Are You Ruled by Fear or Pleasure? “We are born with the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears are imposed by society” -Paulo Coelho. Neil Postman would disagree with this quote and say that we are fascinated with ourselves, technological advancement, and always distracted by social media. However, there’s a bigger force that drives people through today’s society than pleasing yourself with the latest commodities. Postman believes that Aldous Huxley’s stark vision of the future depicted in Brave New World is more accurate than George Orwell’s 1984. However, I disagree with Postman and believe that we are ruled by our fear more than pleasure. To further my argument, a great fear that people have due to our society’s uncontrollable …show more content…
The climate seems to be crashing all around us. For example, heat waves, tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, and massive storms are happening day after day all around the world. This leads to some people believing that the world is coming to an end, makes them become frightened, and some even prepare their bags just in case they have to flee. Fear of plague or severe sickness causes people to take extra precautions. On October 13, 2014 there was more than 8,300 people that contracted Ebola during this year's outbreak. Of those, more than 4,000 have died. With this people stayed home, stopped traveling, and out of fear they live their lives more cautious. In conclusion, people live in fear everyday of their lives. There’s so many little things that we are frightened of, besides the world’s issues. Such as being kidnapped when walking from school to home or having your child taken in a shopping mall when you look away for a second. Not only that, but the fear of failure, rejection, humiliation, suffering, and what lies ahead for the future. These are the reasons why I stand strong that fear is what controls us in today’s society over
Fear is a positive influence on people because it motivates them to promote change and helps people unite. People are influenced to unite in times when fear is present. “We pledge to do all we can to help you heal the injured, to rebuild this city and to bring to justice those who did this evil.” (Bill Clinton). Tragic events such as The Oklahoma City Bombing struck fear in many people, these tragic events “are the dark forces that threaten our common peace.”
Is fear the only thing to fear? Maybe it is, maybe it is not. Fear is a strong emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. Some people use fear to control the people around them. Someone that uses fear to control others is called a demagogue.
The Fear of Reality Fear dominates various aspects of life. It can elicit physiological and emotional responses that greatly influence an individual’s reaction. For example, fear can cause an individual to experience an adrenaline rush that gives someone an extra burst of energy to lift a car or quickly flee from a situation. Fear can also cripple an individual by producing intense feelings of anxiety and nervousness.
Fear is a powerful response, but it can easily be taken advantage of
Discussion Forum: You need to identify and explain one key point from the article. You then need to describe how that point is relevant to a real life example you have experienced. I 've found myself using the fear control response on more than one occasion. The article defines fear control responses as those reactions that occur when an individual uses psychological defense tactics to resist a message. Although I 've never really thought about it from that type of perspective, after reading the article it definitely makes sense that, “wishful thinking" would be considered a fear response.
In his book entitled Untie the Fear Knots of Your Heart, published by Liberty University Books in 2010, Dr. Ken Nichols explains how fears are generated from life events, and that knowing how to manage these fears can be far healthier than letting them control the heart. Dr. Nichols explains how fear is a normal response to life-altering events that one may face, and these fears can often tie one’s heart in knots. This steals the joy that Christ provides. Attempting to use the fear will not overcome the challenging event that originated the fear. Depraved things happen, and they can cause fear.
“The only thing we should have to fear is fear itself.” There are so many things, us as humans being feared. We shouldn’t because fearing something that only exists is something that only exists in our heads. I myself have fears just like everyone else.
Barry Glassner’s Culture of Fear identifies the fear that media gives us about problems that don't exist. They manipulate statistics and stories to get the result that they want- to buy their paper or watch their news because they have the most sensational stories. This inevitably earns them the most money and ratings. Glassner used the accurate statistics and the real stories that the news stations didn't use because then you would see how unnecessary they really are. They manipulate the truth so you become dependent on them for helpful tips about how to avoid these new dangers.
How Can Fear Change the Outcome of Our Lives? Fear can be beneficial and unhealthy, it just depends on how people handle it. Fear can keep people from doing horrendous things; however, being exposed to such fear can cause someone to become so paranoid they cannot enjoy life. For example, Edgar Allan Poe writes stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and “The Masque of Red Death” to show the different ways to handle fear.
Fear is within everybody in the world, nobody can escape it and nobody can avoid encountering it. Fear can define many things: being unable to talk to others, having a rush of adrenaline because something is frightening , or just the fact that the task at hand is too hard to handle and someone could potentially yell at someone for not completing it. Fear is the main element in both the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest and the film The Ward. Being in a mental ward is not as bad as many people say so, only until meeting certain people there, is when people change their whole perspective on it. The way it is presented to people and the thought of being in a mental ward makes people feel more fear within themselves.
Fear is a psychological and physiological response to distressing or dangerous circumstances. Fears are often rational – the fear of death, for example, or of harm to oneself of those one cares about. Some fears are more irrational, such as phobias of certain animals or things not causing immediate danger. In any case, fear is a powerful response and causes someone to be weaker and more submissive. 1984 by George Orwell illustrates how fear, a natural human experience, can be used as a means for a person’s submission to authority, In the novel, Winston Smith, the protagonist, is a working-class citizen in a futuristic, dystopian London.
Fear can be very advantageous when it comes to surviving. Fear inhibits you from doing risky actions that can put you and others in danger; it keeps you cautious and careful. Even though fear helps you when surviving, fear can harm you in life. Fear can cause paranoia that keeps you from enjoying life. You start to obsess over minimal things leading to hallucination.
Why do people like fear, because of how it is presented. Fear can be presented in many shapes and sizes. For an example, on Halloween, many haunted houses are open to the public and they go there to get scared. Haunted houses have played a big role for Halloween and how they produce fear. But there is a story behind Halloween and how it produces fear.
One of the most known human emotion is fear. It is a feeling everyone has experienced at one time in their lives. Many people react to fear in different ways. Fear can be defined as general anxiety. Fear has a way to set obstacles in life which become too big to overcome.
In Aldous Huxley’s dystopia of Brave New World, he clarifies how the government and advances in technology can easily control a society. The World State is a prime example of how societal advancements can be misused for the sake of control and pacification of individuals. Control is a main theme in Brave New World since it capitalizes on the idea of falsified happiness. Mollification strengthens Huxley’s satirical views on the needs for social order and stability. In the first line of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, we are taught the three pillars on which the novels world is allegedly built upon, “Community, Identity, Stability" (Huxley 7).