Becoming part of the solution

26 minute read / listen

Today we will hear Tom Campbell discuss the concept of fear, instincts, and consciousness within the MBT framework.

He challenges the notion that fear is always a natural survival instinct, arguing instead that it often leads to dysfunctional behaviour. Campbell suggests that fear is not an inherent instinct but rather a response that inhibits rational decision-making and locks individuals into unproductive patterns. Through examples and analysis, he emphasises the importance of intelligence, preparation, and awareness in navigating potentially dangerous situations.

Campbell advocates for a shift in perspective away from fear-based reactions towards a more reasoned approach to survival and decision-making.

Interviewer’s Question

Let’s talk about fear. Because this is something that I hear a lot of people object to when they hear about MBT. It’s the idea that fear is always dysfunctional. And usually they objected this idea based on one of the following arguments.

The first is that fear is a natural survival instincts for all animals. And supposedly there are animals that lack fear, such as the dodo, that are now extinct because of it.

The second argument is there are individuals who lost the part of the brain that is responsible for the fear response or emotion and they became more dysfunctional as a result, not less dysfunctional.

And the third argument is that supposedly in psychopaths, psychopaths, the portion of the brain responsible for fear is less responsive and smaller.

So I thought about this and I came up with my own resolution for this conflict, which is the following.Perhaps we need to make a distinction between on the one hand the fighter flight instincts that come with the avatar, and on the other hand fear or fearlessness as a metaphor for the quality of the consciousness that is locked onto that avatar. In other words, a metaphor for the capacity of a consciousness to make low entropy profitable choices within its decision space.

So to make it a bit more concrete, when I see a spider, and my body creates a strong fighter flight response and activate its sympathetic nervous system, that has nothing in another self to do with the level of fear of my consciousness. It’s simply how my avatar is wired, and therefore part of the constraints that my consciousness has to make choices in. So the level of fear or fearlessness of my consciousness, my IOC refers to its capacity to make good choices within those constraints. Would that be a good way of putting things?

Tom Campbell’s Answer.

Yes, that is a good way of putting things, but it doesn’t quite answer all the questions that you created here I think, but that is true.

Language is something that, of course, it’s a wonderful thing, but you can interpret it in many different ways. I think that’s what you’re saying. It’s just kind of the way one interprets the fear and it applies this way in one situation. It kind of flies a different way there and we get confused in how we interpret it. But I would say, if we go up and look at your three things that you said, the first is fears and natural survival instinct for all animals, I would disagree with that. I would say fear is never an instinct that there’s no instincts to be fearful.

Now, there are fear instincts to be careful and to respond to certain things. If a herd of gazelles, here’s a lion roar, they probably all start to run. But we then say, well, that’s because they have fear of the lion. But that’s us. We’re making that up. That’s just a response. They do have a response. An instinctive response that if you hear a lion roar run. Okay, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s fair-based. It’s just a response.

You know how when you crush your leg and the physician takes that little rubber hammer and it hits something Just the right spot, your leg pops out. Well, you didn’t make that happen. It’s just a response. It’s a natural response to the way your central nervous system is wired. Well, the gazelle running when it hears the lion roars the same thing It’s not fear-based.

You don’t make your leg jump because you feel like you’ve got to run or anything. It just happens. It’s just a spot. So yes, the line roars and the gazelles all start to run away from the sound of the line. Just a response. Because they’ll run 100 feet and then they’ll stop. Well, if it was fear, they’d keep on running because they’d say, Oh, there’s a line back there and we’re afraid of that lion. So they don’t, they have a response to run, they do run, nothing happens, they stop.

So it’s just, so I think that’s what’s going on with these instincts. It’s a reaction. Instincts mean that you have learned over for us, it’s like 200,000 years to have automatic responses to things.

The bird automatically goes, Get twigs and stuff and builds a nest. It didn’t have to go to nest building school. It just does it. Because that’s instinct. And it does it just because it feels like that’s what it wants to do. And it’s just a response to things. It doesn’t build the nest because it’s afraid that if it didn’t have an nest, it wouldn’t have any place to lay the eggs in. It’s a fear response. No, it just is a response. So I think there are no instincts for fear. And that’s because, as you said, fear is always dysfunctional. Right?

Fear is always dysfunctional because when you have fear in a way you kind of lose part of your cognitive ability, the fear you just react. Well, how do things react to fear? Well, we all know about the deer who stares at the headlights of the incoming car. That’s how you react to fear, right? That’s not a lion and that’s something unknown. You know, an automobile and it’s roaring and it’s frightened and fear kills. Fear doesn’t help you survive. Fear keeps you from surviving. If you walk into woods and you run into a bear, well, if you’re fearful, you’ll do two things. One, run, which makes the bear think that you’re prey is a wrong thing to do and to that fear will ooze, hormones , out your pores to the point that you smell, like bait, you smell like things that are easily killed and eaten, you smell like prey. It smells that fear.

So what does the fear do? It kills you. It’s harmful. Now, if you walk out in the woods and you see a bear and you’re not fearful, well, you don’t put off those hormones . You might be a frightening thing that could hurt bear. So the bear is a little more wary than if you’re putting out all these, I’m terrified, hormones, and you don’t run. You see? So any, whenever you have fear, if fear is driving you, fear is high entropy, fear isn’t reasoned, fear isn’t informed, fear just drives and you react to the fear. So I’d say there are no instincts that call for fear. Fight or flight. That’s a choice. Okay?

What gives me my best survival? Do I stay in fight? Or do I run and try to get away? Well, you think about that. You come up with a choice of doing one of the other, based on the situations. Your ability to run. It’s ability to run. Your ability to fight. You sort all that out and then you do what’s reasonable. So you may have an instinct for danger. There may be that you just sense that something dangerous is going on here. But mostly that’s not instinct either. But the instincts are never fearful. And two, the d0do bird didn’t go extinct because it didn’t have fear, it went extinct because it didn’t have enough sense to stay away from human beings.

I wouldn’t say that that was because it didn’t have fear. It’s a lack of awareness. It wasn’t smart enough to say, Oh, you’re coming to humans.
Let’s get away. Let’s go someplace else. That was just intelligence. Most animals do have that much intelligence when the humans come up other animals are you know they have the idea that that’s a risk those humans are risky we should leave. Now you can attribute that and say oh that’s fear they’re all afraid of the humans not necessarily. It’s just intelligent that’s an assessment they make should, we stay and see if they give us food or or should we run because they’re likly to hurt us? And the safest thing to do is to run because they might give you food or they might just kill you.

So, if you’re not in real big need of food, then be safe, you know, take the safer course with the higher probability of survival and run. That’s smart. That’s not fear. That’s intelligence. Most critters have enough intelligence to know what might hurt them. And if it’s even something they’ve never seen before, they’re very wary of it because it might hurt them. So it’s not really fear. This reminds me, I had two golden retrievers and they were both only probably about one to two years old so they were still almost puppies. And after a big wind, there was a cardboard box sitting in my backyard. and it wasn’t supposed to be there. And both of those dogs, they barked at it and barked at it. And then finally I put them outside and they got the about like 50 feet away from it and they stretch out, you know, and then they turn around and run. And then because it didn’t chase them, they’d get a little closer and they’d sneak up and maybe another two or three feet closer and they’d turn around and run. And it was just funny watching these dogs and you’d say, well, they’re terrified of that box. They’re really frightened of that box might get them. And it’s just because it didn’t belong there and they didn’t know what it was. It was just an unknown. There’s an unknown thing there. Well, it’s not that they were fearful. It’s that they were smart enough to know that if you don’t know what it is, then be cautious. That’s intelligence. So, we tend to see fear lots of places that it’s not there. It’s either intelligence choices, or it’s a lack of intelligence from the dough does point. It just wasn’t bright enough to put together the humans were dangerous.

That was , yeah, it’s too bad because it did not survive for that reason. And this thing about the brain is no brain. That’s a virtual brain. And when people say that they go in and cut away that part of the brain that has to do with fear, When you cut away part of the brain, we have no idea what that means or what that’s doing. We’re not that smart. Yes, we probably cut away part of their emotional life. We may have cut away some of their rational life. We think we understand a brain and it’s got lobes to do this and over here’s the part for vision and here’s the part for tactile and here’s the part for hearing. We think we know some things about it, but then there are people that really don’t have any brains and they do well with all that stuff. There are people that have a centimeter wide liner inside their skull and that’s the only brain they have. They just have a one centimeter plusy stuff that stuck to the skull and they don’t have this lobe that lobe and all this kind of stuff and you know they’re working on their PhD in mathematics in some university. They’re not retarded. They’re doing just fine.

We don’t know as much about brains and things as we think we do. So anyway the fact that you cut out part of somebody’s brain and now they act in a way that’s difficult, that changes their personality. Well yeah you’ve just missed with the rule set. Those brains evolved and they evolved according to the rule set. And now you cut out a piece of that and what does the rules set say? Well, the rule sets pretty complicated and we don’t understand . Now yes, it does create certain kinds of attitudes, perhaps or lack of attitudes when you do that. That’s a, that’s a rules set thing, but you can’t jump to a conclusion like, oh, we cut out the fear part.

Interviewer

Well, for example, there was, I think I read about some individuals and there, I think there amygdala got calcified, and they did lose a lot of the fear response. For example, they had just no fear regarding approaching strangers in dark alleyways and things like that.

Tom Campbell
They have cut out their ability to respond not fear.

Interviewer
Things that people would be afraid of they would just walk straight into it. But that did also make them less functional in some ways. For example, like they lost their ability to manoeuvre socially. They maybe got too close to people or things like that. I don’t exactly remember the specifics, but in some ways it made them less functional as well. So I found that interesting.

Tom Campbell
But that doesn’t mean that it had anything to do specifically with fear. See, that’s a conclusion that’s jump to, that’s not necessarily a fact. It could have taken out that part that had the instincts for response. See something coming at you, you jump. That’s a response, not necessarily because you’re afraid, because you’re intelligent, you have those instincts to get out of the way when something’s coming for you. Well, that may have been gone. Or that may have been part of the brain that did processing that was relevant to action, you know, and how you did that.
And the fact that something’s coming at you went to process that in a brain and well, that part that it has to travel through to get processed or that part that processes what’s there anymore? So it didn’t, but what we look at is we say, Oh, they’re fearless. They’re not afraid of things. We see a lot of fear places that it’s not really fear. It’s something else. Like the antelopes that run, they run because they’re afraid. Instincts are about fear. Well, I don’t think any of that’s true. I think it’s our assumption that it’s fear is what’s involved. But there could be other explanations besides that it’s fear. So I don’t really think that any of those are very convincing, very convincing arguments. I think fear is high entropy, it tends to lock you up. It makes you not rational, it makes you incapable of doing the things you need to do to save your life.

All the chop chop and shoot them up and the you know the tough guys the good guys and a bad guys. Well the good guys who are really very successful all have to be fearless right because that’s how they’re so successful because when it looks like they’re surrounded by a hundred people. How could they possibly get out? Well, they don’t just sit down and cry because they’re frightened, you know, they think they’re smart. They never get they never become afraid they always become resourceful and figure things out. So it’s you know fear is a thing that keeps you from figuring things out it locks you up It makes you stupid. Makes you unresponsive like the deer standing in the headlights. So there is never a valuable thing.

You could maybe make a case that young girls are told to be afraid of sexuality and afraid of men and afraid of things like that because they’re young. They’re only 13 14 15, you know, so parents tend to frighten them away from getting involved, you know, having sexual relationships and that fear keeps them safe. Well not necessarily that fear may also ruin the rest of their life. You know, it that those in in grain fears live on. And you may have done more damage there than you’ve done good. Fear isn’t the thing that’s helpful. Fear is an unhelpful thing, it tends to do more harm than it does good?

Interviewer
So let’s look at a very concrete example. So let’s say I’m standing on top of a very tall building. And I can feel that my hands are starting to sweat and my heart starts pounding. And is this my instinct or is this my fear? Or is it a combination of both?

Tom Campbell
Well, your instincts probably tell you danger. There’s a 200 foot fall on the other side of that fence that’s fatal. Watch out. That’s your instincts. Now, if you have your palms sweat and all the rest of that stuff, then that’s just your fear. Now once you have that fear, that fear makes you clumsy. If you notice that when your palm sweat and everything, you’re not real, loose and able to move and do things and you don’t think much, you kind of just wedge you up, and I can’t move, which is what people do when they’re really terrified like at a height, they just can’t move. So someone has to go and get them and bring them down. They can’t do it themselves because they’re too clumsy. They can’t really function. Their muscles don’t work, right? Their nervous system, the reaction times are gone. Well, that’s what the fear does, and the fear backs you away from the, you know, from the, from the thing that frightens you.

So that’s fear. Yes. But that’s not what keeps you safe. What keeps you safe is intelligence. That says, don’t climb the fence. Don’t try to walk on top of the top rail of the fence. Don’t, this is not a good place to run and play catch. You know, this is a place to pay attention into where you are and what you’re doing because there’s only a three foot high fence and you know it’s two hundred feet to the ground. So that intelligence is
what saves you and the fear is what raises your risk of falling because you’ll tend to not hold onto the ladder very well because your muscle functions are all locked up and fear. So the fear always makes you less survivable, not more survivable. So instincts of fear will be counterproductive. It makes the critter less survivable, not more survivable. And fear on top of tall building will make it more likely that you’re going to have an accident up there because you’re not in your right mind, you’re not able to function well. You’re clumsy, you know, when you’re real fearful, you start tripping over your own feet. You get clumsy, you get dysfunctional, and that means your probability of ending over the rail somehow goes up. Whereas if you’re not fearful, there’s no reason for you to fall over that rail. You can just stay on the inside and you’re perfectly in control of yourself and everything’s fine. So yes, that would just be fear if you feel that way and that would be a fear of high places. Fear of death.

Interviewer
If I was in that same situation, but completely fearless, then my instincts would probably still activate me to the point of being able to be functional. Maybe there’s a little bit of adrenaline and so my body is alert and adjust. Just pause. Reduce. So it’s only the functional part remains and the dysfunctional part goes away. Would that makes sense?

Tom Campbell
That’s true. You do have instincts that will tell you to be careful. This is a situation that could be harmful. You’re a 200 feet near. Be careful being 200 feet up near you can’t fly. So if you 200 feet up near you be careful, be cautious. And what you do is that you look down at where you were walking and see if there were any obstacles to trip over where things lying on the floor. You’d notice that. You’d notice the rail and you’d notice how strongly it looked like it was built. You may even walk over to the rail and give it a little shake to see that if you stumble and hit it would it go over with you. So you start gathering information. You start looking at the possibilities and then you come to the kind of conclusions, well the rails are sturdy. I don’t see any hazards laying on a floor. There’s really not a problem here. All I have to do is not, if I go real near the rail, be cognitive of what you’re doing. Don’t have conversations and be walking backwards. Don’t do that kind of things there. So your instinct say, Be careful. This is a dangerous situation. Then your mind looks at it and says, Got it. I can take, you know, I can handle it. I got it. The fear comes in and says, No, no, I’m going to fall. Save me, you know, and it’s totally dysfunctional. That’s the difference. So fear is always dysfunctional. It never helps. It always just gets in a way. What you need when you run into a bear in the woods is intelligence and preparation. So you’ve read all about bears and what do you do with a bear of woods? Do you stare at them and stare him down? Will that make him go away? Will that make him angry and want to fight? Well, if you don’t know, then you ought to stay out of the woods. If you have to go into the woods then educate yourself. You know, educate yourself. Go over and rattle that fence and say, is that a strong fence? So if I trip and fell against it, or somebody pushed me and I hit it would it crumble and you’re probably fin, no, that fence has been designed to be very strong.

So be smart, you prepare yourself, you look at the possibilities to decide what you’re going to do. You still may not survive, you know, the bear might still get you, but at least you optimise your probability for survival by being smart. And you optimise your probability for dying by not being smart and by being fearful. Okay, good.

Interviewer
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that that clarified a lot.