Fear...

Okay, so I didn't wait THAT long to post about fear.

And it's a loaded topic, with so many twists and turns that it would take weeks and weeks of blogging to unravel it.

Science has its explanations of the physical changes that accompany the emotion of fear. But do the chemicals make the fear? Or does the emotion of fear spark the chemical response?

Fear, as it is understood in both psychology and anthropology, is survival-based. It has its roots in our hunter-gatherer origins. I know this statement is oversimplified, but I'm blogging before work and I need to make this brief.

Natural fear reactions, just as they are, are natural. We are here on this planet. We live, we breathe, we grow. We're animals, and we want to stay alive, perhaps for no other purpose than to experience being human and to pass on our human genetic code to future generations.

But if there is one thing I have noticed about humanity, is that along with our larger skulls, larger brains (and in the view of natural selection, the idea that larger genitalia make for better survival of the species), we seem to have also developed notions of:

Rank or class
Superiority/Privileges (or lack thereof) based on rank or class
Inferiority/Privilges (or lack thereof) based on rank or class

Granted, other species also have something of a hierarchy, but their associations seem to be based more on physical size rather than finances or expertise in one field or another.

We humans, however, seem to attach much emotion and meaning to the above notions of rank, class, privilege, inferiority/superiority. We manipulate and shove people around emotionally and mentally because of these attachments, creating fear in people where there was none, originally.

Why? What's the purpose? Is it ancient, primal survival tactics that are merely blended in with modern times and the development of currency?

If that's all it is, the notions of financial and educational equality have been achieved to great success in many parts of the world.

But what of religious fear and the use of power and cruel manipulation to make the "common people" do what the people in power want done, supposedly in the Divine Name?

That, my friends, I have never understood, and I am still trying to wrap my head round it.

I am on a high right now, listening to Jon Anderson's "Toltec" album, so I am not necessarily in a very "academic" mood. ;-)

BB and Namaste,
Rev. Kat ^.^