Tue 19 Apr 2005
Of all the emotions that human beings have, is fear the most dominant? Are we driven by that emotion throughout civilizations?
This was brought up today in a discussion. Is fear a stronger emotion and a driver for humans than love? anger? etc?
When we are kids, we don’t throw our food because of fear of punishment, you want to get good grades because of fear of punishment or fear of humiliation and so on …. In our society, many girls want to get married for fear of being 3aanis, not love! Some women also decide to wear 7ijaab bcz of fear of punishment and 3athaab ilgabir, not bcz they honestly believe that covering their hair is the right thing to do, and so on….
Humans have a fear of the unknown too, if you take the Egyptian civilization as an example, they were smart people, they were very advanced in some sciences, but for things that seem simple right now like floods and droughts and other natural disasters, they created gods and reasons for such events such as their gods’ anger and such. With the advancement of science, these solutions given the Egyptians became obselete, until the next unknown question comes up.
The biggest fear of the unknown comes from death and afterlife. What happens when we die? Religion gives us the perfect answer, u go to a better place if you’re a good person. How convenient is that?? The fear of death is solved!
Can people be so afraid of the unknown that they will be able to believe anything that can help explain?
Nowadays, the same concept is used in politics. If you instill a certain fear constantly, you will get to the point where people might believe anything no matter how farfetched it is, as long as it alleviates that fear! George Bush was able to win another term as president by using fear tactics, right?
Anyway, these are just random thoughts that have been thrown around in the discussion!
Mako salfa! Bes I in short I think fear is the strongest human emotion! Any thoughts?
24 Responses to “Are humans driven by fear!?”
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April 19th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
Fear me
April 19th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
You demonstrated how fear can influence our decisions in life, but I don’t see why you say that it is the most dominant.
Surely fear restricts our area of ‘decision-making’, but it is only one out of many.
What about desires? To prove oneself, to reveal the powers that lie in every person.
What about gratitude? A person can be overwhelmed with gratitude that he/she ends up doing a lot in response.
I, personally, wouldn’t say that I am driven by fear. I can’t speak on behalf of the others, but my driving force is the above two that I have mentioned (more of the first one).
Sorry it’s a long comment, but I found this topic an interesting one.
April 19th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
purg
suvai, I agree its not the only one for sure, but if you compare it to desires or gratitude, it is definitely more of a driver!
your desire to prove oneself is a driver, but ur desire not get fired is a bigger one! That is why not everyone might try their best at work, but they will definitely try to do AT LEAST the bare minimum to keep the job!
My point is that it not only affects our decision making, but also the way we live our lives as individuals and as civilizations!
Hitler might have been motivated by desire, while the millions of Germans who followed him did that mostly because of fear! They followed someone with ideas that are obviously far for humane or even sane, but they did!
April 19th, 2005 at 11:59 pm
eee Fear me and my cow, and my penguins, P4 and last but not least shosho
Tara next time I will have red eyes, becareful
April 20th, 2005 at 3:20 am
I am currently fighting a fear that I will suddenly delete my entire blog right now for no reason. Totally irrational. I cannot explain it. I am fighting it. What does this mean, Q?
For most people fear does drive them. The scariest thing is to look your fear in the face and take away its power to control you. Most people cannot do this or will not be aware of their fear enough to actually attempt to do so. This is far scarier than the fear itself : the fear of losing your fears and being without them. Scary.
April 20th, 2005 at 9:01 am
Why did hundreds of Kuwait martyrs sacrifice their lives & died during the Iraqi invasion? Didn’t they fear the occupation’s soldiers with all their weapons & all the torturing stories everyone heard and saw it?
Well they (the Kuwaiti martyrs) did all that out of two emotions, their love of their country, and anger frustration of all what was happening.
God bless their souls.
April 20th, 2005 at 9:35 am
MrsBaker.. did fear make Bo Jaij take off his blog?
April 20th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Zaydoun - forgive me, I simply cannot resist - Bujaij has more “balls” than I do, LOOOOL!
April 20th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
Q,
The most thing I fear is losing someone I love.
Boghazi,
It is the fear of losing their country.
April 20th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Mojrem
April 20th, 2005 at 6:08 pm
Ridiculous!
Everyone knows that the strongest human driver is SEX.
That’s right:
1)Parents want their children to eat their food so that they will grow up and be healthy in order to have SEX (and continue propagation of the species, incidentally)
2)People care about good grades in the hope that they will get into good schools in the hope that they will get the good jobs with the high pay so that they are more attractive to the opposite SEX! In what they hope will result in them having better and more frequent SEX!
3)Many girls just want to get married in order to (here it comes) have SEX!
4)Women wear 7ijab so that they can be taken seriously and be treated normally rather than as SEX objects and in the hope that if all women wore the 7ijab then when they are older and married their husbands won’t compare them to younger girls and still find their aging wives SEXually attractive for as long as possible!
Oh wait, I changed my mind… People’s biggest motivation is Self Gratification/Satisfaction!
Proof:
1)Kids eat their food because they want the reward of the chocolate bar or ice-cream they get after lunch, which they know they can’t have unless they finish their food! Mmmm! There aint nothing so satisfying as an aero, kitco, and KDD failaka orgy after lunch!
2)Many kids want to get good grades for the 20KD they get from their parents for each “A” they get! Now come on don’t tell me it aint satisfying to get the flashy car daddy will buy them if they graduate this year! Oh and nothing beats the satisfaction of the envious looks they’ll get from all their peers!
3)Many girls want to get married for the satisfaction a married life can bring! Ahh, the eternal love.. the babies… that huge gleaming rock on her finger!
4)Some girls wear 7ijab because it’s much more satisfying not to have to blow-dry their hair every day!
Hehehehe Ok that was totally written in fun but I think my point has been made, which is that simplistic generalizations or “absolutes”can never be made regarding human feelings, motivators and experience.
Anyway, on to the rest of the post!
You speak of several different things “interminglingly” ya Q, so the best I can do is to just reply directly under each part that got my attention.
For example, you said:
“if you take the Egyptian civilization as an example, they were smart people, they were very advanced in some sciences, but for things that seem simple right now like floods and droughts and other natural disasters, they created gods and reasons for such events such as their gods’ anger and such.”
Who says they created gods for that reason? I do not think deities were created in order to explain natural disasters. It was only after creating deities that they attempted to explain unpredictable natural phenomena as something susceptible to the whims of the gods.
So that now begs the question, why have people throughout history believed in a higher power? Or in an after life? (yes even Grecians believed that mortals could gain admission onto Mount Olympus in the afterlife if they were heroic enough, or else take an eternal dip in the river Styx… Buddhists believe that they are reborn on this earth as either a lowly creature if they were bad, or something more exalted if they were good… Ancient Egyptians believed that this life was merely a brief interval before their real lives began in another plane [and yet, interestingly enough, this did not stop them from being the most advanced and developed civilization of its time] etc. etc.)
So… what is this illogical and inexplicable instinct? I think it is partly because of the belief that they themselves are more than the sum of their flesh and body parts, that there is something intangible yet immortal in them, and that there must be a higher power with a Purpose, and that this has nothing to do with fear.
Why on earth have people throughout the ages worried about whether there is a reason for them to be here? Having a “reason” is completely inessential to staying alive, and yet, people are programmed to seek this reason, and it is not sought out of fear, either. I also think it is interesting that very very often, people reach the conclusion of a Higher Power; of there being a God who is watching us, and who will eventually judge our hearts and actions. Now WHY people reach such a conclusion is not immediately obvious. When I try to objectively figure out what led them to such an “outlandish” conclusion I can’t figure it out. I mean there is no scientific logic to explain it, really, yet they do. For me, the inexplicable nature of this inherent instinct is proof in and of itself that we were born with this seed in us, and that it was planted by the very entity whose existence we come to believe in. Now Q, I know this has gone on a bit of a tangent from the overall thrust of your post, which was questioning whether fear could be said to be the most prevalent emotion in us, but your example did challenge the very basics of the institution of religion, belief in God and an afterlife, etc. And that is what I am responding to here
You also said: “The biggest fear of the unknown comes from death and afterlife. What happens when we die?”
Do they truly fear it? I do agree that people want to understand it more and try to formulate explanations but not necessarily that they fear it. Let’s take a closer look at the Ancient Egyptians. Although death and the afterlife is an unknown they did not fear it at all! They looked forward to it and took care to be buried with their favorite items so that they would have a blast in the after-life too. I personally am convinced that there are a great deal of unknowns in this world but I do not fear them.
You said: “Religion gives us the perfect answer, u go to a better place if you’re a good person. How convenient is that??”
Convenient for whom??????? On an individual level the thought of an afterlife based on the verdict of a Judgment Day isn’t convenient at all! It would be so much easier to get ahead and succeed if we could cheat and steal all we wanted, it would likewise be quite satisfying to indulge our every whim and fancy whenever we wanted.
However, on a mass level it IS the perfect answer because that way people are encouraged to do good, and take consideration of the consequences of their actions on other people.
And if religion, belief in God, and the belief in an afterlife is something that inconveniences the individual a little for the benefit of the whole, than sign me up!
You see, I do not believe in these things out of fear, but because I believe in the role they can have for the “greater good”.
And to tie this back up to the main hypothesis of your post… In short, I do not agree that fear is the strongest emotion nor the biggest motivator, nor is it the reason people are led to believe in an after life, because actually the idea of an after-life can be even more scary! I don’t want to get punished for my misdeeds, does anyone?? I don’t really want to be held accountable for my many short-comings! It would be so much more comforting to think that when we die, we are simply extinguished. So in this context, I do believe that a little fear can be healthy
but inessential.
Gigi, long-windedly (sorry, Q) :$
April 20th, 2005 at 6:24 pm
GiGi, ok.
April 20th, 2005 at 6:32 pm
Hahahahaha thanks for balancing out my long comment Purgatoire ;*
Gigi, good-naturedly
April 20th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
No problem GiGi, that is why I exist, to balance things
April 20th, 2005 at 8:40 pm
nice topic Q..
yes i believe humans are driven by fear.. they fear the alternative outcome.. so they do whatever is needed so that that alternative outcome wouldnt happen.. personally, the fear of disappointing my parents is what makes me try my best at school, after that comes the WANT of being whatever im studying etc…
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MY BLOG IS SCREWED UP DOS ANYONE KNOW HOW TO HELP ME FIX IT?!?!
April 20th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
Snookie, most of the time its related to the last post, so check that out, either remove it or adjust it.
April 21st, 2005 at 12:32 am
no
i deleted the last post. nothing still empty.
sorry im off topic Q
April 21st, 2005 at 2:42 am
i would have to disagree with you Q. i would believe that lust is stronger than fear, because we fear getting caught doing it in public, specially in the Middle East, you still find people getting their freak on in public
April 21st, 2005 at 2:43 am
I’d consider money to be as powerful as fear as a driving force. It’s just people run in the opposite direction.
Run away from fear … run towards money.
April 21st, 2005 at 9:24 am
Snookie, check the changes you have done then in last 48 hours to template, posts, etc., it should be there somewhere.
April 21st, 2005 at 9:55 am
Yoda Said it best
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
Everything starts with fear I TOTALLY agree
Its the strongest motivator
and about the money issue.. We only want money because we FEAR the lack of it .
April 21st, 2005 at 1:46 pm
GiGi
I love your sarcastic way girl, you cracked me up LOL
Nevertheless I found some statement on your comment that I felt I have something to say about; your quote (the role they can have for the “greater good”),
Is this the only thing you found in religion? If you have, then I congratulate you. And since you have not specified any religion, then I would assume you are talking about the three major religions.
Ok, what is the big picture of the religious parties in the globe today? History of religion x politics is repeating itself everywhere and in different forms and rituals. If you think of a religion as something between you and God, then you are ignoring a part that you should not if you are a faithful practitioner, but if you are inclined to subjugate yourself to it’s firm rules and regulations; then most probably you’d suffer because a lot of it does not make sense to you, you just have to take them “ ma3a elbai3a”.
Can you do that? I doubt it
Here I’m only talking about religion, as a practice, and mind you religion is not the only way to communicate with god.
Q
I agree with GiGi that the drive is not fear, it’s Our natural propensities of purity, goodness, our ethics and morals, our natural abilities to differentiate between right and wrong, good or bad, these are the perfect way out.
Fear on the other hand, is not a natural propensity. It’s a conditioned or learned trait. It can be un-learned. Nevertheless, it is a dirty tool that all religions have used to attract scattered souls.
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December 12th, 2005 at 7:17 am
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