What is Fear?

The Profound Rebel’s Five Faucets of Fear


Fear is a part of the ocean that is in our souls or psychological set up and most of the times interferes with our ability to love. I call this the The Profound Rebel’s Psychical Ocean of Fear. This ocean is the one unitary system that defines us as psychological human beings and it has one type of watery substance. Yet this substance flows through different systems or pipes that make the substance seem different when it comes out. An ocean can flow into many rivers and we might perceive the rivers as all different; for one river may have clean water, depending on its environment, another dirty water, as per the environment as well. For example we drink water but it comes out of our bodies in different faucets and as different substances. Like one way would be when the water that we have consumed comes out through the urinary system after experiencing some metabolisms and reactions with other substances; then this becomes what we call urine, yet it is still water but not in its purest form. Another would be the respiratory system, through which it becomes what we have named sweat. Many are the systems but one more would be the circulatory system where it becomes what we have called blood. So the same substance undergoes different systematic mechanisms and becomes almost a new system all together, even if it is still the old substance. The ocean has many systems that we call rivers, lakes and dams etc. Within those selfsame systems there are many other systems that help promulgate the substance to other surfaces.

Among the systems in the The Profound Rebel’s Psychical Ocean of Fear, is The Rebellious River of Fear; this river extends itself through channels or pipes. These channels or pipes are The Profound Rebel’s Five Faucets of Fear. They are all founded on the emotion of fear, if fear is an emotion, but they are manifested in different ways.

DEFINITION OF FEAR:

Fear is a generation of wrong perceptions that make things/people in the world seem like they pose a threat on us and render us helpless in the eyes of the scary subject or object. The helplessness is felt by a notion of pending danger and it makes us very uncomfortable. There is nothing really scary in the world, except only to the perception of that/them which/who fear(s). For example, a man can be scared of heights but if he gets proper training and motivation he becomes a stunt man. A young boy may have the fear for big boys, especially bullies, but when he is high on strong drugs he becomes fearless. Now that shows exactly how perception works, it depends on the information from inside. The little boy who feared the big boys was at that moment being informed from inside of his inferior mind that the big boys were harmful and could defeat him even if he tried to fight them. Now he goes out, smokes drugs and has his perception clouded by power and he feels, by information from inside his fogged mind, like every thing in the world is so small and that he fears nothing in the world. So perception plays a huge factor in the life of everyone, especially when it comes to what makes us fear. It depends on what you consciously or unconsciously feel towards, against or for a certain situation. If you think that spiders are harmful you will feel a strong fear of spiders. No wonder people of the same age, maybe even the same height, width, intellect would fear different things. Yet there are some that fear certain things by reason of what age group or social circle they belong to. An emotionally hurt man fears women, but a loved young man thinks women are the best “thing” to have ever happened to the world. So their different perceptions make up their different chemical reactions. Karen Horney says that “man is not disturbed by events but by his perception of them.” There is nothing to really fear in the world but our minds need training to come to grips with the fact that we are powerful and above what we call “situations.” A girl who has been raped would fear men but the situation placed her in a perception that informed her that she was always in danger and there was no safe place found in the world for her. This fear is simply (I know this sad case does not call for a word like “simply”) a wrong perception of a real situation. This fear has then found way to manifest in different ways, channels, pipes or faucets.

ETIOLOGICAL AGENT OF FEAR (cause of fear):

Every society that has ideals of heroes, winners, villains, losers and so forth, is a cause or shape of fear that takes permanent residence in the psyche of its citizens. The concept of win-and-lose, especially win-or-lose, is the most powerful sculptor of our societal psyche, our ego and superego; this brings about scary notions of heaven or hell, success or failure, married or single, married or divorced, driving or walking, driving big car or driving small car, loaded or broke, healthy (HIV negative) or sick (HIV positive), moral or immoral, powerful or powerless, beautiful or ugly, charming or repulsive, fit or fat, famous or obscure, active (busybody) or passive (lazyass), believer or pagan. Such a demographical set-up of the world we live in causes great fear and neurosis in every society affiliate, and exacerbates the fire that lead us to develop various defence mechanisms in order for us to survive.

The Profound Rebel’s Five Faucets of Fear are namely:

1)Hate, which is commonly the great dislike of an object or subject. This has been mistaken to be the antonym of love because of the world’s obsession with opposites. It is fearing that the next person or event will make you have an uncomfortable response that you were not really ready for. A person believes that this is capable of harming them (emotionally, sentimentally or physically) then they won’t admit that they fear such, except only through the powerful word hate. Hate has an inclination of hurting, but sometimes as part of fear itself, hate fears to hurt, fearing the consequences, which is the inability to respond in itself. Hate is all fear but fear is not all hate. This too manifests in many forms, with the most common being self-hate and isolation.

2)Jealousy, the fear of the success of others. This is manifested in people by them feeling intense feelings of discomfort whenever encountering what is deemed a successful person or the person’s potential success; and sometimes just when being reminded of or thinking about the success of the person. They have the perception that this person is better or close to being better than them; so such a situation reduces their position in the eyes of a watching world or even the very eyes of the feared person. Inferiority complex is the mother of all fears and is a great motivator of jealousy. Jealousy can even cause many of the types of delusion, making the person believe that others are succeeding just to harm them (by humiliating them or making them feel small when they feel supreme.)

3)Competition, a person’s innate survival instinct to be above, among, against or with others in a world with defined notions of success. It is the need to be accepted by being or doing what is normally expected of human beings. Competition is that feeling that says there’s no problem with being wrong, as long as everybody is wrong and that it is imperative to be right if there are those who seem to be right. This is a fear in light of that one cannot picture oneself behind in a world that is moving forward and one does not want to be too far ahead in a world that is greatly behind. We fear to be unique unless everybody loves unique people. We don’t want to live alone, far from the madding crowd; we always want people with whom to compare our lives with. Although this competitive spirit haunts us sometimes by subjecting us to various stresses, we still need it to feel that we are alive and in line with the world. This fear is also founded on inferiority because those who harbour it always want to boost their status by being the same with or better than others. A good example is Socrates the great philosopher who realised how unrealistic the world was for him as an individual that he gave up on living a “normal” life and stayed by himself far from the madding crowd. People finally concluded that he was nuts because of the way he dressed and seemed to have lost care of the material things of the world. Yet he sometimes liked and enjoyed engaging in conversations with people and that displayed his need to be accepted as an intellectual being, thus competent in a world that demanded great thinking. To be very different is not what many people can afford, not when it makes them look abnormal to the world of set demographics. So we can only live up to set rules, we can only run within the borders of the race lane. We do no want to battle bears in the jungle even if we can but will only accept fighting within the boxing ring. Competition is a sort of survivalism.

4)Irresponsibility, the lack of zeal towards handling situations that we dislike or were not ready for. For example, I may love someone today because we have a great intellectual connection, but if it happens that something goes wrong tomorrow with their abilities I would be reluctant to stick around. This may cause me to flee and play far from the person as if I never knew them. Does that mean I no longer love them? No, I might still be loving them but my fear of responsibility would have driven me away and made it look like I did not care while I did but couldn’t afford the price. This is irresponsibility, the inability to positively respond to this situation. This fear can still be good. For it is better for a person who is not emotionally ready, to leave the job than to dare and endue something as profound as handling the handicapped when you are not ready. That might even create a danger, breeding evil plans to help you escape the burden in a way that people will not think of you as bad. Like murdering the ill person and appearing to be innocent. So if one experiences a fear like irresponsibility the responsible thing to do for one to handle this is for one to walk away without causing any unnecessary problems. This fear (irresponsibility) may even cause a person to neglect the most important emotions they usually experience by fearing to be responsible in dealing with them. It goes further by manifesting in people who fear truth or engaging in dialogue in terms of what they believe. Irresponsibility can be said to be an apathetic inclination found in the ocean of an individual.

5)Trauma, the experience of fear that leaves one fearing afterwards. You can expand this for yourself, I guess. I'm afraid to give you everything.

When last did you pray? What did He say? Please tell Jove to give me a call.