The Most Misused Emotion - Fear

By Veronica Carrillo

During witch-hunting, virtually all people, including majority of alleged witches themselves, believed that witches were indeed guilty in bad weather, food spoilage, misfortune, natural disasters, and other effects and phenomena. It was presence and gradualism of torture that was one of the factors that made most witches convinced in being possessed by evil spirits. Hence, witch-hunters could get more confidence, when witnessing how "witches" exposed their "real nature" and admitted being possessed. This uniform belief was one of the key factors in longevity of mass witch-hunting that spread for about 3 centuries with large numbers of witches being burned or killed (up to about 100,000 victims according to many sources). In such conditions, there were very few, if any, cases, when a witch-hunter could get insight ("Aha!" experience) and realize absurdity of their own behaviour.

During Nazi's Holocaust, some Jews could believe in their own inferiority. However, most of them were still not convinced, even after spending months or years in concentrations camps, that they were inferior in relation to the Arian race. Hence, behaviour of Holocaust victims was characterised by resistance and preservation of their original beliefs. Similarly, other nations did not buy the idea about one super race on Earth. Uncooperative behaviour of Holocaust victims and other nations undermined the spirit of Nazis so that it existence was limited by about 13 years. Resistance of Jews, disapproval of Nazism by other nations, and public trials (like Nuremberg process) made many Nazis grasp their heads in the astonishment and shock in relation to their past actions.

Emotions simultaneously carry both small and very large experiential elements. This is nature's way of offering small upsets that we can manage which are symbolically connected to very large hurts or traumas, almost always having occurred in childhood, brought to our attention via the feeling and its attitudes - just in case we need to remember them in order to survive or to grow psychically. In this way feelings can discover things; facts can't.

This effect (falsification of memories) made leaders and organizers of Gulag Labour camps convinced that there were indeed numerous enemies, groups, and plots against the Soviet state. Hence, it is normal that modern Siberian FSB-KGB agents, who have developed under control of past mass Gulag murderers and who were never debriefed and explained the silly foundations of this hunt, are still under the influence of this decades-old mass paranoia. Inability of modern Russian leaders to have a clear view on silliness and primitivism of Stalinism further promotes existence of groups of Siberian agents who continue to murder civilians due to the fear of the insight (the "Aha" experience seems for them too frightful).

Viewed as an emotion, rather than a call to action, fear is most probably the learning emotion. It tries to be, doing what's necessary to accomplish that role - except that we frequently insist upon using it in an entirely different way, most heinously to justify violence.

Ultimately, have predetermined ideas about groups of individuals is a human trait. It is impossible not to. The more wisdom and experience an individual gains, the more they feel they know what to expect. It is when these ideas turn into actions when it becomes social psychological discrimination. The most common forms of subtle discrimination happen every day and are something our society should pay a little more attention to. - 31521

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