Fredrik’s Blog

The affects of fear on Individuals

The Buddha said, “Thus all fears and all infinite sufferings arise from the mind.” And he also said, “..It is not possible to control all external events but, if I simply control my mind what need is there to control other thing?”. In these two sayings I feel he is tying to say that you are the one responsible for fears even though you may blame other things. With this said, fear can affect people in many ways. I feel that there are two types of fear; “Know fear” and “Unknown fear”. The definition of fear in the dictionary means a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, ect., whether the treat is real or imagined; the feeling or conditioning of being afraid. I feel that this definition is a very detailed definition of fear. There are many different degrees of fear such as the ways people get fear and give fear, because of this people have created many types of phobias and that makes people act in strange ways.
“Unknown fear” is everywhere and it haunts people lives all the time. In English we have read many books and many of the characters have experience unknown fear. In “Lord of the Flies” many people were affected by fear. In this book even an object represents fear, which was the “beast”. The people were frightened and resorted to people of higher class or the elders, which in this case was Jack or Ralph in search of help. Even thought the people in the book “Lord of the Flies” were not sure if the beast was real or not. The affect on the individuals was that they needed help and did know what to do. Jack also used this fear to create power, which made him have more power and control. In Anne Franks diary Hitler used fear to take power and control over people. The fear made people weak and easy to penetrate their thoughts and minds. Finally, in one book that we just recently read called “The Tempest” Prospero used Unknown fear to take control over the people on the island who betrayed him before. This shows that fear is like a weapon. Ariel was the Unknown fear to the people trapped on the island.
There is also another type of fear in this world, which is called “know fear”. This fear everyone knows about and is aware of it. Even thought we may know these things we are still afraid of them. During this year we have had first hand experience with know fear. This was reading one poem that we had written, revised, and edited in front of a crowd during poetry night. How could we have gotten fear from going up on stage and saying one poem? Even thought we have lived, breathed, and eaten with this poem we are still afraid off standing in front of a small audience. Even though some of us have more experience with thieve types of events we all have some fear of these events. In a book we read this year, a school was faced with known fear. They were faced with peer-pressure (yes I know I am using health terms) and they were nearly forced into joining a group called The Wave even if they wanted to or not. Lastly, Anne Frank was also affected by known fear. She was affected with fear because people from ethnic and religious minorities, such as the Jews were being picked out and discriminated.
I feel that fear is like a weapon and can be used by everyone.  The power of fear can grow as rapidly as bacteria. I can consume an inter civilization if it wanted to.  If we have all this fear on this planet, one day we will not be able to stop it. In our world people are trying to help us relive ourselves from fear which they consider to be bad and evil, but I fell that we should always allow ourselves to have fear and learn form it from experience. So if everyone says we should try something why don’t we just try fear, no matter what it does to us. I would not mind trying living with fear in myself. By the way we all have fear inside ourselves.
Ps. If you think that all of our essays end in “So What’s or whys” then ask your self why did you make us write these essays and thesis.