Love and Fear, Fear and Love
Fear and love are at the root of all of our “emotions”.
Love and fear are the only true, basic emotions. Every other so-called 'emotion' is a reaction, a coping strategy.
Anger, resentment, hatred, all negative 'emotions’, are a fight-or-flight reaction to fear. Every time. No exceptions.
Fear and love are necessary to survival. All animal life, and *I* think, plant life,(at least the fear),depend on love and fear, in whatever particular nuance each lifeform evolved with to “feel” these basic-to-survival emotions.
The basic-to-survival aspect comes into play with the reactions to love and/or fear. Animal life has more complicated reactions to them than plant life.
Our, (yes, humans are animals), nervous systems developed, through evolution, to address our need for mobility and our need for sustenance, insuring our survival. The interplay of these two basic needs gave the advantage to those of us who had more complicated nervous systems, eventually brains. This increased the number of possible reactions to fear and/or love. An increased number of reactions, strategies, improved the chances of our survival, and thus, our chances of reproducing. Human beings, as mighty as we are, have the same basic motivations as viruses, or the grass in our yards, ie; Live/Survive/Reproduce.
The fight-or-flight reaction to fear is rather obvious, ie; the need for survival. With more and more complicated nervous systems, this becomes the default reaction to anything perceived as a threat. Instead of fighting back or running away/hiding from a predator, it becomes, for example, reading something that we perceive as threatening to our sense of self, our identity, our understanding of right and wrong, our basic understanding of “HOW THINGS ARE”, or even more intangible things such as our sense of self-worth, our 'place' in society.
Anger/resentment/hatred becomes a reaction to fear that is induced by purely cerebral matters, beliefs and ideas that we perceive as essential to our self-esteem, our sense of security/comfort.
We then, often, react, instinctively, with the intensity that our distant ancestors did when discovering that they were being stalked by a tiger. For some,(too many), of us, our adrinalin skyrockets, our blood-pressure climbs, our faces turn red and we’re ready to fight!
Others don’t react so strongly. Some have enough self control to mask their anger. Others still, basing their inner lives on love, are saddened, seeing, hearing, or reading, another human being, unknowingly under the influence of their fears, out of control, hurting…knowing that the other person is trapped in a cycle of fearing losing something they perceive themselves to already have or fear of not getting something that they think they deserve, adrinalin constantly flowing, their desperate fight for survival being the very thing that is causing all of their problems.
Basing our inner lives on Love is the cure for all of our ills, both personal and societal.
We humans are, at our very core, tribal creatures. We evolved, for eons, as small, cooperative groups, family units, for the most part, with extended family increasing the size of the tribes.
When space and resources, (prey animals, farm land, raw materials, etc.), begin to run low, become more precious, fear of not having enough resources to survive results in a fight-or-flight reaction of some sort. Either move to an unoccupied area, or drive off or kill the “others”.
If that fear were replaced with love, the reaction would be to work together with the “other” family or tribe, arriving at a solution that benefits all.
If we all lived our lives, always starting from a place of love, not letting our fears run wild, controlling us and “forcing” us to be suspicious and hateful, oh, what a beautiful world ❤️
😍😘😇🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼
