Fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

-Bene Gessarit Mantra, from Frank Herbert's Dune

People are afraid of many things.  Death and public speaking are high on most people's ranking of things they fear most (for some death is #2).  These days the fear seems to be bubbling up all around, and it's mostly a result of perhaps the most fearful thing for human beings: the unknown.  We don't know what's going to happen, in Syria, or Afghanistan; we don't know what's going to happen if Iran manages to procure or build an nuclear weapon, we don't know if the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is going to work or create a bureaucratic monstrosity that leaves us all dying in the streets from Cholera.  We don't know if Congress is going to be able to compromise and get the government up and running again, we don't actually know if we care.  When you get down to brass tacks, we don't really know much of anything, and the things we think we know are largely contingent assumptions that more or less glaze over a whole bunch of uncertainty.

At some point fear is a biological response, it heightens our senses and kicks our adrenal system into overdrive.  The rather peculiar thing about adrenaline though is that it's addictive.  People can become "adrenaline junkies" and that's not just a euphemism.  The chemical substance that is adrenaline, can actually form addiction.  It's why we can get addicted to gambling, because winning (and actually losing too) generates a rush of adrenaline, your body likes it and says, "hey, give me some more of that stuff!"

But the responsible part of your brain says, "not so fast, that stuff is dangerous and expensive and we can't just go doling it out willy nilly, we need to save it for when we really need it."

Then the irresponsible part of your brain teams up with your body and figures out ways to force that adrenaline into your system: jumping out of planes, risky gambles, sex or it's easy cousin pornography, drugs that mimic the feeling, you name it, anything that works.

I think that's why I keep reading the news; the crass stupidity of the leadership of this country regularly gives me just enough of an anger/fear boost to get me through to the next cup of coffee.  Man, brain chemistry is weird sometimes.

Anyhow, back to biology, adrenaline inspires highly autonomous physical reactions; you don't think, you just do.  Sometimes this leads to almost superhuman accomplishments, like a diminutive wife lifting a car off her husband (true story, not mine but true nonetheless), a feat which the conscious mind says is rather impossible, but the body, functioning without the interference of logic, does rather promptly.

Fear is indeed the mind killer, because if you're being chased by a leopard, you don't have the luxury of pondering the precarious nature of human life, you just need to run, fast.  The problem arises when the fear is not of the sort you can outrun.  What if you need to think things through?  What if the danger is not of the slavering, predatory sort?

Well, then biology is working against you, and you need to rise above it, apologize to that logical, responsible part of your brain and ask it to please help you sort through the confusing feelings and conflicting information.

Humanity has evolved a rather unique capability to harness the fight or flight impulse and do something different.  At some point our ancestors realized that we weren't going to be able to outrun those leopards for very long, but if we armed ourselves with pointy sticks, we could become a rather more formidable organism.

When we're scared of the dark, we make a torch, gas lamp, an incandescent light bulb.

When we're terrified of disease, we find the cause and locate a cure.

When we're afraid of anything, we immediately begin trying to solve the problem and overcome our fear, and many times we have to conquer our fear, before we can approach a solution.

We're pretty amazing that way: don't be afraid.

Or be afraid, but then get over it and figure something out.