Let’s Examine Fear – Its Usefulness and Its Destructiveness

Instinctual fear has an important place in life for us humans and for all living beings. It is a sort of inner guidance system that tells us whether to stay and fight or to run like hell in the other direction. On its most primal of levels, it indicates whether someone or something “out there” in the world is friend or foe or if it is going to eat us or not. It is an important survival mechanism that serves as a radar that instinctively determines the level of safety that exists in our environment from one moment to the next. Physically, it resides inside the limbic brain that is located in the medulla oblongata at the base of our brains. Energetically, it resides in our solar plexus inside of our third chakra. That anxious gut feeling is an energetic, inner warning system about our potential for survival. Our will to live also exists inside this third chakra, and it steers us away from or even through dangerous situations if we would only listen to what our gut is telling us.

The feeling of fear is a safe and useful tool, like a light switch that comes on when we need to see clearly in the dark. But if the switch stays on too long or off too long, we can burn ourselves out and/or damage the mechanism of fear and its usefulness to us. If we have had it on too long, we may misread everything in the world around us as dangerous and will eat us if we drop our vigilance for even a moment. This is a hellacious way to live, constantly scanning the horizon and beyond for a danger that may not even exist. The amount of Xanax being consumed in the USA right now is a really good indication of exactly how anxious and fearful a great deal of our population is, and how hard it is for many of us to stand down and relax without meds. Then there are the people who literally deny the reality of something or someone who is definitely very dangerous and will, figuratively speaking, eat them alive if given half a chance. Their fear switch is malfunctioning in the “off” mode of denying the existence of danger. Actively denying that something or someone who is dangerous is not won’t do much for the survival prospects of anyone that does not allow themselves to feel fear when they definitely should do. And these folks won’t live long enough to contribute to the gene pool – Darwin at work, if you understand what I mean.

These two, stuck-in-a-groove types of responses are generally on the extremes of a bell curve diagram of the measurement of a given population, with many variations of both responses between them. The goal is to be in the sweet spot for this emotion called fear. This is the place where that fear on and off switch is flexible, not static in either position. It goes on or off in an accurate and real reevaluation of the safety or danger that actually exists at any given moment “out in the world”. There is this lucky personality type which has both healthy fear and relaxation responses that realistically reflect the world around them at any given moment. Their capacity to read a room for danger is accurate and affords them a sense of peace of mind and personal security when it is actually safe. They are able to allow themselves to exhale, relax and enjoy life when things are truly safe. And they can respond in a moment’s notice if things are dangerous and react as needed- fight or flight.

Unfortunately, fear as a tool has been severely manipulated by nefarious individuals all over our world Right Now. It has been a very destructive use of fear, and of hatred, that has turned friend against friend – it has even divided families into opposite camps. It’s really an age old- ancient, really- strategy that uses our all too human tendencies to fear and to hate against us to divide us from each other in order to control all of us. The goal of this type of strategy is to make use us for a very small population’s ultimate purposes, which, in all honesty, sucks for the majority of us.  So, what’s a decent person supposed to do in the face of this kind of covert and overt manipulation? Expose it for what it is, what it is doing and how, and help the rest of us to see it for what it is. Thus empowered, we can collectively stop that tiny minority from using and harming the rest of us and send them to jail or to an insane asylum.

This is when the clarity of knowing what and who is dangerous and what and who are safe in a given population is vitally important. This is when good and accurate assessments of what are truth and lies, or manipulation, divisiveness, and coercion, must be the top priority of the majority of us for the highest good for most of us. Right now, we are living through a period in history of what could be called the upside-down world. A minority of very rich and powerful people have made it their life’s work to manipulate all of us into believing their lies through the dangerous use and manipulation of our human fear and hatred switches. This has happened over the internet, corporate-owned news outlets, and artificial online “news” sites. However, I believe that we can choose to give over our power and allow them to continue to manipulate us or NOT. We are way more powerful when we stand together in the clarity and truth of reality. We need to turn the world right-side up now, and we all have the power to do so if we all choose it together.

And from clarity and truth, I see it has already begun. The protests today were a good step in the righting of the world – at least here in the USA. The majority of our common humanity is beginning to take action in communities all across our country. People are getting up and going out, determinedly seeking out the reality of the world around them. News agencies funded by our general population, not corporations owned by the minority, are sprouting up and speaking with clarity and truth, facts, not lies. And they are supported by donations from individuals like all of us, from their hard-earned money. Young people are running for political office after having lived through an untenable childhood of gun violence in their schools. This is power – real power - and in this case, this is Fear used correctly and collectively in evaluating the real-life situation that faces us and deciding to fight not to run because the alternative will be slavery of the majority to a minority of really rich individuals.

 So, you now know what the usefulness is and what the destructiveness is of fear. I will now share what the definition of courage is – being afraid but doing it anyway – and this is the usefulness of fear at its best, in my opinion. Folks are standing up every day now and saying this far is too far and you can go no farther, not anymore. And to this I say Brava and Bravo!

Collectively, we’ve got this!

Namaste,

Jean 🌱