Insightful Observations

Are you afraid of yourself?

Have ye courage, O my brethren?…He hath heart who knoweth fear but vanquisheth it; who seeth the abyss, but with pride. He who seeth the abyss but with eagle’s eyes, — he who with eagle’s talons graspeth the abyss: he hath courage.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Fear is the basic emotion hidden behind most of the human (too human!) behavior and motivation. It is a double-sided blade that both constrains and preserves life. We can find motives and states of mind such as anger, asceticism, overt agreeableness, hope, love, rationalization, prospective thinking and conduct, guilt, inauthenticity, friendship, shame, chastity, holy faith, greed and so forth all stemming from an underlying feeling of fear! Having said that, let us now examine some of those propositions.

“I could have done otherwise”, “I should have chosen the other option”, “I would if I could…” – the fear of making the wrong choice. The babbling that comes with the typical lack of action. Action speaks louder than words, how true is that, that’s why humans invented humor to hide both the lack of courage to take action and the regret of not doing anything that they feel afterwards. We can also find here the fear of taking responsibility upon oneself, where the basic existential burden of life lies as well, manifested as the fear of asserting one’s existence in the world. “Maybe I shouldn’t have been born because I’m not worth it?”. The pain of regret from inside and indirect ridicule through false consolations from the social environment outside are the real objects of fear in this case.

Fear of guilt, of feeling guilty after having sinned. How clever and hindering at he same time this Christian invention is. Parents don’t even realize what they are doing when they instill this notion of a lasting guilt after doing something bad into their children, for it has no place in mind of a free man! Go away you obedient Christian sheep guilty of the Adam’s original sin, for autonomous lions possess the relieving insight of unnaturalness and laughableness of this herd-controlling tool. Lions don’t learn what is good and what is evil, they will it!

Fear of loneliness and, consequently, abstaining from doing unconventional things and taking unpopular stances. One can easily step out of the herd, but by that he’s risking not being allowed to get back in. It is the ultimate choice one has to make between loneliness and authenticity or boredom and pretense in a herd. Only the strong ones have the courage to say yes to their bliss in spite of disapproval of others. The object of fear here is the fear of losing one’s social status,  external validation that assures one in uncertain cases and, in majority of cases, the inability to share one’s experience with his closest acquaintances. Only the genius is not sociable, for his own monologues entertain him far more than other people as Schopenhauer correctly has it.

The hedonists with their greed and lust. Their fear of losing their possessions, money and experiencing displeasure reveals their very short-sightedness. The last shirt has no pockets, thus don’t forget that you won’t be able to take your material, money and women with you in time of death. Remember this my friends: there is no intrinsic happiness in technological gadgets, cars and young virgins, they are only as valuable as you subjectively think they are. Poor Socrates has a far more fulfilling life than a rich pig.

Jealousy is the hidden fear of being judged as inferior to others. How pitiful it is to care about the opinion of others to an extent that one destroys himself with this harmful thought called jealousy. Self-worth is the only worth that matters. Opinions are like youth and beauty – very transient. Arm yourself with this knowledge my friends, for it will help you greatly next time you hear someone boasting about his possessions or successes.

Some say that the fear of death, the knowledge of the inevitability of death, which is peculiar only to man among all the world’s species from his very youth, is the basic drive to action. I say it is failure of shielding oneself with essential knowledge on a transcendent spiritual level. Poor materialists who are burdened by the unavoidable letting go of everything they have in the time horizon of a few decades. How painful must this knowledge of an unavoidable future loss be!

The fear of saying “I believe this and it is good for me!”, which would unmask one in a middle of social masquerade. No that wouldn’t be suitable to appear at a masquerade without a mask. Even more disturbing would be to stand up for one’s conviction in spite of the peer pressure to conform. Superficial masks that put on fragile and artificially constructed egos don’t last very long, thus you better hide and preserve them well you actors!

Fear of love, this basic worldly happiness- and sorrow-producing emotion, a very unsafe one, indeed. Not only it is hard to open oneself fully and commit to the object of love, but it is even harder to close oneself when the circumstances require one to do so. Passion is so hard to find and even harder to abandon. Above that is the love of another human. As Nietzsche has it, every true man wants danger and play, thus he desires woman as the most dangerous plaything!

Fear of losing meaning in life. Only a few are as strong as Sisyphus and capable of living despite having the knowledge of emptiness, meaninglessness and vanity of everything worldly. To discover that one spent the majority of his life chasing after a carrot on stick hidden underneath an irresistible social advertisement, how hard a blow is that. Let the 9 to 5 rat race for wealth, happiness and eternal glory begin!

Fear of the Self! Committing oneself fully to one’s passion and not caring about the opinions and validation of others. Being healthy and natural like the river, in which everything constantly changes as the water endlessly flows. Have some integrity and order they say, be constant so we can know what to expect, predict your behavior and manipulate with you. But what if one is full of chaos and complexity? With this comes the fear of Self in the form of self-destruction. Compulsions such as alcohol, tobacco, drugs, mindless consumption of useless information and mass media, junk food, meaningless chatting and so forth that are human, all to human, indeed. The discrepancy between the natural needs of one’s body and mostly unnatural and unhealthy wants of one’s mind is at the root of this dissonance. To triumph over it and flourish that is the sign of a strong man!

Fear is intrinsic to the human condition, one cannot get rid of it. What he can do, however, is to master the response to it. As Twain has it, courage is resistance to fear – not the absence of fear. Fearlessness as the mastery of fear, as the ability to look fear in face and laugh at it.


Fearlessness as the state of mind worth striving for!