The Element of Fear

“Try laughing, so that whatever scares you goes away” hosts Japanese Film, ‘My Neighbour Totoro‘. This is referring to a haunted house in the middle of a deserted countryside. This is very much still a shared concern amongst people, as portrayed in the Horror Movies: ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (1974), the recent ‘The Stranglers’ (2008) amongst many others, just pick out a handful of Horror Movies and this will be a running theme - away from humanity and surrounded by nature.

According to the Dictionary, Fear, is: an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

Fear is still a physical feat, but has it escalated past that, mostly? In a world where we are so concerned that our Iphones boot up correctly, the internet connection runs smoothly on our flashy hi-tech laptops (which it ironically isn’t as I type this…and yes I freaked out, it’s been down for many hours now), and when our Facebook refuses to load due to a technical glitch, so we cannot spy on the world or inflict the world with our life stories. What makes the news regarding youngsters at the moment are protests, demonstration movements and of course, looting. Granted that this is just a minority but the video games we have been playing for years such as, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Halo and Red Dead Redemption are all factors into why I feel a lot of people fear things that will never cause pain but, lack the fear when perhaps it would sensible to fear.

I’m no different - I’d happily walk down a side road at midnight on my own, or crossover a motorway at peak time or order a McDonalds for Breakfast. Okay, so the last one’s a lie, I would only ever order one of those in a fatal emergency. I’m not slating the company, just all fast-good outlets. My point being that the things that worry me most (excepting a few obviously) are things that really don’t matter. So, my Cell has no signal or battery - the other person isn’t going to die if they have to wait an hour longer for a text/call. Despite this known fact, I still feel as if rapidity is the correct and if not the only way.

A few common fears amongst people seem to be: death (themselves or people close to them) and an epidemic. Countlessly I’ve loaded myself into an early morning train and been greeted with an abundance of sniffles, coughs and hanky-shakings. I instantly attempt to shield my mouth and nose before realising I’m in an enclosed space and therefore the bacteria will succeed.

Not afraid of rollercoasters, or being in a Vehicle driving too fast down the M27 or M25 (British Motorways), but afraid of catching a cold, whether my clothes match or whether the flying insect above my head is going to drop onto me. Are all my fears wrong?

A scientific answer to what fear is could be “Fear has a certain contagious feature to it, so the fear in others can elicit fear in ourselves. It’s conditioning, like Pavlov and the salivating dog.” In other words, we can be drawn to fear, so perhaps it is still that we fear these things, but we’ve become immune to the feeling, so therefore do not feel it as fear. We feel it as a similar emotion to those we feel everyday.