Fear : Fear And Fear

Fear a powerful emotion, once it is born it is merely impossible for it to perish. Fear corrupts, tortures, and haunts all. Humans have a horror encrypted into their core. With the power of holding one's fear forms the feeling of paranoia leading to the most holiest power of all, control. Throughout history paranoia has been used to control mass populations and indoctrinate their mind. A common example of this, is the reign of Joseph Stalin; dictator of the Soviet Union who used the paranoia of death and being sent to concentration camp to control his citizens and sustain power. George Orwell, a man who recognized this demoralizing form of dictatorship and was terrified, of what might come if no one rebelled against this. Furthermore he

In which school the shooting incident happened today? Should I help my child put on a bulletproof vest? Everyday miserable news are reported whenever we turn on TV. The news glue us to the TV screen and give us a sense of uneasiness. We feel living the extremely dangerous era.

To start of the novel Fear, by Gabriel Chevallier, Jean Dartemont is in France observing all the civilians celebrate the start of the new war. He criticizes their behavior and strongly disapproves, however, he admits a curiosity in him that convinces him to volunteer for the war for it will be a ‘remarkable spectacle.” After being approved to go to war, Dartemont heads to a training camp. There he becomes a private after failing to become an officer. Here he commands a group, but realized he finds the maintenance of soldiers to be tedious and useless work. Already he becomes quite eager to arrive at the front lines, which soon happens.

The idea of being ruled by a totalitarian power has never ceased to scare an audience that fears of being controlled. By this case we can soon to establish from the reality today in certain countries, that we create our own story of how dystopian societies are seen. Dystopian societies in movies and novels have played a huge role in our lives, from Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and Alduous Huxley’s Brave New World to Lois Lowry’s The Giver; cementing humanity's faults of suppressing power. But among those movies and novels, two have resonated in our minds, not only mimicking that of Syria and North Korea today, moreover presenting foreshadow of what is possibly to be. The film 1984 and the novel Fahrenheit 451 use fear

Fear is a feeling created in a response to a perceived danger. Fear can produce pleasure, heighten awareness, be in the form of phobia, a fear of the unknown and an instinctual response to danger.

In his book, The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner examines the elements of fear regarding ‘road rage’ and political correctness on college campuses. This section describes the ease in which people are sucked into “scares” or “hype” regarding a nonexistent problem. Glassner describes road rage as a small risk the media successfully turned into a wide scale fear among Americans. Organizations responsible for introducing fear of road rage to Americans include talk show hosts, news reporters, and printed news sources. In one example, Glassner identifies Oprah Winfrey as one guilty “fear monger.”

Americans are addicted to many things. For instance, the populace is addicted to such things as violent spectacle and imagery. Another example is sensationalism. But one of the paradoxical ones is the addiction to fear. The populace is under constant fear of something bad happening or being projected to happen soon. These are crime rates, financial collapse, terrorist attacks, epidemics of diseases, and many more. But it is a paradox that Americans fear the wrong things. As Barry Glassner states in his book Culture of Fear, "one of the paradoxes of a culture of ear is that serious problems remain widely ignored even though they give rise to precisely the dangers that the populace most abhors" (p. xxvi). The problem is that Americans not only fear the wrong things but the true fearful and dangerous things are ignored although these dangers are the ones they truly abhor.

Enforcing Fear Gains Divisive Obedience A contemporary American society is dramatically different from the one presented in the book 1984. The Inner Party, which is the highest ruling class of power in Oceania, is a totalitarian government creating an atmosphere of fear. Consequently, since no one is able to overthrow this organization, the government gets enough power to play a dominant role in the individuals’ everyday lives. Party members are always under strict surveillance, the worst part is that they have no one to trust.

Fear is a feeling induced by experience, perceived danger, or watching a frightening traumatic accident. The fear responses arise from the perception of danger and ultimately a change in behaviour, such as fleeing, or hiding or from perceived traumatic events. Every person has fears and different fears may be different adaptations that have been useful in our evolutionary past. I have fears too, and sometime, I feel embarrassed to intersperse my fear with others.

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman compares the two dystopian societies of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and 1984 by George Orwell. He suggests that “Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us” (Postman). The Party of 1984 maintained control of the people by keeping them under constant surveillance, whereas the government of Brave New World kept the citizens so happy, they never felt threatened enough to put up a fight. Both Brave New World and 1984 multiple methods of fear manipulation to control and restrict the ideas of their societies. Even though manipulation of fear could be necessary for keeping a peaceful society, it is used to restrict ideas in the societies through limiting language and a lack of history, inconsistent legal systems, and multiple methods of control based on perceptions of love and hate.

“The Gift Of Fear,” a psychology book written by Gavin De Becker, is an extremely useful and informative read. It gives valuable advice about how to act upon human intuition, how to recognize threats, and defines what real fear is and it’s purpose. I found the book to be extremely interesting. This book provided me with a sense of understanding on violence and fear and I feel much better prepared when it comes to recognizing dangerous situations.

In “The Certainty of Fear” by Audra Kendall, the author chronicles the fears we have throughout our lifetime. Starting with the fears of childhood and then adolescence, progressing to a mid-life crisis and concluding with the fears of our senior years; I can relate to these fears but I don’t remember much of my younger years. For me, my greatest fears started as an adolescent and continue now into the mid years of my life and further into the future of my senior years.

Fear paints a picture of necessary response. It tells your prospect that he or she will be somehow damaged. This threatens the ego’s continuous quest for self-preservation. Therefore, the threat of being damaged is insidious and powerful. Can you use it for your products and services?

Fear is something that large amounts of people have encountered at least once at some point in their lives. It has been said to have caused a variety of outcomes, many of them being largely negative. Therefore, it is a common human response to react to fear by counteracting it with positivity and/or success. The idea people have of what fear is depends on the person. In the article “How Fear Works”, for example, fear is defined as a “chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals” (Layton 1). The website “Psychology Today” defines fear another way, calling it “a vital response to physical and emotional danger” ("Fear Paranoia”). There are several other definitions people have on the

Culture of Fear, by Frank Furedi, is a book that looks at how widespread fear impacts Western cultures like the United States and Great Britain. Frank Furedi believed that society tends to panic too much, as we actually enjoy "an unprecedented level of safety." I admit that Frank Furedi's novel is based upon a novel concept, and an interesting one at that. However, Frank Furedi comes off to me as little more than a fear monger and an intellectual elitist. His book, to me, seems redundant more often than not. But sometimes part of college is learning about points of view that you may not agree with, so I tried to maintain that perspective when I read the book.