Fear: The Most Pervasive Emotion

Considering fear as a defining characteristic of the human experience.

Fear deserves our thoughtful consideration, much more than most people tend to assume.
Rather than scary monsters or the boogeyman, true fear involves things like loneliness, failure, and existential dread.

The terms “scary” and “fear” almost seem inappropriate in this discussion due to their common association with Halloween and Hollywood movies.
Let’s ignore that modern context for a moment, however, and consider the history behind fear itself.
The list of things people fear has been expanding for as long as people have been around.

Surely fear is a necessary consequence of our evolutionary process; in fact, humans aren’t the only species with that adaptation.
Many creatures find that life often benefits from a healthy fear of danger and death.
But humans have a wonderfully unique way of making things so much more complicated than they might otherwise need to be, and ever more complicated over time.

Arguably the primary distinction between humans and all other earthly creatures is our increasingly elaborate social structure.
The majority of other creatures are limited to extremely simple socialization opportunities and a very few are able to comprehend basic relationships.
Humans, conversely, often have very complex social experiences and tend to have a nearly endless supply of fears related to them.
Fears of rejection, of incompatibility, and of misleading pretenses are all examples of thoughts that have crept into each of our minds at one point or another thanks to our intricate interpersonal relationships.

As civilization has become more complex, so too have our abilities to experience an ever-expanding variety of fears.

Whether you are considering if you’re going to invite that friend to have coffee or you’re wondering why that national political figure made that particular statement, there is always an aspect of fear worth acknowledging.
Maybe you’re afraid that you’re not as close friends as you used to be, or maybe that they’re more attached to you than you to them, or maybe that they don’t like you anymore, or maybe that they never even liked you to begin with.
Maybe that political figure is afraid that they could lose the upcoming election, or maybe that their strategic partnerships are being weakened, or maybe that their huge scandalous secret might become exposed to the public.

The examples and possible fear-based explanations are endless.
Regardless of the particular details, potential elements of fear require adequate analysis in order to more fully understand and appreciate the reality of why people behave as they do.
Social norms and long-held traditions encourage people to ignore or hide this aspect of human nature, but that is a mistake that only serves to temporarily obscure the truth.

These types of fear cannot possibly be avoided, nor should we even try.
As with our physical safety, fear plays an important role in our emotional safety and stability.
For those who want to read between the lines and see through the fog of modern social interactions, it is an absolute necessity to recognize and analyze fear for what it is.