Are We Who We Think We Are
Are we what we think we really are? Or are we simply living in a society with an abstruse reality? At times I feel we are nothing but regular people, living with our stubborn self-righteous virtues in this so-called Arcadia, until we are shaken up by our devious circumstances and finally forced to embrace reality.
I often wonder why it is that we deliver better when pushed against the wall. Why is it that we are more motivated when the stakes are high? And why is it that the freakin realization factor always kicks in after messing things up?
The Word and the Answer
Every human being has a driving force in life. It could be termed as aspiration, ambition, avidity or hunger, but deep down below there is something else culpable for our insatiable vigor.
FEAR.
Fear, as we know it, could by no means be associated with a compliment. It is like a double edged sword. Its absence could turn you into a cold blooded psychopath, whereas too much of it could make you go cuckoo and earn you the suffix "Phobic Freak". Needless to say, fear is one of the most powerful primitive human emotions and it feeds on our darkest cogitations. The more we think, the more skittish we get.
Fear is only as deep as the mind allows.
Believe it or not, it is this so-called primitive feeling that has played a crucial role in keeping our ancestors alive. I for one believe fear is nothing but a vital response to physical and emotional threat. It is an alarm system our body is accustomed to, one that in most cases gets triggered just before doing something irrational or immoral.
In today's modern society, more and more people are falling prey to stress and anxiety, and this is exactly what is responsible for our capacious human appetite for weird diseases. Experiencing or anticipating any kind of trauma are emotions strong enough to send one into desolation. But it is the trauma knots that have a long lasting effect on us. Whenever trauma knots get triggered by our thoughts or by life events, fear arises. Physical traumas are short lived but the emotional ones could last for a lifetime.
Bravery, My @$$!
Everyone has a chink in his armor. Anyone who claims to be scared of nothing is either not amongst us anymore or is lying to himself. And by the way, bravery is not always associated with heroism and flying bullets. A true hero is somebody who has all the corners of life covered. Someone who physically might not be Herculean, but is emotionally a rock.
Deep down, every one of us feels scared. The reason could be anything from a petty little fear of being mugged to the more serious issues of life. Fear of poverty, failure, losing loved ones, experiencing emotional turmoil and fear of death are a few very common ones. I personally consider the fear of death, the so-called Thanatophobia, to be the freakiest of all. It is a kind of phobia that could really drive you nuts and get you twisted in your head.
Interestingly, people with an IQ below 70-75 tend to be largely immune to these kinds of phobias. I'll be honest, that little fact brought a smile to my face when I first read it. I found myself genuinely happy for a couple of my friends. A true catch-22 situation, if there ever was one.
The Twisted Part
Fear has its own mysterious ways to encapsulate our mind and our soul. A lesson well learnt by our wise forefathers who gave us religion. And before I go further, for anyone coming to this blog for the first time, I am not an atheist. I am very much a god-fearing person, though I prefer to be known as an agnostic-theist. I believe in the existence of just one mighty energy.
Like it or not, fear plays an important role in our modern society too. Fear is like the foundation of governance. In the arsenal of governance, fear happens to be the most lethal weapon. All our religious sects lean on two things, faith and fear.
Where faith fails, fear prevails.
From the early days of Judaism to the present day, the only thing that remains prevalent is the set of rules that govern us. The do's and the don'ts. Fear of repercussions is our trigger, something that has always held us together. Every god-fearing person, irrespective of religion, would by default be inclined toward heaven rather than hell, not because heaven is so pure and scintillating, but because it is the fear of hell that gives them a little extra push.
Atheists on the other hand, who don't tread the holy road, are kept under check by our government and its law, an organisation that carefully enforces guidelines to govern behavior. Needless to say, they capitalise on fear of punishment. They call it retribution. Imagine, had it not been for fear, how difficult it would have been to govern people.
For believers we have religion. For non-believers we have law.
Is fear a good or a bad thing?
Is fear a necessary evil?