Michael Barlow
James Paige
ENG 102
10 Nov. 2014
A Fear of Flight
Fear. What exactly is fear? To some it is emotion that all of us have experienced at least one time throughout our lives, but to others it is a force that guides many to live their lives with caution and always err on the safe side in all aspects. It is a subject that has been broached by everyone in history from President Franklin Roosevelt when he said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself...” to Tupac Shakur in his song “Only Fear of Death” when he says: “My only fear of death is coming back reincarnated…”. I myself have often found myself to be well within the clutches of fear and I can honestly say that I did not know how to cope with, but somehow, I did.…show more content… Karl Albrecht. He defines fear as, “An anxious feeling, caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience.”. This definition is very useful because Albrecht’s article focuses on the five basic fears which addresses all that we as humans biologically fear. He also says that if the fear that we feel does not boil down to be the fear or some form of the fear of extinction, mutilation, separation, loss of autonomy, or ego death then it is not really a warranted fear. He says this because if you really think about it, all of these five basic fears can be related back to. For example, Albrecht says, “Think about the various common labels we put on our fears. Start with the easy ones: fear of heights or falling is basically fear of extinction (possibly accompanied by significant mutilation, but that's sort of secondary). Fear of failure? Read it as fear of ego-death.” (Albrecht). These examples show just how easily our fears can be brought back to the five basic biological fears. Dr. Albrecht also addresses how we can begin to cope with our fears. He brings up the famous FDR Quote about only fearing fear itself and relates it to the five basic fears and shows that because all fears relate back to the basic fears, we only fear the results and the what ifs that come to mind when we think of something that scares us, from which one can draw that Albrecht feels that fear other than the five