Fear-inducing tragedy encompasses the deadly consequences of contaminating the atmosphere, including through nuclear radiation. Theatrical works juxtapose the threat of extinction with the benefits of energy obtained from nuclear, coal and oil power sources as they indicate that the earth’s atmosphere can no longer be regarded as an exploitable resource. The degradation of breathable air is life-threatening for human and nonhuman species alike. The depiction of human-induced contamination from mid twentieth-century theatre encompasses life-threatening atmospheric nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean region and on mainland Australia. First Nations theatrical performance about nuclear-damaged ecological systems broadens the emotional commons of climate change theatre in which characters confront atmospheric contamination and the threat of annihilation.

This chapter considers how Australian theatre responds to, represents and stages floods, and how those representations have changed over the last half-century and more. Beginning with Eunice Hanger’s Flood and Mona Brand’s Flood Tide from the 1950s, the chapter traces how dramatic characters are fashioned in response to increasingly extreme climates. Alana Valentine’s (2008) Watermark, a work of community/verbatim theatre, draws on the oral testimony of survivors of a fast-moving flood that in 1998 swept through the town and surrounding areas of Katherine in the Northern Territory. In Jackie Smith’s (2009) The Flood, rising flood waters have a materiality and agential capacity to provoke fear and anger in the three characters of three dramatic characters trapped inside a run-down farmhouse. Between Two Waves by Ian Meadows (2012) is a politically engaged climate change drama that represents the increasing hysteria of a climate scientist’s warnings as they this to these are distorted and denied by conservative politicians and media.

This chapter explores the neuroscience of fear, examining how our brains detect and respond to threats, both real and imagined. It introduces major theories of emotion and focuses on the role of the limbic system in processing fear-related stimuli. Through research in animals and humans —including lesion studies and the famous case of patient S.M.—the chapter distinguishes between behavioral responses to danger and the subjective experience of fear. It also challenges the idea of a single “fear center,” emphasizing that fear arises from dynamic interactions across multiple brain regions. These concepts are then applied to ambiguous situations, such as sensing a presence in a dark room, where the brain may interpret uncertainty in emotionally charged ways. Finally, this chapter encourages readers to consider how the brain constructs meaning from unclear stimuli, laying the groundwork for a scientific exploration of the supernatural.

Chapter 3 begins with how the Donatist controversy shaped Augustine’s theology of justification by faith because the Donatists represented the real possibility of having faith without charity. The chapter then turns to the key features of Augustine’s theology of justification formed by the Pelagian controversy, especially participation in Christ’s righteousness. Both controversies pressed Augustine to consider how justification is by faith if faith sometimes fails to justify, as in Donatists, lax catechumens, and impenitent Christians. In both de spiritu et littera (The Spirit and the Letter) and his sermons, Augustine addresses this through a deeper psychology of faith: faith only obtains the grace of justification when it is motivated by hope and fails if it is motivated primarily by fear. The chapter concludes with de fide et operibus (Faith and Works), exploring Augustine’s understanding of faith, works, and charity, his criticism of sola fide (faith alone), and his development of a new terminology for justifying faith: fides Christi (faith in Christ).

The USA has among the highest levels of mental illness of all countries, together with the most treatment. We seek happiness through mechanisms that produce pleasure, most of which are not effective. Those lower down in the hierarchy use more destructive means to gain gratification, thereby becoming worse off. Americans may suffer more pain than people in other rich nations, especially social pain in response to chronic stressors present here. We consume 80% of the world’s opioids Smartphone use, especially among youth, may be harmful for mental health. Evolutionary pressures make us live to reproduce and nurture the progeny until they can have children. Various mental illnesses that don’t impact propagation can manifest, especially in later life, such as anxiety to cope with danger. Mental health is political, like other aspects of health

To explore what it meant to own and possess in the eighteenth century, Keeping Hold looks to instances in which people lost possessions and how they responded to such experiences. Chapter 2 begins the book’s focus on loss and does so by looking to urban sites. It looks to the city of the eighteenth century: London. The capital was of growing importance in this period as an economic powerhouse and social hub. Guidebooks emerged as an important genre for those seeking to comprehend London’s densely filled and ever-lengthening streets. The chapter explores these sources and finds how the capital was increasingly imagined as a site of deception and loss, where possessions might be pickpocketed or simply left in the bustle and in which servants and apprentices regularly ran away. The chapter examines how eighteenth-century Londoners responded to such perceived threats by utilising technologies of security, such as pockets and collars. By doing so they worked to prevent loss.

This chapter begins with an in-depth exploration of neuroanatomy, including macroscopic features like the cerebral cortex, brain stem, and basal ganglia, as well as the pathways between the brain and body such as the spinal cord and cranial nerves. Against this background, four potential applications are introduced: first, the creation of motor prosthetics that use brain activity to control artificial limbs; second, the development of sensory prosthetics to restore vision or hearing; third, the artificial reactivation of memories through targeted brain stimulation; and fourth, the treatment of anxiety by incorporating either neuroimaging or brain stimulation. Each application is framed in terms of the modularity debate, which focuses on whether specific psychological functions can be localized to distinct brain regions. These four examples illustrate some cases in which it is useful to localize a behavioral function within a single region, but also where it may be more useful to appreciate either the diversity that exists within a region or the coordination that exists across regions.

Analyzes the superficial and underlying motives of initiators for the use of force.

Chapter 1 examines the leading theory of chilling effects – chilling effects as fear of legal harm – a legalistic account most often employed by lawyers and judges in the United States, Canada, and beyond. The author explores its historical and intellectual origins, key actors that have articulated and influenced the theory, and argues this predominant conventional account is too narrow, legalistic, and deeply flawed theoretically and empirically, and cannot explain, predict, or understand chilling effects in a wide variety of contexts. As such, it only contributes to skepticism about chilling effects, rather than dispelling them.

Chapter 2 critically examines privacy-based conventional theories, which approach chilling effects as a result of privacy harms. While privacy-based theories of chilling effects improve on legal accounts, they are also too narrow and cannot explain chilling effects in a variety of contexts, including even forms of privacy-related chilling effects. Moreover, courts and judges have also remained deeply skeptical of privacy-based theories. To address these limitations and fully understand the threat chilling effects pose to freedom, fundamental rights, and democracy we need a new understanding of chilling effects that moves beyond conventional accounts.

In the early 1980s, relations between the superpowers deteriorated from severely strained to acutely confrontational, and fears of nuclear war gripped people in both countries. Yet by 1989 relations improved so much that most informed observers believed the Cold War was ending. This chapter goes beyond conventional explanations of the transformation that have focused on the policies of President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. It demonstrates that citizen activists also played important roles. In the early 1980s, a very popular nuclear freeze movement compelled the Reagan administration to change its harsh rhetoric and to show greater interest in negotiations with the Soviet Union. Then, large-scale exchanges of Soviet and American citizens, which both Reagan and Gorbachev came to support, challenged demonic stereotypes and humanized the supposed enemies. The chapter also describes how American and Soviet films reflected and contributed to the dramatic changes, from the nightmarish depiction of a communist invasion of the United States in Red Dawn (1984) to the dramatization of a partnership between Soviet and American police officers in Red Heat (1988).

This chapter discusses the emotional brain from a brain networks perspective, which contrasts with attempts to assign a unique or emotion-specific role to individual brain regions engaged in emotion phenomena. Here, the emphasis will be on the collective function of coalitions of brain areas that carry out functions that are often considered important for emotion. We will call these coalitions “networks” or “circuits” interchangeably. Brain networks/circuits are composed of both cortical and noncortical regions. Brain regions carry out one or more processes (“computations”), and the degree to which they can be functionally specialized is a matter of much debate. As our emphasis will be on networks/circuits, we will focus mostly on how brain regions contribute to overall functions. We consider fear and related phenomena, such as anxiety, as illustrative examples given the extensive literature across species in this area.

A common feature of all existing organisms is their ability to adapt, survive, and even thrive in the face of danger. Evolution has endowed organisms with a myriad of defensive mechanisms, from bodily phenotypes and sensory apparatus to learning mechanisms. Humans are no different, and a wide variety of defensive mechanisms has allowed us to adapt to changing landscapes and threats. Yet, we are unique in our capacity to predict the future, to learn from others through many streams of communication vicariously, and to experience emotions consciously. In this chapter, we briefly go through the evolutionary history of defensive behaviors and how they are guided by a canonical set of ecological conditions, by the characteristics of the threat, and by the organisms’ repertoire of cognitive and sensory abilities. We explore the converging mechanisms across species and highlight the uniqueness of humans, including the rich internal representations of the dangers that allow us to experience a large array of emotions.

Trauma refers to an event or series of events that overwhelms the capacities of the person. Trauma disrupts all developing systems from brain to self. Trauma is especially devastating in the early years because of the nature of development. Development is cumulative and follows the principle of differentiation. Basic forms are laid down and then refined; therefore, there is a lasting impact of early disruption. Trauma can be especially devasting with regard to meaning making, because the major impact of trauma is to compromise integration. Integration is precisely what meaning making is. When early integration is compromised, gaps in the mind in the form of dissociation will result.