Fear Essay Research Paper Fear is the

Fear Essay, Research Paper

Fear is the quintessential human emotion. Some people live lives devoid of joy, happiness, and pleasure, but no one escapes the experience of fear and fear s companion, pain. We are born in fear and pain. Our lives are profoundly shaped by them, as well as our efforts to avoid them.

Fear, experienced by every being of the human species, is an utterly unavoidable emotion. The extent and range of fears varies from person to person, but the emotion is the same. One person s reaction of seeing a snake will be similar to another person s reaction of walking into a train station. The body is programmed to react in a distinct fashion once the stimulus is recognized.

With all or almost all animals, even with birds, Terror causes the body to tremble. The skin becomes pale, sweat breaks out, and the hair bristles. The secretions of the alimentary canal and of the kidneys are increased, and they are involuntarily voided The breathing is hurried. The heart beats quickly, wildly, and violently; but whether it pumps the blood more efficiently through the body may be doubted, for the surface seems bloodless and the strength of the muscles soon fails The mental faculties are much disturbed. Utter prostration soon follows, and even fainting I once caught a robin in a room, which fainted so completely, that for a time I thought it dead.

Why the body reacts this way, is a very technical subject that is not to be discussed over the duration of this essay. The brain is the most important organ of the human body; however, it is also the most complicated and the least understood. Although the physiological aspects of fear are being overlooked right now, the psychological points will be explored in depth.

What makes a person afraid. The amount of anxiety a person experiences at a given time is dependent on several factors such as culture, media, past experience as well as the unavoidable natural-born fear. An example of a cultural induced phobia is that a child raised in a highly religious, homophobic household is more likely to be homophobic than a child who is raised atheist with two mothers.

Alfred Hitchcock receives an angry letter from the father of a girl who refuses to shower after seeing Psycho. Such a phobia is a media induced fear.

The experiences of a person s past are extremely important constituents that affect a person s range, and intensity of fears. As it is explained in John Locke’s most important work, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, the mind is analogous to a blank slate, a tabula rasa, on which the senses make impressions. If a young boy is chased and stung by a nest of bees, this experience will be kept in his mind forever; the slate is marked. Every action and every experience is marked on the tabula rasa. The slate is marked, whether the person consciously remembers or not; and there is no eraser. This theory also explains the irrational phobias that many people experience. Often, the affected can t understand why he is afraid, but through therapy he comes to an understanding of some previous event that had a traumatizing affect.

The human s natural-born fear is the fear that every human possesses. The fear is not of tangible consistency; it is a fear tied tightly with its partner, psychology. It is a fear of loss of comfort, as the human race knows it. Human comfort doesn t mean a nice house and comfortable bed, in fact, a large percentage of the world has never seen such a luxury. Human comfort is the comfort of knowing what is happening, and what is going to happen. It is the comfort of understanding how it is happening and why it is happening. When something awful happens, the first thing the unfortunate person often exclaims is Why me. Asking such a question isn t going to help the situation, but it is what the person truly wants to know, he wants to know why his comfort was upset.

As discussed earlier, every person faces fear, and it is fear accompanied by anxiety that shapes lives. Paradoxically, horror films and literature have been thriving since it has been technologically possible. Dating further back, scary tales have been passed through generations for centuries. What is it that makes society want to be scared.

Fear is inextricably bound to pain, but it is also linked with pleasure. Successfully overcoming a fear or emerging from a fearful situation unscathed can be a highly pleasurable experience, for surviving a scare can often trigger the release of a flood of opiatelike neurochemicals.

Simply, horror films make people feel good. It isn t unusual to see someone laughing, or feeling giddy after something scary has happened, whether it is real life or while watching a film. Such things make people feel more alive. Roller coasters are another example of things that give a similar dose of small-time euphoria. Film or roller coaster, either one has an addictive characteristic. To feel the same pleasurable feeling, the next time the dose needs to be anted. In some cases, it becomes so extreme that people attempt to climb Mr. Everest, or jump from high-rise to high-rise on a motorcycle. The process is similar of a drug user; over time, more and more of the drug is needed to produce the same effect.

Moving back to film, an audience s attention is captured through the method of horror. Horror films come in all types, ranging from dead