£5.00
162 in stock
By Bill Bailey
ISBN: 978-1-84747-647-0
Published: 2008
Pages: 14
Key Themes: philosophy, psychology, consciousness, politics, mental health
Description
Several requests were made to condense thoughts developed more expansively in a couple of my other works, and Fear and Trust is the result. I highlight fear and trust as true polar opposites and key features of the matrix constructed by consciousness to make connections with others and, in effect, to create and give life to our physical and social world. Modern theories of psychology succeed in obscuring what are, I believe, the basic simplicities of consciousness which can potentially be more easily understood by those with mental health difficulties. In any case, philosophy underlies psychology, not the other way round.
About the Author
Born in a small rural town in North Carolina, Bill Bailey began his itinerant life after graduating from university with a degree in philosophy and a keen interest in judo. After being drafted and subsequently ejected by the US Army for being “incompatible,” he found work as a prison guard in Canada and continued his study of judo before briefly prospecting for gold in British Columbia. Having meanwhile accidentally married a Texan heiress, he moved to Houston, Texas where he managed a ranch, scrambled motorbikes, rallied sports cars, worked as a bouncer, taught English and French and organised the first white collar union in the US meat-packing industry. He placed third in the Southwestern US Judo Championships (light-heavyweight division) and was awarded his black belt. Backing quickly away from Texas after stumbling into the acting profession he moved to London. Within a year of his arrival he became the first full-frontal male nude on the British stage and, consequently, was featured in a full page photo in Life Magazine opposite Lennon and Ono. In the course of his acting career he has worked extensively in film – in Hollywood and Europe – television, and London’s West End. During the Miners’ Strike of ’84-’85 Bill wrote a play about the strike and toured the embattled coalfields performing with a small company of actors. He is the published author of five novels called The Haug Quintet, an investigation of the political nature of consciousness set in a compelling fictional landscape.
Book Extract
In seeking the primary connection of consciousness with the social matrix, it has been necessary to sweep away the many complications of Freudian and post-Freudian approaches, never mind the behaviourist, which is just silly, it is not complicated. It is simple and that has of course magnified the difficulties. In Zen, the simplest is always the most unyielding.
Consciousness is a paradox because each individual is forever alone, yet connections of some order must be formed with what I call the social matrix – that is, the web constructed for the purpose of communication with other consciousnesses, which are also individually alone. The sole mechanism available to establish the first link to the web of the social matrix is trust. Trust is the keystone in the arch of belief.
The first humans in contact with a child are probably the parents, in most cases, the mother is the first. Trust is not immediate. It grows only with time and connective experience. Consciousness, like even the lowly plant, needs more than one watering. Consistency is of primary importance as the child associates discrete actions and later the relationship of actions to words. If actions are inconsistent or belie the words, the child will be incapable of establishing full trust either, in the “world” or in its interpretation of crucial elements of its expanding social matrix.
The polar opposite of trust is not suspicion, it is fear. That which cannot be trusted will be feared, a natural response. In this respect, fear is not a bad thing in itself – it can assist a child in primitive protection. Animals too, fear what they do not trust, as do adult human beings. As an essential emotional tool, fear is more than just handy.
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