All below is just my opinion of course, but having been in similar circumstances as he describes many times I think I understand what he is trying to say. Not to say his way of dealing with the fear is the only one, but those who are most effective in the face of great danger all seem to have a similar mechanism to the one he described.
I'm not sure I care much for his approach if so - which seems to involve familiarising yourself with the concept of dying in various ways? I mean - I do that automatically and don't find it helps manage fear, what I find helps manage fear is to isolate it and set it aside - dwelling on it makes it easier to amplify it (unhelpful in itself as it reduces effectiveness and inhibits the usage of mental resources).
In a few weeks, I expect to do something most people would call dangerous in which survival will depend at least to some extent on luck - factors beyond my control (given limited time and resources those factors are larger than I would like). While I might envisage all the things that go wrong in order to attempt to determine my mitigation strategies for those situations - that process ceases to be useful at the point at which there is no viable strategy. At that point - it seems expedient to say - OK - that might go wrong - and there is no strategy available to deal with it, no point to allocate mental (and emotional?) resources to it.
Death itself is not inherently scary (to me anyway), but the process that would lead to it sometimes can be (especially when you toss in major unknown elements and uncertainties). Perhaps there is some resonance with what you say in terms of it being easier to fight to survive and do the short term thing in this sense? Ie it is easier to go out and fight to survive than it is to accept death as inevitable? In this case however - my actions would be precisely the same (as far as I can tell) no matter what outlook I take - as the course of action is decided and will be followed (and it's pretty much as simple as that).
I think the author was intending to put readers in his shoes and to try and bring to them an awareness that, even though they do not consciously recognize it, they are actually in the same situation in their lives right now as he was rolling down the roads of Iraq waiting for the inevitable IED to rip through his Hummer.
This point is true perhaps - certainly many people (most?) do not contemplate such existential questions. It is easier to live a shallow life driven by football and beer and page 3 (non UK readers may not get that), than to think deeper (let alone to act accordingly). I am not sure though if this enhances the effectiveness of the soldiers (or other actors) in question to dwell on these points? Certainly for most people in the developed nations - they don't perceive an immediate threat in the way a soldier rolling along in hostile territory necessarily must. Their thinking would be very different one feels if they were placed into the shoes of the soldier.
Civilization is paralyzed by fear. This is what he is talking about. As a group, whether right or left politically, almost everyone is just frozen in place. From the extreme doomers who think extinction is 25 years out; to Joe Romm over at Climate Progress who advocates a Green BAU based upon endless economic growth; to the evangelicals who pray for God to save them; to the hard core believers in the religion of technical Progress who think that god will save us; to Joe Six-pack on the street who does not understand any of the details, but understands deep down in his subconscious mind that the DANGER alarm bells of his primitive senses are going off and bad shit is coming his way; to the ultra-wealthy who know that disaster is coming and who understand that wealth is measured, and by implication survival, not in total terms but relative terms and so you get your hands on absolutely everything you can before the crash. They are ALL paralyzed by fear.
I actually don't agree here - I think civilisation is paralysed by denial and greed rather than fear. I don't see any signs that people really engage with or even understand the oncoming threats surrounding them.
It seems to me that public perception of the problem is continuing to grow but at a rate substantially slower than the problem develops. The risk factor here, in my opinion, is that one day the perception of the risk must catch up to the actual risk - and that this will probably happen late in the process. That is to say people respond best to immediate risks and I think will rapidly gain the necessarily realisations at the last minute. I predict a very rapid and violent later stage of collapse when this point is reached, particularly as there are strong elements of positive feedback involved. The realisation of impending doom (consciously) may in itself be enough to trigger the final stages of collapse (if not a large portion of the whole process...). People do after all take decisions where they consider the future (near term at least) and the human response en masse may be very unhelpful to effective or useful action.
I suppose that ties back into the point about it being easier to fight to live than prepare to die and the inability to meaningfully grapple with the problem (as opposed to trying to solve increasingly short term survival problems which is when you end up eating your seeds).
For years I have tried at times to speak to people on these issues and it comes down to the same thing - virtually nobody is mentally able to absorb and retain the information presented to them. Even where a person has an open mind and doesn't retreat straight into denial, you can explain things to them clearly and logically and for a brief moment they see what you do - but then they inevitably recoil from it. They are unable and unwilling to focus on it and think about it and the next day it will be as though the conversation never happened. Occasionally one might detect that it left a subconscious mark on them, but usually it will be entirely gone.
It is this refusal (if not outright inability) with people to engage the issues mentally that is the problem - I don't think it's precisely fear? Not in the sense that people are later paralysed by anything they would experience as fear anyway - perhaps it is an instantaneous sort of fear that leads to the denial though? A fear so strong they are unwilling to confront it to the extent of even remembering it (I guess I don't really understand it, as I remember when I started to get into all these things - I was somewhat awestruck by the magnitude of the issues, but felt no imperative to retreat from them - perhaps other people are mostly wired differently somehow?).
The author is trying to teach the reader how to manage ones fear in order to remain effective and be able to accomplish what needs to be done. We can't save ourselves because we are already dead, but we can salvage some part of the future.
It was my hope for some time - largely faded now I must admit - that people could be motivated even in the face of their impending demise to do the right thing for their children and/or grandchildren. To understand that they can still help those they owe a future to even if they cannot themselves make it. Unfortunately, this seems to make no practical difference in people's actions or willingness to engage the topic.
The author has called us out. He has shown us that we are standing here naked and that we are cowards. Our fear of dying, of the end of what we know, has paralyzed us. But there is no need to let our fear control us because we are already dead. We can't be saved. But, we can live on by our actions if we save others. All men die, few men really live. Life is not found in ones span of years but in ones actions and in the memories of those one gives the gift of life.
That much I agree with - though I'm skeptical it will result in any appreciable actions being taken by people who have not already previously contemplated the issues in such depth (as he would appear to have - far moreso than most).
One of the most interesting things for me was his ability (very rare) to relate his experiences in war zones to climatically damaged regions of the US - to join up the dots to connect it all together into a coherent larger picture world view - something I think should be easy, but which so few manage to do.
