Fear IS the problem

Wow...as time goes on I am realising more and more that fear is at the root of preetty much everything. Sometimes even love...am i the only one whoo sees this?

fear controls a lot of what we do, but i would not say it controls everything. do you come on here out of fear? i suppose you could see it as people go to school or work out of fear of being reprimanded for not doing so, etc, but some people go out of enjoyment, or to achieve an end. fear controls us all in different ways, what i may do because im afraid of something, you may do for fun.

i agree that some people do go into a relationship out of fear, or love someone because they aleviate that fear. the whole issue of marrying for security follows that idea. but sometimes fear can be confused with other things, for example, i dont like be alone, i enjoy having a gf. im not afraid of being single however, though i would say i was afraid of losing my gf, though that is a slightly different thing.

In terms of basic survival for humans and other mammals, probably other animals too, fear is definitely an important motivating force. Pleasure is also important, though. There might be other motivational forces but the two that occur to me immediately are definitely fear and pleasure.

Fear motivates us to run from predators, but it's pleasure that motivates us to choose eating an apple over a rock. We're not afraid of eating the rock, it's just that it doesn't give us any pleasure. What causes us fear and gives us pleasure are determined by evolution. For an example of fear, take fear of heights. People who enjoy standing at the edge of cliffs and looking down are probably more likely to fall and die than those who stay away from cliffs. Therefore, the fear of heights is passed on as an evolutionary advantage. Of course, not everyone has a fear of heights, because not /all/ prehistoric people who enjoyed heights fell and died. But the fear of heights survived because it gave those who had it an evolutionary advantage.

There are reasons things that taste good taste good. Like the apple. An apple is beneficial to us, so it's good to eat the apple. Therefore, eating an apple is a good thing. Since pleasure is a motivating factor, it's the pleasure of eating the apple that makes us want to eat it. Therefore those who take pleasure from eating the apple eat it and benefit.
On there other hand there are things that taste bad. Rotten milk smells and tastes bad, so most people avoid drinking it. It's not because they /fear/ the milk, it's because the gives them displeasure. Evolutionarily, those who /liked/ that flavour drank the milk and often died of sickness because of it.

It was randomness that first gave people the gene that makes us like or dislike something, but through evolution, the most beneficial system of likes and dislikes was the one that was most likely to survive.

Fear is not the only factor.

I agree fully that some fear is necessary and actually a part of our instinct. But when it comes to emotions like hate, which is entirely based on fear, that has nothing to do with instinct. Whether it is making fun of people, racism , or any other form of hate, they are all a product of insecurity which is again founded on fear. I agree with what cynic-al said I guess I was just exagerating in a moment of frustration.

sorry to sound like im picking on you here, but not all hate is fear. sometimes hate can also stem from something someone has done to you, you hate them for it, but you dont fear them.

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Wow...as time goes on I am realising more and more that fear is at the root of preetty much everything. Sometimes even love...am i the only one whoo sees this?

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I have came up with that same thing years ago when I served in the Navy.

Money is the root of all evil - its more of a saying then a fact. In most cases when you track down a bad thing, it leads to money.

But the real culprit is fear. We're afraid that we won't have enough money.

We're afraid that people won't like us.

We're afraid that women won't like us.

We do things to counter those fears. Fears created out of our own imagination.

Yeah i agree i think that our society is just based on fear. We live in a very capitalistic society that teaches us money is the most important thing and without it you are nothing. So we grow up seeking this money but not because we like money but because we are afraid of becoming a failure. We often mistake this for materialism but its nothing more than fear like okcitykid just mentionned. We have a fear that people wont like us for who we are so we have to compensate with material things.

In response to cynic-al no worries man...its always good to share an opinion. I just think that hate is such a strong emotion that it can only be felt with a direct attack on one's self and personality like if someone insults you. But if you arent insecure you dont get hurt by this insult and you just shrug it off. Most everyone acts out of these insecurities, and when you start looking at people like that you realise that people dont have a problem with you but rather a problem with themselves. If someone beats you up, the problem lies with them and not with you. Im not saying that you shouldnt fight back but simply that you wont hate them because your self has not been affected.

I'd like to refer here to a good image okcitychild brought up. He talks of two rooms, on light, one dark, connected by a door. One lives their life in the dark room. When one opens the door the light goes into the dark room, but the dark does not enter the light room.

As he says, and rightly, we may never know why the dark, the doors or the room is there. Thats a question for something more than I am know. But, I dont know whether we should fear fear as daft as this may sound. When you process photographs, if you put too much light onto the film it ruins the hue, the contrast, so the balance of the photo is way off. Perhaps fear is there for a reason, to live life so we can learn. Its just a feeling I have-though admittedly things would be much simpler and clearer without it.

Now, as to what we or I do with this feeling, who knows? We can liberate those who live life in ignorance, living under fear. To do this, we have to understand their hardwiring. Don't waste too much time by bringing yourself down though.

I see the light room as the comfort zone. I'm sure many spiritual people visit this often sitting silently on their own in peace. But their is a world that exists-where bullies batter inncoents and the like. I think, and its for me, the dark ROOMS hold fear, hold guilt, hold bad things, but from a lightened room they may be liberated if you struggle hard enough to open the doors. Also, if you struggle out of your own dark rooms, the feeling is just as good; if not better.

Fear might be the root of all evil, but hate is the beginning.

I think what cynic-al is talking about is getting hurt. You get hurt when someone you trust hurts you. You would not hate them if you didn't trust them. If you didn't trust them and they hurt you, it wouldn't hurt so bad and you wouldn't hate them. But because you trusted them, it hurt

Bad things begin to happen, this hatred will destroy you and any good in your life including anyone who is close to you. Its root was someone elses fear, but begins with your hatred. Now that you have leaned to fear, you will never be so trusting again, at least not so easily anyways. So now we have a dark room, and to find peace with another person, we have to open that door.

But we won't open that door to anybody, to some people it needs to stay dark for our own protection, maybe this is what heyjme1 is talking about.