According to Paul Ekman, fear is one of the basic emotions. Others are anger, joy, sadness, disgust, and confusion. Fear must be our oldest, the most primitive emotion for it helps keeps us alive. Since it is mentioned in ancient proverbs too, it is probably true: “Cowards live long.”
Fear has other benefits too. We already know from the history of politics that one of the ways to rule the masses easily is to intimidate them. Fear -and other emotions- seem like spreading from one individual to another, and then to huge masses by some kind of vibration, contagion. It is easy to be a devotee of biochemistry produced by fear. This happens almost by itself.
Those who govern and those who are governed must also be able to comprehend this system, sometimes with intuition and sometimes with consciousness. I guess that’s why it is so common to generate fear. If the child, who thinks his voice can be heard by shouting and intimidating, is not the fruit of the parent who shouts and communicates with his child, and of the adult who seeks a solution with violence in times of crisis, what is?
Systems built with fear have a dangerous part that blocks innovation, development and interrupts the transformation potential. Fight, flight, freeze: This cycle offering no choice but fight, flight and freeze interrupts any productive flow (talk, communication, love and, co-production) between people. The system built with fear is lacking the vital cycle, turning into a ghost from which motion - that is the life itself - is drawn.
Whether individual or corporate, in today’s survival strategies it is time for courage to shine out rather than fear. The courage of expressing a controversial opinion, changing direction, taking the risk, encouraging joyful and fruitful collaborations rather than scare and neutralizing individuals.
We love daring heroism, fairy tales, stories. But what about standing up and saying there is something wrong here?
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