Hi Everyone;
I just read a very interesting article on Milkboys. Please visit http://www.milkboys.org/article/eek-a-male/
Fear is baseless all too often, and in a global news network where they are begging for your eyes to see the products they are peddling, it has simply become a sales technique - all the sadder. The mind, if I recall my freshman psychology classes from way-back, generalizes very well. Stereotypes come about because it is simpler to lump a potential threat in with the "danger" file so to quickly react than it is to ponder if that saber-toothed tiger is hungry or playful.
But, unless you know something I don't, there are few of those particular tigers about anymore. And yet, we in America seem to be confounded and surrounded by fears. Personally, I blame the tv. If you watch long enough you will realize that you don't dare go outside for fear of getting robbed, killed, hit by a car, sun poisoning, air pollution, ya-da, ya-da. But, I don't dare stay inside for fear of being killed by falling furniture, asbestos, death by Doritos....it reminds me of an old joke where the man laments hearing that 90% of accidental deaths occur less than 3 miles from the home - - he hasn't been home since.
"One of the things which danger does to you after a time is -, well, to kill emotion. I don't think I shall ever feel anything again except fear. None of us can hate anymore - or love."---- Graham Greene - The Confidential
I have shared with you how I've lived my life in a form of fear. I've feared to be true to my desires because....what will people think? My fears have placed me in a position of loneliness and being alone (yes, they are separate issues). But, as you also know, I'm working on that.
"What are fears but voices airy?Whispering harm where harm is not.And deluding the unwaryTill the fatal bolt is shot!"---- Wordsworth
I keep coming back to the thoughts expressed in the Milkboys article. I hope you read it. It offers anecdotes of moments when men have been feared despite doing what can only be described as helpful. Also, men have feared to help because "what will be said?". What is the end of this path?
"Fear is a tyrant and a despot, more terrible than the rack, more potent than the snake."---- Edgar Wallace - The Clue of the Twisted Candle (1916)
When we begin to fear, we stop thinking. How often I've heard this statement! And, yet despite that simple understanding, it is easier to fear than it is to think, to understand, to hope and even to love. Fear becomes the master, the ruler, and the more we fear the greater our worship of that quiet killer.
What we fear comes to pass more speedily than what we hope."---- Publilius Syrus - Moral Sayings (1st C B.C.)
You have probably found yourself with two main thoughts if you've gotten this far...one being examples in your own life where you have seen fear or felt it and it's stopped you. The second....why is randy putting up all of these quotes? Well, to the second, I wanted to show that the simple understanding of the situation is so long in history, so deep in our culture's literature, so forward in our minds, and yet it still rules our days. Why?
