Fear In A Well-Functioning Society
“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” (Mark Twain). It was Mark Twain an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer who had said these words and it is with great humiliation that many don’t concur with these great words. These words ring true throughout the history of our species yet we have somehow managed to lose the meaning of these words as we advance towards the future. Fear is meant to be beneficial to ourselves and those around us but it can also lead us to be abused. You are able to clearly see how fear is implemented in our biological behavior, in our society and within the government. Depending upon severity of the fear. If a person finds themselves in a situation where they are afraid, their nervous system will activate. This causes an adrenaline rush, your pupils may start to dilate, your heart rate will start to increase, and a number of other physiological responses. All of this ultimately results in a state of being where your foremost priority is survival. To put it bluntly, this enables a person to resist or escape from threats that would otherwise be threatening. The only issue with fear is if a person was so afraid that they actually stop right in their own tracks, this could result in the person freezing and being unable to think clearly. Basically, fear triggers physiological responses that allow people to respond to threats better and faster; however, too much fear will cause a person to freeze up and not be able to do anything.
Fear is required for a well-functioning society. Values like freedom are an equally stressed value, but there must be a balance between the two of them. The government instills too little fear in democratic countries (like India), allowing crime rates to be significantly higher than that of countries like China.
Think about it, crime has always existed, and will continue to exist. It adapts and evolves. The only way to limit crime is to instill fear into those who realize that they will be punished. The concept of the purge works beautifully as an example. The purge is a movie about how once a year for 24 hours all crimes are legal. The purge showcases what society would become if there was no fear instilled upon those who seek to do villainous things making our democratic society into a dystopia. A majority of the people in America have the same matching ideology that is spewed from the mouths of politicians who are really just the voice of special interest groups and serve a specific agenda for their own benefit, and they get this information from biased media.
A prime example of how fear is used within the premise of the government is the Bush Administration. They wanted the panic, tension, and fear forced upon the masses to justify them throwing away the very constitution they follow in the name of terrorism and "protecting" you when it did quite the opposite without people even realizing. It's hilarious how a country gets linked to a radical group, and gets invaded under false pretenses (weapons of mass destruction). Iraq has natural resources America wants (Oil) and Afghanistan has ninety percents of the world's opium (most lucrative drug). We end up getting so caught up by the things around us that we don’t realize that the thing that we should be fearing isn’t others around us but those beside us.
