Why Is Reason the True Opposite of Fear?
Fear is frequently weaponized to be unreasonable.
All opposites, like positivity and negativity, black and white, good and evil, are extremes. They’re not, as most would suggest, opposite sides of a coin. That’s because the space between them isn’t so thin as the edge of a coin, but far broader, making it more akin to a cylinder.
To clarify. Let’s take black and white. On one side of the cylinder, there’s black. The other side of the cylinder is white. Between them is every color and shade of grey you can imagine (literally and metaphorically). Particularly in the non-literal sense, you probably exist and experience life somewhere between these extremes.
There is one more complication to this. The cylinder between given extremes isn’t solid, It’s flexible. That’s due to the nature of the extremes coupled with human free will and the inevitability of change. Hence, extremes like good and bad can shift over time, with added knowledge, or due to other factors. That’s how yesterday’s villain is today’s hero and vice versa.
Recognizing this is important because you and I live in a fear-based society. From the semi-harmless, like certain forms of advertising, to blatant falsehood and lies, like large swaths of politics and religion; fear is everywhere you turn.
Fear is so deeply interwoven in society that it frequently goes unrecognized. Before you know it, you’re buying something you don’t actually need because you’re afraid you’ll miss out on something important if you don’t. Or you’re voting for a politician who couldn’t care less about you and working against your own self-interests out of unreasonable, unrecognized, unchecked fear.
That’s why reason is the true opposite of fear.
Reason versus fear
Fear is not necessarily bad. After all, without fear, human beings would never have survived to become the constructive, creative beings we are. Without fear, your ancestors would have fallen off more cliffs, been eaten by more lions, and might not even as a species have survived, let alone thrived.
As humans evolved, so did fear. The trouble is, it has become less tangible and more intangible. Fear now tends towards having no material manifestation. Fear of missing out, fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success, and the like, are abstract. They’re very different from the fear of something that could kill or maim you.
Thus, intangible fear is weaponized blatantly and subtly to direct and misdirect you. If you don’t buy product ‘X’ you will be thought poorly of or miss out on something. When you don’t vote for that politician, the ‘other’ will win and take your way of life from you. If you don’t worship in this way, your afterlife will be all terrible suffering. Look familiar?
The only way to combat this sort of fear is not fearlessness, but reason. Reason is looking at the fear and asking if it will truly harm you. Will the suffering you most fear destroy you or genuinely harm you? Is the fear legit or artificial to line someone’s pockets, give someone false power, or control people?
The key to reason is active conscious awareness, of course.
Mindfulness of fear
Mindfulness has two district brands. Internal and external. Part of the nature of this fear-based society is to distract you. Thus, its focus tends to the external. That’s why news media of every sort clambers for your attention at every turn. Look here, look there, be mindful of the world around and outside of you.
Yes, you do need to know what’s happening. However, you don’t need to know every minute detail to the exclusion of your inner life. When you give all your attention to what’s happening outside of yourself, you’ll lose yourself.
Frankly, that’s what “they” prefer. When you’re overwhelmed by all that information, you lose sight of yourself. Before you know it, you’re confused, lost, disconcerted, and wondering how in the hell you got there.
This is where internal mindfulness comes in. Active conscious awareness is self-awareness. It’s the key to being aware of you, yourself, here and now. That then tells you who, what, where, how, and why you are.
To do this, all that’s required is recognizing, acknowledging, and knowing what you’re thinking, what and how you’re feeling, your intentions, if you are approaching life from the positive or negative end of the spectrum/cylinder, and what actions you are or aren’t taking.
- Thought
- Feeling
- Intention
- Approach
- Action
These five elements can be known, genuinely known, about you, by you. They are also the only elements over which you can exert complete and total control in your life. How? By making choices and decisions with reason and intent.
Choices and decisions
You make choices and decisions every single day. Some are big and especially impactful. Most, however, are small, partially by rote or routine or habit, but still impactful.
What you put on when you get out of bed is a choice. Whether you brush your teeth or not is a choice. What you choose to eat or not is a choice. Buying or not buying any given item is a choice.
This might not seem important, but it all is. That’s because no matter their size, the choices and decisions you make impact your day. They direct your life.
Hence, when you let fear do the driving, you will be swayed by outside forces. Conversely, when you let reason drive you, you’re practicing active conscious awareness. Ergo, you’re taking control.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but fear makes you stupid. It robs you of active conscious awareness. Ergo, it makes you unreasonable. That’s why reason is the true opposite of fear.
Lastly, when you approach life from a place of negativity, lack, scarcity, insufficiency, and the like, you’re more susceptible to fear. That means you’re far more likely to be swayed by outside influences. Reason, and questioning not from without but within what the result of the fear might be, opens you to take control of your life experience. Ultimately that empowers you.
Reason in face the fear defeats fear. The more each individual practices reason, the more habitual it becomes. That, over time, as it gains traction from person to person, can turn this world from fear-based to reason-based. Can you imagine what a reason-based world might look like, and what people could achieve within it?
Recognizing that reason is the true opposite of fear isn’t hard
It’s all about practicing mindfulness of your thoughts, feelings, intentions, and approach to direct your actions.
When you recognize and acknowledge that fear is unreasonable, and the suffering implied is frequently untrue or looks far worse than what you might genuinely experience, you can use active conscious awareness – mindfulness – to apply reason and take control. Knowing that you’re the only one in your head, heart, and soul, and that you alone can make choices and decisions to apply reason in the face of fear, you can make better choices and decisions to drive your life and not be victimized by this fear-based society.
This empowers you, and your empowerment can empower others around you.
Consciously choosing your approach to life towards positivity or negativity – from the vast cylinder that exists between them – shifts life in a way that opens more dialogue. With a broader dialogue, you can explore and share where you are between the extremes and how that impacts you here and now.
Choosing thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions for yourself employs an approach and attitude of positivity for realizing amazing potential and possibilities for your life.
The better aware you are of yourself in the now, the more you can do to choose and decide how your life experiences will be. When that empowers you, it can spread to those around you to their empowerment.
Thank you for coming along on this journey.
This is the five-hundred and thirty-seventh (537) entry of my Positivity series. I hope that these weekly messages might help spread positive energies for everyone. Feel free to share, re-blog, and spread the positivity.
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