. I mean when they have it almost like a humid-x scale now. It’s a level 4 terrorist alert, and level 5 terrorist alert, just in watching the news, they’ll blurt right across the bottom, as though it’s the high temperature for today will be 35. It seem to drive it home a lot throughout the media.
M: So then people pay attention, so you tune in the next day because you want find out what is happening, is it going to affect you, is it going to affect your friends. But it is basically that you want to have them, the media, now not only constructing the fear for you, i.e., telling you how extreme it is or not, then, they will actually tell you how you can cope with it. They’ll always bring in the expert to say, “Now, if you’re having problems…”. You can see the industry that starts to create around it and, to be blunt, Michael Moore just did this wonderful film, I saw before I came out from Vancouver, called “Bowling for Columbine” which was a lot about the Columbine high school mass shooting. And what he really was tracking, and he went in and interviewed a lot of people in the states, “Why do you think the boys did this?” And of course, everybody has got there answer, right. And there was Marilyn Manson, cause they listened to Marilyn Manson before they went out and blew people away. And there was The Matrix, because the large trench coats, underneath, you can hide a lot of guns.

W: The Trench Coat gangs.
M: So those two were interesting. What Michael Moore did is he sort of tracked a lot of things, and what he found out was that these boys actually went bowling at the local bowling alley at 6 am that morning, before they did that mass murder thing. What Moore is saying is “Gee, How come nobody is saying that bowling causes young guys to go out and shoot everybody?”

W: That would be the twist, wouldn’t it….