As a kid, I read Gurudev
Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, “Where the mind is without fear”. I was quite
inspired by that, the kind of dream he saw for India. Sadly, attaining freedom
hasn’t exactly freed our minds of fear. In fact, no person, no country in the
whole world is free of fear. It’s a fear driven world we are living in, where
the government fears loss of power, businessman and service person fear
inflation or recession, students fear the competition, lovers fear commitment,
and the list can go on. What can be the origin of this invisible but ubiquitous
devil? Or is it even a devil? If we go back in time, we will see that it was
the fear factor that sowed the seeds of civilization. The fear of living alone
and being exposed to carnivores made the prehistoric man settle and form
communities. This gave them a sense of protection. Emotional insecurity made
them nurture the concept of family. The destructive forces of nature, like
storms, floods, eclipses made the man create the concept of God. As he saw how
helpless he becomes in the night due to lack of visibility, he developed the
fear for the dark night. And when he saw how the rising sun renders away the
darkness, he started worshipping the sun. Further, the fear of invasion and
encroachment made the man draw boundaries, invent weapons and as time advanced they
started raging wars, killing people to assume power. Wars were fought in
pursuit of wealth, slaves and land and to build and strengthen huge empires
because the kings feared loss of power to some other king. In present scenario,
wars and other violent activities occur broadly due to two reasons, first, to
control the trade, especially oil and nuclear energy and second, to attain
religious or regional superiority. All this is bound to happen, because we are
insecure beings by nature. With time, some fears disappear and new ones replace
them. For example, after the invention of electricity, man is no more afraid of
the night, but over-consumption of electricity and many other energy supplies
has led to depletion of our non-conventional and conventional energy sources. And
now, the biggest fear is of losing our home planet. Even the nation which
considers itself the most superior nation in the world, US, lives in fear of
losing power and allies. Its relations which India, Pakistan and the obstinate
China, are all muddled up. It cannot fully support one without upsetting the
other. So there is huge risk of losing allies in Asia. These are just a couple
of examples. There are many such things happening at national and even personal
level. Fear of emotional inconsistency, betrayal or burden of responsibility
makes couples chicken out of marriage and go for live-in relationship. To cover
up, they would say, we want it the ‘no-strings-attached’ way. Students, afraid
of facing failure, commit suicide. The fear factor, that helped creating
civilizations, is now set to destroy them. Philosophically, the world is driven
by two forces, love and fear. But in the modern world, fear seems to be
out-scoring love. We cannot kill our fear, but we can be selective as to which
fear we should succumb to, for example, choose between peer pressure and the
rightful duty. Only then can we use our fear for our benefit and convert our
weakness into our strength.
