Fear is a distressing emotion in response to a real or perceived threat. These feelings can deeply affect a person’s mood and how he or she lives. The presence of fear as it cascades through a society can transform a group of neighbors who care for and look out for each others into a group that is suspicious of each other and where each individual family keeps to themselves.  As fear grows, the response of people to it is often completely out of proportion to the actual threat. Fear affects the ability to think properly and leads people to make irrational decisions. 

Fear is a real emotion that every person experiences. In many cases the presence of fear prevents a person from getting into or remaining in a situation that contains real danger. The body sends a warning signal to the brain that encourages a person to act in order to avoid the potential threat and to reach a place of safety. There is nothing wrong with being fearful in response to a real danger. It allows for an accurate assessment of a situation and a rational choice can be made whether or not to continue onward. In some cases, fear must be overcome in order to do something that is risky or challenging, but the presence of fear ensures that an individual’s actions are rational and the actions a person takes do not lead to real danger of pain or even death unless a greater good will come as a result.

How fear affects a person or a group of people is closely connected to the truth that the emotion is reacting to. When a perceived threat is understood properly, fear leads to choices that are positive and that bring about safety and peace. The emotions produced by fear drive actions that make a person stronger and that create within a group of people an appropriate sense of awareness of potential dangers. If this response is kept in proper perspective then a society can become stronger, more self-assured, and better able to protect even its weakest members from being taken advantage of.

Fear, though, can easily become a threat itself. When threats of danger are increasingly perceived, even when the reality of that threat does not exist, fear can become an overwhelming emotion that takes over individual lives and eventually an entire community. A society that has given way to such irrational fear will see everything and everybody as a potential threat. In such an irrational situation, truth gives way to actions that promise protection, but that brings bondage in the process. A society that gives way to fear, particularly irrational fear, is a society that no longer works for the good of the individuals, but that exists solely to guard itself from an unknown threat that may or may not actually exist.

A society has to continually make choices that balance quality of life and freedom of movement against safety and order. While these choices are often fairly simple, there are always challenges in creating the appropriate balance. In addition, each individual differs in the things that he or she is afraid of and the degree of that fear. As a result, it requires a consensus of a society to draw appropriate boundaries and to give and take away freedoms on a case by case basis. Fear can prey upon a society when these decisions are consistently made with regard to worst case scenarios without consideration of the freedoms that must be given up in the process. When the members of a society stop doing those activities that they enjoy because of fear, this society stops being one that is worth living in.  Irrational fear that preys upon a community robs that group of people of all those things that make it worthwhile. Such fear must be rejected if a society is to grow and develop as it should and be a place that others want to be a part of. 

Fear exists and has a positive role to play in society when the source of fear is correctly understood and responded to. Unfortunately, irrational fear can prey on a society and affect it in extremely negative ways. When the emotions produced by fear are allowed to spiral out of control, the actions taken by individuals and society as a whole become focused only on protection from danger at the cost to everything else. Fear preys on a society when danger becomes such an overriding priority that the members of the group no longer care for each other, trust each other, or work for the benefit of the group.

Fear has a property of leading people to focus only on self-preservation and a society made up solely of such people will eventually deteriorate into ruin. Each person in a society must work to react properly to dangers and rightly handle his or her fear in order to prevent fear from preying on the group as a whole.