Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

The same old lie that today sends men and women, boys and girls, to war.

The Paradox of Anxiety for Law Enforcement and the Military

It is paradoxical that, law enforcement and military personnel run toward danger rather than away from it, act in spite of fear that naturally arises when exposed to danger, train to overcome fear in order to act, and yet they can be defeated by fear's close cousin (Lazarus and Lazarus, Passion and Reason), anxiety (disorder), which is elicited by no real threat.

I'll see you in Valhalla Annalise Braakensiek

Model, designer and actor Annalise Braakensiek has been found dead in her Sydney home.

Police went to her apartment in Potts Point just after 3pm yesterday after receiving concerned calls for her welfare.

The death is not suspicious.

Ms Braakensiek was made an R U OK? ambassador in 2017 and the organisation said she was "loved and respected".

Annalise Braakensie was a warrior. She fought the good fight against depression. She not only fought the good fight herself, she stood tall and encouraged others to fight the good fight. She was a a leader. But unfortunately she lost her fight. The enemy proved too strong.

Valete, socii mei! Farewell my comrade.

I do not suffer the black dog (depression). I suffer the Chicken Little (anxiety).

You cannot know the daily battle that is waged by us black dogs or Chicken Littles unless you suffer these conditions. 

We fight a relentless foe. If you are fortunate enough to not suffer these conditions; to not have to wage a daily battle against these determined foe, support those who do. Have their back. Stand side by side with them. Stand up for them. ... that means sacrifice and understanding. And not just for one battle, for these conditions may last for years which means they are a war. A war where the combatant is at risk of injury or death. Be their ally in this war. It'll cost you, but it'll be, as Stephen Fry said, the noblest thing that you'll ever do in your life.

Valete, socii mei Annalise Braakensiek. I'll see you in Valhalla.

Know Your Enemy - Anxiety

I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder when, ironically, researching and writing a book about the mechanism responsible for that disorder. The disorder is distressing and at times debilitating, but it did provide me with an opportunity to assess theory and gain insights into anxiety disorders.

Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion proposes eight primary emotions which when combined produces other emotions. When fear and anticipation are combined they produce anxiety.

fear + anticipation = anxiety

That is how anxiety is often described when explaining anxiety disorders. Fear is an emotional response to an immediate present perceived threat whereas anxiety is an emotional response to an anticipated perceived threat.

As the stimulus comes closer in time and/or space, anxiety merges into fear. That is to say the anticipation element in the emotion equation lessens leaving only fear.

When your only left with fear and facing the immediate present stimulus which turns out not to be a threat at all, fear dissipates and equilibrium is restored.

I have lived this analysis and having lived it, and knowing how it works, enables me to better manage my impulses and 'act in spite of anxiety.'

Sometimes when I was invited to my adopted nieces home for dinner, everything in my being was trying to stop me from going. It took enormous will-power and often anger to get me to drive to their home, however, when I arrived at their door - nothing. No anxiety, no fear, no emotion. Equilibrium was restored because anticipation had dissipated and the stimulus proved not to be a threat after all.


Klein says insight is produced through identifying inconsistencies.

Sometimes when my anxiety levels are elevated, rather than feeling the urge to avoid the anticipated threat, I instead cannot wait to engage with it. This is akin to soldiers who are anxious to go to war, anxious to fight, anxious to 'let slip the dogs of war.' How do you explain this type of anxiety? The medical textbooks don't even mention this 'symptom' of anxiety.

The above equation provides a possible explanation.

Fear is a negative emotion with a withdrawal action tendency. Anticipation is a positive emotion with an approach action tendency. The normal anxiety is when fear is greater than anticipation.

fear > anticipation = withdrawal anxiety

When anticipation is greater than fear you have approach anxiety. Still anxiety but with a different action tendency and not as much distress.

fear < anticipation = approach anxiety

Both are symptoms of anxiety disorders, at least in my experience.

2+2=?

Saw an episode of Silent Witness last night were a highly acclaimed pathologist asked his class, attended by another highly acclaimed pathologist, and as a lesson, what 2 + 2 equals.

Come on. What does 2 + 2 equal? 4!

What does 4 equal? :)

Infinity. There are an infinite number of answers to 4.

It's not the answer that is important. It's the question that is important.

It's the questions where insight lies.

Too many in the martial arts are about answers. Very few are about questions. That's why so few in the martial arts have insights.

Fight-of-Flight - Get It Right

I am currently working on Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat. Chapter #2 concerns fight-or-flight.

The fight-or-flight concept is often used to explain our natural response to a threat. Many who refer to fight-or-flight for that purpose often explain that fear motivates instinctive fight or flight behaviours which an automatic physiological reaction prepares the body to enact.

If fear motivates instinctive fight behaviour, why do 'Fight Activities' such as martial arts, self-defence, combat sports, security, law enforcement, and the military, teach ways and means to overcome fear in order to fight?

Those who refer to the fight-or-flight concept to explain our natural response to a threat ought to at least refer to the title of Walter Cannon's book published in 1915 where he introduced the concept of fight-or-flight. The title is: Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage, first published in 1915.

Cannon is referring to two emotions - fear and anger. He associated fear with flight and anger with fight.

An accurate understanding of the fight-or-flight concept already suggests a 'strategic use of emotion to counter fear in war' - turn fear into anger in order to turn flight into fight.

Sun Tzu adopts this strategy in The Art of War. He states that rousing anger in your soldiers is necessary in order to get them to fight. This is recognised in the US military in a manual where anger is described as being the emotion of courage.

Cannon explains nature's strategic use of emotion to survive:

The cornering of an animal when in the headlong flight of fear may suddenly turn the fury and the flight to a fighting in which all strength of desperation is displayed. (1915, 275)

The initial natural response to a threat is flight and the 'risky business' of fighting is only engaged in if flight is obstructed - flee when you can, fight if you must.

A stimulus is appraised as a threat which elicits a subjective feeling we call 'fear' that motivates instinctive flight behaviour which an automatic physiological reaction prepares the body to enact. If flight is obstructed, the subjective feeling turns to anger which motivates instinctive fight behaviour that an automatic physiological reaction prepares the body to enact. In both cases, as in all cases with emotion, the emotion is being experienced in pursuit of a goal. In this case the goal of fear and anger is survival.


There is a duality associated with 'fear as a weapon' that Sun Tzu recognised in The Art of War. He advises to always provide your enemy with an honourable exit otherwise they will fight to the death. On the other hand, he advises to take away all means of retreat for you soldiers so that they will fight.

How do you turn fear into anger in order to turn flight into fight? That becomes the question when emotion is used strategically in order to counter fear in war and turn flight into fight.

Did I not learn to fear knife-wielding assailants?

I'm in the editing phase of the first draft of Fear and Fight: Understanding Our Natural and Learned Responses to a Threat.

Conventional wisdom suggests that our natural responses to a threat is a fight-or-flight, stress (Siddle's survival stress), fear response. I did not experience either when I was confronted by a knife-wielding assailant on two separate occasions. These natural responses to a threat were selected for in nature because they conferred a survival advantage on an individual. Where was my fight-or-flight/stress/fear response when my survival was threatened on two separate occasions. That is the question that drove Fear and Fight.

Our natural responses to a threat are based on an unconscious evaluation or appraisal of a stimulus. A lot of my work is driven by Robert Plutchik's psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. He proposes n emotion process model with 'inferred cognition' being on of the components at the front end. Plutchik proposes 10 postulates about cognition in relation to psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. Postulate #6 is:

In higher animals, most cognitions depend on learning and can be modified by experience.

 Humans have very few innate fears. What innate fears we do have relate to stimuli experienced in our evolutionary past. Knife-wielding attackers were not a stimuli in our evolutionary past environment. Is the answer to my question that I'd never learned to be scared of knife-wielding attackers?

Many authors discussing fear in battle suggest that its normal to be scared in battle. After all, our survival is threatened in battle. They suggest only a fool would not be afraid. But how does that fear come about? Are they suggesting the intellect makes a conscious determination that the people firing at me can kill me and this becomes the internal stimulus for the emotion/amygdala which responds with fear?

Are we afraid in battle because we've been socialised; taught fear. Stories of injury and death, seeing the injured and dead, the injured and dying - is that what teaches us to be afraid?

I can imagine the Australian Aboriginals when they first came into contact with the white British pointing their long sticks at them would not have been afraid. They were not holding them as if they were going to throw them and they didn't have pointy tips. After the first loud bang and puff of smoke and seeing their comrades fall injured or dead, I'm sure they quickly learned to fear these white men with funny sticks.

Do we have a natural response to expressive anger-aggression by another? This may be why I didn't experience fear because both of my assailants were quite calm and measured.

This work that I'm undertaking provides plenty of food for thought.