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Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to thinksanely under the influence of a great fear.- Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)Fear changes everything. Man, woman or child, a person experiencing fear will notact the same and will not make decisions and choices in the same way they do whentheir fear is at a manageable minimum.While security is a myth as no one can live in complete security unless theywithdraw from the world into a shell of a life, many people live in an excess offear as if it were normal.Fear is not normal, except in the sense of apprehension that prevents us fromdoing foolish things that could result in injury or death. Fear is made entirelywithin ourselves.People who live in fear flock to places of worship that offer them solace andcomfort, protection from that which makes them afraid. That protection is worn asan invisible cloak in the same way that the same people wore their fearpreviously. They believe in the protection with the same devotion with which theybelieve in their fears.Some join extreme political parties or support measures that are extreme withinmainstream parties, believing that if the "bad guys" are somehow corralled andsuppressed the world will be a better place. Whether the bad guys eventually arerounded up and silenced is not as important as the feeling of power over othersthat passing laws that restrict the behaviour of other people not like themselvesgives them. Power as a security factor works at the grass roots level as well asthe top levels of politics, industry and the military. Physical and emotionalabuse are the most common forms of fear showing itself as power over others.The most usual form of withdrawal from some aspects of society as a result of fearis addiction. The addiction could as easily be to television, movies or bingo aswell as to gambling, alcohol or racing cars. These are all distractions, at thestart, from the causes of their fear. Excessive participation in bingo or watchingan inordinate amount of television or movies has a longer term effect on aperson's life than the more familiar addictions (with damage not as severe asdrugs or some other forms), but it does change people.In general, fear makes people close their lives in, making them smaller. Theunconscious attempt to control their lives by building walls around them alsoresults in generalization and prejudice. For example, a fear of Middle Eastterrorists by a white North American (at least terrorists from the Middle East)might show itself as a dislike for or prejudice against Muslims in general, or forpeople with beards or for people with olive skin colour.While most fears happen as a result of unfortunate accidents of fate (such asclaustrophobia resulting from watching a movie about people escaping through atunnel dug under the wall of a concentration camp), some are knowingly andconsciously taught. A fear of terrorists is an example of the latter.Of the 6.5 billion people on earth today, only an insignificantly small percentageof us have died or been injured by a suicide bomb or a sniper. Given a choicebetween protecting themselves from terrorist attacks or reducing climate change(aka global warming), more people would choose the protection even though thelikelihood of their being harmed by a terrorist is far less than that of beingstruck by lightning.Though statistics are not available, the percentage of people who openly expressfear that they will lose their jobs in the near future or who strongly disliketheir jobs is many times as great as the percentage who go about seeking a new jobto avoid these unpleasant eventualities.Not much is logical about the decisions of people who are afraid. They can't bedepended upon to act in logical ways all the time. Given that adopting fearunnecessarily is itself illogical, the irony is striking.If you know someone who is afraid of something, you can only help them if theywant help to overcome their fear. If they don't want help, nothing you do canchange their minds. In the sense of being devoted to their fear, fearful people
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