Abstraction

1. When you are afraid, the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Your heart beats faster, faster, faster. Every muscle in your body feels spring-loaded and ready to snap. Your mouth is dry and you cannot stare at one thing. Your glance shifts around the room relentlessly. Every sound is magnified, but the sound of your heartbeat against your eardrum is perhaps the loudest.
2. A grizzly bear stands on its hind legs not fifteen feet away, and you stop dead in your tracks, your heart pounding. Your little brother pops around the corner and yells "Rawr!", and you nearly wet your pants. Your pen stops working in the last 10 minutes of an FRQ, and you nearly fall out of your chair when reaching to snatch one off of the floor. You walk through a haunted house, and as you turn a corner a hand grabs you, so you punch the crap out of whatever creature is attached to the hand. You experience something frightening, and so you react based on fear.
3. I sat crouched near the deck, not daring to move as my enemy moved ever closer to becoming my victim. Capture the flag was played in the dead of night at my cabin, and it was a full moon. I feared that my brother, who was unwittingly crawling under the deck towards me, would see my silhouette near the overturned wheelbarrel and turn around before he crossed over onto my side. As he slowly army crawled nearer, my heart pulsed and I thought that surely he would spot me. He was well past the line now, and still I waited as the muscles in my neck tightened. He stopped, and quivered, "Kkkaitlin?". I sprung up, ran to the side of the deck, crouched down, and lauched myself underneath it. I army crawled through the dirt to my now scream-laughing brother who had curled up into a fetal position. I tagged him and he went to jail.
4. Fear is either rational or it is irrational. Rational fear can be logically explained, while irrational fear cannot. Rational fear is created when you believe that something will be dangerous, painful, or threatening. Irrational fear cannot be explained.
5. FDR once said "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself". Fear has been feared as a sign of weakness, but it is not usually that simple. Even if David feared Goliath, he defeated the giant in the end. Surely David feared the Lord more than his mortal enemy. In this case, David's fear of the Lord was a sign of strength. Machiavelli argued that a ruler in the ideal situation would be feared and loved, but in the real world he said that it is better to be feared than loved.
6. Is it really better to be feared than to be loved? While being feared may be an advantage in some unfortunate political situations, being loved is clearly an advantage in normal day to day scenarios. Both fear and love can generate respect, but respect based on fear is much different than respect based on love. Respect based on fear can disintegrate into hatred, but respect based on love is capable of growing into loyalty.