You don’t say? I didn’t say, per se, more like I guessed.
You have to define the words, because others will certainly take advantage if you don’t.
Ihave to say that I was mainly looking at them in practical terms, not moral ones. Not sure if it would make any difference. I also would generally say fear is better than neutral.
or bad, yes.
I agree.
It doesn’t have to be rational to protect you. It can be non-rational. For most people there are only two possibilities rational or irrational, the latter being negative. But to me there are plentry of non-rational processes and these can be good, fear being one of them. If you wait around for fear to always produce a rational justification, you may die.
Good points.
What do you mean?
I see it as a positive. I would not want it taken out of me. it helps. Change the world so fear comes up less, fine. I am down with that. But fear it positive mainly.
If fear is positive, then aren’t governmental “anti-terror” programs negative? Because the government wants to “stop terrorism”, stop terror, stop fear.
If fear is a good thing, then the government is actually denying people a good thing, which is fear. Furthermore, if fear is good, then shouldn’t Americans develop more fear, not less, of forces like Islam, and other forces around the world, that would seek to do harm and kill innocent Americans?
Maybe the United States should be more “pro-fear and pro-terror”, not less? All these questions are asked under the presumption that fear is good, or, useful. But, useful to whom?
I certainly am critical of some anti-terror programs, but that’s really another issue. If the programs were really aimed at getting rid of my fear, rather then getting rid of threats, that would be a problem by definition for me. I made the point before, I think. It’s fine with me if people make the world such that I have less to fear - with certain caveats - but I don’t want them to come into my house and make me less capable of feeling fear.
For example, I think we are an overmedicated society. Instead of making society better and reducing anxiety - amongst other ‘things’ - we simply reduce the ‘negative’ feelings. That’s like taking the fire alarms out of houses or thermostats or people’s sense of pain.
That’s quoteworthy.
So the conclusion derived by this thread is that United States is an over medicated nation, that is using pain killers to “cure” fear, instead of actually dealing with the fear? And the largest manifestation of this fear is the new “war on terror”? You might as well call it a “war on fear”. How much sense does that even make? It’s nonsense.
There is a shared attack on symptoms in the way we medicate emotions and the way we make a war on terror. Ahistorical, contextless approaches to eradicating the effects of something much more complex. But I view both as actually working well. The first works for those who make Money and the latter works for those who make Money off it (and also gain a lot of Power). The arguments defending these approaches may be weak, but that’s just marketing. You can’t confuse the way a Product is marketed with the reasons an organization wants you to buy it.