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Fear is often used to compel people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do and sometimes to do things they never thought they could.
Fear has been used to help keep the masses "in line", such as the fear of God. I've often thought the genius of Emperor Constantine in switching to Christianity was he could instill the fear of God into his soldiers hundreds of miles away. The Emperor wasn't watching them but God was.
Of all the reasons humans have to be fearful, the most baffling to me is irrational fear. The result of reacting to that fear can be surrendering your free will to follow someone who vows to protect you.
What I don't understand is why people don't stop and ask themselves if the fear is real or imagined. Most do but an awful lot don't.
I would argue that fear is the most powerful and most important human emotion. It is the strongest motivator of animals and humans. It is absolutely essential to survival. Without it, we would have no future as lifeforms and would be extinct within weeks if not days.
Fear ensures you do not get eaten by a predator, avoid poison and toxicity, prevents you from walking off cliff edges, demands your stronger self-determination and ensures you remain breathing. It's like having a cheat code to exist in the world.
Your body is an extremely advanced piece of work and is pre-packed with billions of years of evolution. If the world was all hunky dory forever and ever, there would be no fear. Except the earth is an incredibly competitive place packed with enemies and problems. Therefore, your fear is actually quite useful and relevant.
The emotion of fear is also instrumental in introducing and motivating other emotions, such as curiosity and lust, and encourages our imagination and intelligence. It also inspires the idea of anger, rebellion, and independence. We were afraid before we became proud.
People who say fear is just bad are missing the point. To be RULED by fear is pathetic, sure. But this is kind of rare. Fear is a treasure of survival instinct. You can and should pay attention to your fear.
Thank you for your input. Certainly fear can compel us to do things that ultimately save our life and protect us from harm. Few would argue that, in those kinds of cases, fear is an important emotion and is linked to our survival.
But humans don't have a perfect filter that separates rational fear from irrational fear. When the movie Jaws came out, fear gripped the nation and compelled some people to go out on shark eradication missions to eliminate the threat. What threat? If you aren't in the water where sharks are, how can they eat you?
Prior to that movie being released I cannot recall a single report of people going out to hunt down sharks. But after the movie I remember numerous reports. The only factor that changed the actions of those hunters was the movie. And it had a decimating effect on the shark population. If those shark hunters had applied rational thinking and asked themselves, "I never did this before, why am I doing it now?" they would have concluded the idea that sharks are out to get us is pretty silly.
But they didn't.
About a year ago, a friend of mine had inexplicably begun directing our conversations to terrorism, and that continues to be the case. He thinks about it a lot. After 9/11 he talked about it like most of us did but after a while the incident faded from our conversations. 9/11 was never forgotten, it just didn't continuously consume our conversations.
My friend's talk of terrorism was as if he was being directly threatened. I asked him why he thought that he, personally, was in danger. All he could say was, "It could happen." When I gave examples of a lot of things that could happen, he replied with, "But this is real!" His fear reminds me of the fear of sharks back when Jaws was released.
I likened that fear to the fear of being struck by lightning. Yes, it could happen, I told him. But should you live in fear like it will? Should you act on it like it will? He seemed not to understand the logic.
Fear is often used to compel people to do things they otherwise wouldn't do and sometimes to do things they never thought they could.
Fear has been used to help keep the masses "in line", such as the fear of God. I've often thought the genius of Emperor Constantine in switching to Christianity was he could instill the fear of God into his soldiers hundreds of miles away. The Emperor wasn't watching them but God was.
Of all the reasons humans have to be fearful, the most baffling to me is irrational fear. The result of reacting to that fear can be surrendering your free will to follow someone who vows to protect you.
What I don't understand is why people don't stop and ask themselves if the fear is real or imagined. Most do but an awful lot don't.
Any thoughts?
Fear of God is a figure of speech, it doesn't describe real fear. It describes obedience.
Irrational fear , paranoia is based on something not real.
Fear that is beneficial is prudence.
I would say the worst fear is the state of being,its not a fear of anything particular, the fear transfers from one thing to another without missing a beat, that constant state of fear is ..again..a state of being.
That is the most destructive form of fear, it permeates every thought and drives the mind from the moment a person wakes until they can't get to sleep.
I would argue that fear is the most powerful and most important human emotion. It is the strongest motivator of animals and humans. It is absolutely essential to survival. Without it, we would have no future as lifeforms and would be extinct within weeks if not days.
Fear ensures you do not get eaten by a predator, avoid poison and toxicity, prevents you from walking off cliff edges, demands your stronger self-determination and ensures you remain breathing. It's like having a cheat code to exist in the world.
Your body is an extremely advanced piece of work and is pre-packed with billions of years of evolution. If the world was all hunky dory forever and ever, there would be no fear. Except the earth is an incredibly competitive place packed with enemies and problems. Therefore, your fear is actually quite useful and relevant.
The emotion of fear is also instrumental in introducing and motivating other emotions, such as curiosity and lust, and encourages our imagination and intelligence. It also inspires the idea of anger, rebellion, and independence. We were afraid before we became proud.
People who say fear is just bad are missing the point. To be RULED by fear is pathetic, sure. But this is kind of rare. Fear is a treasure of survival instinct. You can and should pay attention to your fear.
People who flee dangerous environments because of fear for themselves and loved ones is considered as pathological behavior by our politically-correct social justice warriors.
One mans fear is another's fun. I know many people who fear flying in an airplane. Irrational? Maybe. Maybe not. One can say that planes nearly never crash. But, they can, and at times, do. So, it isn't irrational. It is a very real possibility that it will crash. Something mechanical can go wrong. On the other hand, others fear leaving the house or being left alone in the dark. Those fears are riculous to me because nothing can happen to you by those two actions in and of themselves, yet some are certain they could die from it. you couldn't get me to go on a roller coaster for $50,000,000.00. That is irrational to me and I realize it but I will not put myself through that feeling for anything.
Fear is very real to the person experiencing it. Rational or not, it is real to them.
Rational fear is knowing if you fly in a plane it may crash and you may die. Irrational fear is knowing the odds are very high that will happen. The difference is the facts and what they support.
Coyotes sightings where I live are becoming more common. And as those sightings are being reported, people are beginning to express their fear. Some have feared the coyote will attack them. It got so bad the local paper recently featured an article educating people about coyotes. If that article was your first introduction to coyotes you'd only be afraid if you have a small cat of dog you let run loose.
Often times, irrational fear could have been avoided if education based on facts preceded it.
People who flee dangerous environments because of fear for themselves and loved ones is considered as pathological behavior by our politically-correct social justice warriors.
Where do you get this idea from? And what do SJW have to do with this topic? Maybe we should discuss obsession.
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