Now about fear …

Fear is an instinctual mechanism whose purpose is to preserve the life of the individual organism by alerting it to danger. Brain chemistry is altered by a gland in the brain to force behavioral action.

 

Fear is going to drive behavior in one of three ways: Attack behavior, Defend behavior, or Retreat behavior.

Human beings are very sophisticated. We can evaluate the relative threat with the prefrontal cortex of our brain and decide upon action. This happens very quickly. If we don’t make any decisions then the chemistry of fear will entirely direct our behavioral response.

Being so smart we can also build complex abstractions to justify having fear even when there is no genuine imminent danger to our actual physical lives.

 

People frequently exhibit fear based behavior without being consciously aware of doing so.

For example:
A snarky remark, or a piece of malicious gossip, is attack behavior. A snub, or a person pretending not to notice another person whom they ought to know, is defend behavior. Crossing the street, or ducking out of sight to avoid an acquaintance, is retreat behavior.

Fear can influence our behavior in very subtle ways. Fear can influence behavior in dramatic ways. Fear seems to be with most people most of the time. Fear can be infectious. Fear can spread from person to person. A crowd of people, like a herd of cattle, can stampede away from a perceived threat. An entire nation of people can get patriotic fever all at once …

Because fear is so powerful it is often used as a tool to manipulate entire populations or target specific demographic groups.

Fear is a sales tool. Fear is a call to political action. Fear is sufficient reason to trade freedom for a promise of security …

Fear can motivate people like nothing else … except, perhaps, faith.

“A man of courage is also full of faith.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

A person consumed by fear cannot be courageous.

What is faith? Faith can be said to be a strongly held conviction, a belief that a principle, or set of principle’s, is true—like: belief in oneself, one’s ability to succeed; belief in institutions, political, scientific, judicial; belief in traditions, sociocultural, philosophical, religious—many people find faith in religion.

Religion can be a foundation upon which people may build a faith sufficient to withstand fear.

Curiously the religious message—so comforting to believers—can sometimes ignite fear in those who are unconvinced by it’s theological arguments, suspicious of it’s perceived social agenda, or political ambition—yet the same can be true for any article of faith held by some and not by others. The bold confidence of a person with faith in themselves can be perceived as a threat to the ambitions of their peers. One person’s political agenda is another person’s tyranny. One person’s just economic system is another person’s financial oppressor—odd that one person’s faith may be cause for another person’s fear … yet faith alone can conquer fear.

Therefore, if one can find a faith sufficient to overcome fear, then one’s actions will be directed by faith and one will have courage.

 

Faith would seem to be an ally of truth.

group truth

Each individual human being has that which is true in the heart of themselves. When gathered together in groups—human beings will form a consensus opinion regarding what is truth for the group—people seek harmony. When what is true in the heart of the individual is not in concord with what is true for the group then the individual must either reconcile through conformity, or seek a new consensus through argument, or leave the group …

Mathematical Truth

numbers

Are mathematical truths invented or discovered?

 “Mathematics is not either invented or discovered; the dichotomy is false.”
― George P. Lakoff

“One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its propositions are absolutely certain and indisputable, … How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?”
― Albert Einstein

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
― Isaac Newton

 

42

42The number forty two as the answer to a most ambitious question.

“In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (42 is) ‘The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’, calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately no one knows what the question is. Thus, to calculate the Ultimate Question, a special computer the size of a small planet was built from organic components and named ‘Earth’.”
― Wikipedia Article: 42 (number)