Articles & Essays by Marai Ratajzack Why do people fear? What triggers fear? Is fear triggered by a lack of control? Or feeling of a lack of control? Is fear self-preservational instinct? What does it mean?

Fear is triggered by a feeling of a lack of control, power, the unknown, self-preservation instinct & past experience. A feeling of fear is the opposite of a feeling of safety, thusforth fear is caused by hazards, where safety is a state of being secure.

Human beings like to have the power to control their environments. The ability to control an environment increases the potential for safety and the preservation of the healthy individual. Having control of ones' body, mind, surroundings and circumstance increases the security of the mindset of the individual for as long as that control remains.
Example #1: [Mary Shelley's Frankenstein] Victor's experience of losing his mother created a view of death as the ultimate evil, leading to his obsession with curing the world of death all together. That search to control death led to the temporary tireless work until he animated the Creature. After raising the Creature to life, he then realised he was not in control, and became so utterly fearful of the Creature and what he had accomplished that he went temporarily insane. An edge that would plague him until his death at the conclusion of the book.


Batman
The scariest thing about Batman is not his gothic persona, but the fact that somewhere in life, the strongest of people are going to fail. Something is going to go wrong and he is the result. Life could have been perfect for Bruce Wayne, but that strong element of tragedy struck him too deep.

The most tragic life, is when the person could be beautiful, angelic, perfect, but chooses to live with their own decrepit pain, and beat back their own nightmares. It is the possibility of something around the corner that makes someone afraid even if that fear is ill founded. It's not an excuse if it's a possibility. It's not a ploy if you are willing to follow through with the threat. It's not irrational if the fear exists.