Fear, Essay Example

According to The Oxford English dictionary online version, the noun “fear” is “an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm, also the likely hood of something unpleasant happening” (Connelly, 2008).  We experience fear almost in every single day; and due to the shocking and harmful nature of fear, fear is often to be highly unpleasant.  Yet, still many people love to be scared for one reason or another.  Thousands of scary movies, roller coasters, and haunted houses exist throughout the world all with the simple goal of inducing as much fear into people as possible.  Shocking fear is statistically found to reduce stress in the human body.  However, fear can also linger in the human body and create large amounts of stress.  For instance, an individual may experience the fear of being evicted from their home.  If this fear does not subside, it increases the amount of stress that the individual is experiencing and can cause great physical and psychological damage.

Behaviors that actively seek to produce fear are common among thrill-seekers and individuals that are looking to escape from their comfort zones. Thrill-seeking behavior often develops from a need to feel free and experience an adrenaline rush in the human body.  At times, this rush can often produce similar results within the body as that of caffeine or nicotine in which the body can become addicted.  This is why bikers and individuals that love roller coasters constantly take the plunge into pushing the envelope as far as possible.  In many cases, we can become inundated with the dull and boring constancy associated with everyday life.  Our thirst for excitement forces us to attempt to burst through the walls of boredom and escape from the comfort zone.  This is why people love to watch scary movies or even scary television shoes such as Fear Factor and Ghost Hunters.  These shows help promote fear and allow for us to forget about the everyday problems we experience in order to enter into a brief, disgusting world that helps us escape.  Many people hate their jobs or school so much that they need this brief escape in order to feel better about their own situation.  They do not have to eat pig intestine or be chased by a crazy man with a chainsaw, but they enjoy watching it because they know that their own lives are not that crazy or bizarre.

Fear is also commonly associated on the roadways of the United States.  Many people are very fearful of road rage, especially when it continues to become one of the leading causes of accidents.  We live in a fast-paced world where we need instant gratification; we do not have time to wait.  It is this environment that forces people to become instantly frustrated and angry when their needs to drive fast and get to a desired location as soon as possible are not met.  However, in some cases people can become highly offended by another driver’s judgment error behind the wheel.  If we get cut off or a person attempts to pass another car in our lane but forces us to slow down to do it, we get upset.  This momentary error of judgment causes many drivers to begin to react aggressively (AAAFoundation.org).  Psychologically, we believe that it is our natural right and duty to ourselves to express our anger to the other person so that they understand what happened is not acceptable.  We become our own defenders of justice on the roadway and the effects of road rage emerge.

Oftentimes, this defensive reaction to an incident on the road can often stem from other problems that the individual is experiencing in their own life.  For instance, “a bad day at work or troubles at home” can often make it difficult to handle the stresses of our problems and they remain dormant within the person until an event on the road causes the feelings and emotions to be released (AAAFoundation.org).  Road rage is not the problem of some other person; instead, it lies mostly within the person that has very little control over their own emotions and experiences highly stressful or even fearful situations in life.  The negative effects of fear and stress force us to lash out in a biological attempt to protect the body from future physical or psychological damage.  However, the road is not a constructive venue to release this anger or fear, and it can often cause much more damage than necessary.

References

AAAFoundation.org. (n.d.). AAA foundation for traffic safety – resources. Retrieved from http://www.aaafoundation.org/resources/index.cfm?button=agdrtext#2B

Connelly, P. (2008, March 25). Definition of fear. Retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?Definition-of-Fear&id=1067996

DeFoore, W.G. (n.d.). Anger and road rage. Retrieved from http://defoore.com/angerandroadrage.htm