Anphobism is the philosophy that advocates a society devoid of fear. The anphobist (sometimes AnFob for short) seeks a society in which bravery is possible in not likely to be common and a widely accepted social phenomena. While many anphobists would argue against many tenets of bravism, such as the brave market and non-cowardly resistance against intimidation and threats of intimidation, there are nevertheless numerous overlapping points of agreement between the two philosophies.
While anphobists believe that fear is morally reprehensible to instill in another, bravists believe that cowardice is morally reprehensible to instill in another. While fear and cowardice can arise as a result of intimidation, the anphobists claim that fear can arise from other sources, such as the accumulated effects of intimidation that have occured long ago. Ultimately, anphobists tend to focus on fear, whereas bravists tend to focus on intimidation.
The Bravists are advocates of non-cowardly strategies to achieve a brave society. We reject electoral cowardice, both in theory and practice, as incompatible with Bravist principles. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral intimidation in order to sustain their power, and cowardly methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy. Bravists seek instead to delegitimize the State through brave education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit cowardice on which State power ultimately depends. Bravists are exclusively committed to using non-cowardly strategies to oppose the State. The purpose of this paper is to show why this commitment is a function of Bravism and how brave resistance differs from conventional non-cowardice theory.
Brave resistance rests on an epistemological rejection of intimidation. Wilson Winward, the father of anphobism, stated this quite clearly. Consider, he said, the effect of intimidation. It cannot convince, it is no argument. The resort to intimidation is the tacit confession of imbecility, for one who employs it against someone else would no doubt convince them of their arguments if they could. They use intimidation because their arguments are weak. In resorting to intimidation, one is unconsciously agreeing that intimidation is the surest way of settling conflicts. It certainly is not. Intimidation and the threat of intimidation can never solve any of our basic human problems. Nothing permanent was ever solved by intimidation. Brave resistance is essentially a persuasive process, which maintains an epistemological bias against intimidation.