Human beings are genetically hardwired to protect themselves from harm, from confrontation, from what they fear, or else to fight and destroy it. A third option, curiosity, comes only from the safety of an objective distance. But in the moment of confrontation, there is only fight or flight.
Early man first heard a rustle in the bushes and immediately legged it back to the cave. Subsequent ages have seen human behavior morph this fight-or-flight instinct into emotional and psychological forms as another way to ward off embarrassment, ridicule, and heartbreak, among other modern threats. Aside from the craving of food and water, or the need to evacuate one’s bladder and bowels, there is nothing more natural than being afraid.
Fear comes in many forms. From fear of dying, to fear of heights, enclosed spaces, spiders, or public speaking, all fears trick the brain into believing they are equal to the fear of dying. As irrational as this is to the conscious and objective mind, it is entirely justifiable to the unconscious and subjective mind. To a teenager in high school, ostracism—or worse: global social ridicule on the Internet—might as well be death. Hence the alarmingly high teen suicide rate in developed
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