Fear

Fear can be useful. It is good to be afraid of a tiger in the jungle, a snake in the grass, an onrushing car, or a wild surf. Fear helps us avoid many common everyday threats, and imagining fear can help us lead our lives better. 

Unfortunately, fear can also be nothing but imagination, especially about the more distant future. “In the long run we are all dead” should not prevent us from living, doing, and enjoying the short run. The future is always unknown, the far future even more so, and its imagined fears usually turn out to be superseded by different _ if equally frightening _ ones.

I just read two nearly side by side articles. One claims that scientists who study climate are having no more children because they think the Earth will soon be in disastrous chaos. Another claimed there would soon be no children to worry about. The seers have a long history of predicting “the end” .

Okay, the end may come. It may not. It may come in a totally different way than most expect. The real question is “so what, Jack?” All those gloomy gloomsayers are in effect claiming that the present moment has little value. A happy day is worth nothing, a sunset is valueless, a smile on a kid’s face is of no interest. In an eon, or sooner, they will all be gone and forgotten. Alas! Woe!

The worst fears do not prepare for the future. The worst fears poison the present and prevent us from doing anything sensible and missing the enchantment of consciousness.