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Madison Chan
Professors Seth Epstein and Kris Whorton
History 1120/English 1150
22 November 2016
A Multifaceted Fear
Scientific law decrees that there is no motion without a force. An object does not
suddenly begin to move. The same is true of people. There is no action, no motion, without a
spark or a reason for doing so behind it. This begs the question; what is the strongest motivator?
What turns the cogs of the machine society calls history? What produces a drive that supersedes
all others, harkening back to the dawn of humanity and the natural instincts that kept the race
alive? Some might say ambition, anger, or a revenge born of bitterness. Yet, as Sherlock Holmes
flatly stated in BBC's Sherlock, "Bitterness is a paralytic; love is a much more vicious motivator"
(A Study in Pink). However, while love can be a source of immensely powerful, sometimes
irrational, motivation, it doesn't possess the multitude of distinctive aspects that uniquely qualify
another to play such a significant role in history, a role described in part by Niccol Machiavelli
in The Prince when he says, "It is safer to be feard [sic], than be loved" (Machiavelli 319).
Today's society has degraded the emotion of fear as the chilling thrill for Halloween and not
much else. But true fear never disappeared, it simply appears in hundreds of different forms, and
has always been used by those who knew what a powerful tool it could be.
In prehistoric times, fear kept humanity alive. A healthy fear promoted caution, and
when humans were a link in the food chain, this was critical. However, as humanity began to
transcend natures hierarchy, fear in its primordial state sank beneath the surface, and has

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morphed into a thousand different forms in the ages since. Doubt, insecurity, panic and loss have
replaced the gnawing fear of starvation or death in the gaping maw of a vicious predator, yet they
all draw on the larger vessel of fear in a much more subtle way. However, this does nothing to
lessen their impact; in fact, it only makes it stronger and allows it to affect the human population
in a greater variety of ways.
In Toni Morrisons novel, Beloved, a runaway slave woman finds herself faced with a
terrible situation; her previous slave owner has come to find and recapture his escaped slave,
along with her three children. Mad with grief and fear over the thought of her children being
subjected to the tortures she endured, she made the unthinkably horrific decision to take her
children out of the world before they could suffer. I stopped [the slave owner], she said,
staring at the place where the fence used to be. I took and put my babies where theyd be safe.
(Morrison 164). To the reasonable reader, this decision and reasoning behind it are
incomprehensible. How could a mother claim to love her child so much and yet brutally end the
childs life? Love seems unlikely to be the prime motivation, because if anything, love should
have prevented it. However, when one looks at the situation with knowledge of the irrational
power of fear, clarity springs forth. The womans overriding terror, generated by her experiences
under the slave owner, completely overshadowed her reasonable judgement. To her, facing the
horrors of her past is a fate worse than death, and so she chooses death. She does love her
children; however, her fear mangled that love in such a way that it allowed her to pursue a feardriven action, all in the name of "love".
This is but one example of the powerful motivation fear creates on a personal level.
Others are less extreme, but children often feature in these scenarios because a parents worst
fear is often the loss or maltreatment of his or her child. In Sinclair Lewiss It Cant Happen

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Here, the story of a dictatorship rising in America, one character notes how a parent can take
seemly unreasonable actions for the sake of his child, saying, ...but to see your own kids living
on eighteen cents a day for grubI guess that would make a man pretty extremist!(Lewis 109).
Perhaps the most prevalent form of personally motivating fear as it appears in society
today is the fear of a flawed self-image and the negative perception of peers. Not even the
character of Satan in John Miltons Paradise Lost can escape this quintessentially human
characteristic. When Satan ponders going back to Heaven and submitting to God, he stops,
thinking, Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame / Among the Spirits beneath... (Milton
70). Satan fears the reaction of his fellow insurgents more than the undertaking of his ludicrous
plan to bring down humanity, a task that none of the other of the fallen would dare attempt. So it
would seem that he doesn't fear the impossible or the dangerous, but the subtle fear of losing the
support of his peers this was enough to influence his choice where the other forms of fear
failed.
It is understood then, that fear has an extraordinary ability to move a person, to guide his
or her decisions, to make him or her think a certain way even if it defies all reasonable logic.
However, when Niccol Machiavelli spoke of fear, he thought less of the fear possessed by
individuals and more of the widespread fear that allowed rulers to control the masses with a
fraction of its numbers. It was only a matter of time before an individual realized that this made
for a very powerful lever with which one could move nations. This years presidential election is
a prime example of the frequent and successful use of fear tactics. The most common argument
the two candidates made against each other was an apocalyptic glimpse of the future under the
opponents candidacy. The fact that fear can present itself in both rational and irrational ways
vastly increases its scope, and the fact that fear doesn't have to be rooted in truth casts this net

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even further. It is a testament to the viselike grip that fear exhibits on the general population that
those tactics had such a remarkable impact, becoming one of the primary focuses of the recent
U.S. election. The news organizations and various social media outlets slip daily doses of fear
into the general populaces lives almost without their noticing it. A sense of unease begins to
grow and fester, not enough to make people say they are afraid, but enough to sway their
opinions. In It Cant Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis makes an example of the way politicians can
capitalize on this subtle, communal sense of unease, saying ...most of the Republicans who
were afraid of Democratic Fascism, and all the Democrats who were afraid of Republican
Fascism, were ready to vote for him (Lewis 77). Because the politician mentioned created a
common sense of fear that affected both groups negatively, he was able to gather both in his
support by creating an "empty foe" that both opposed out of fear.
Throughout history, rulers have constantly sought new forms of control. Most rulers
knew how tenuous their hold was on the population and constantly strove to tighten their grip
and solidify their rule. One option was to make an effort to be loved by the people and be
followed by choice, but the fact remained that public opinion could always turn, and, conversely,
as Machiavelli said in The Prince, fear restrains with a dread of punishment which never
forsakes a man (Machiavelli 319). So it was dread, terror, unease, and panic (all of them a form
of fear) that many rulers turned to. Fear, with its myriad of unique qualities that made it so
useful, was the ultimate solution for oppressive governmental systems, and dictatorships in
particular. Fear spread quickly and easily, and was difficult to disperse after it had taken hold.
Governments described terrible consequences for those that wanted to step outside the delineated
boundaries, and considered them to be a separate entity that allowed harsh treatment for "the
sake of the state". As Rousseau described in The Social Contract, when a dissenter was punished,

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...we slay not so much a citizen as an enemy (Rousseau 22). Fear was so intrinsically linked
with control that governments became very concerned if it began to wane. In Jeremi Suris article
on the rise of counterculture, he describes a situation in Soviet Russia that worried the Soviet
government: These young citizens had apparently lost the combination of pervasive fear and
intensive nationalism that had motivated conformity (Suri 50). For governments, the loss of fear
meant loss of control, and loss of control meant loss of power.
However, in this day and age, there is a much more common way that the masses are
moved; surprisingly, the majority of these masses are not even aware that they are being moved
around as easily as pieces on a chessboard. Welcome to the age of consumerism and marketing.
In a consumerist society, manufacturers are constantly pressured to sell more, by whatever means
necessary. As a powerful form of personal and mass motivation, an emotion that can be shared,
and yet is at the same time very personal, fear has become a commonly used tool in
advertisements. Insurance, prescription drugs, security systems, and identity-protection are just a
few of the many industries that capitalize on these qualities in their commercials. One wellknown commercial places an elderly woman on the ground in her home, weakly calling out for
help that isn't there and isn't coming. As the ad intends, the viewer is struck by a sense of
unsettling worry and unbidden thoughts. "This could be my mother, my grandmother. This could
be me". This leads the viewer to the question that the ad desires- "What can I do to stop this from
happening?", at which point the ad helpfully informs the viewer of LifeAlert, the 911 button a
person can wear around his or her neck (at a minimal cost). The famous tagline is "Help, I've
fallen and I can't get up!" (LIFE ALERT), and every time a viewer hears it, he or she thinks of a
loved one saying it. Fear has an incredible ability to create nightmarish scenarios that play quite
vividly in the forefront of a person's mind, regardless of whether or not they are "rational" fears.

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Advertisers capitalize on this fact to create a fear-driven need among consumers. Fear is
insatiable. It can never be satisfied, the very dream of every manufacturer who has tried to sell a
product. As Philip K. Dick wrote in the futuristic short story, "Foster, You're Dead", "...maybe a
man gets tired of paying for a new car every year and stops, but he's never going to stop buying
shelters to protect his children" (Dick 5). In the fear's ability to create irrational and insatiable
desire, consumerism has found an ally.
All of these examples seem to share a common, negative connotation, perhaps because
fear itself is often seen as a malevolent force, due to its effects. However, it could be argued that
fear is sometimes necessary to spur the masses into positive action.

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The image above is from the National Geographic documentary Before the Flood, an
effort to make people realize the disastrous consequences of letting climate change go unnoticed.
The image seeks to capture that potential disaster in a single, panic-inducing frame. The cracks
indicate a world crumbling, and worse, crumbling into a dark abyss. The light and verdant life is
leached from the scene, leaving it cold and barren. The designer of the image plays on the
common fears that haunt humanity, such as a fear of the dark (a remnant of our lack of evolution

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concerning nocturnal eyesight) in order to shock the viewer into action. Yet the line between two
types of fear, panic and something closer to desolation, is very thin. In the image, the advancing
line of chaos and terror is curved slightly, so that the viewer knows the darkness is advancing;
yet the darkness is just barely approaching the halfway point. This represents humanity's current
situation, a tipping point. The entire image isn't dark, indicating that humanity has not yet passed
the point of no return. As the lush, left side of the image shows, there is still hope. That lingering
hope is what keeps the panic meant to jolt the masses into action from becoming a fearful
desolation, in which a person is not motivated, because he or she feels that there is no point in
doing so. The ability of fear to be used in harmony with hope allows it to be molded for a
positive purpose. And if used properly, as this image is, the use of fear will incite the people to
take action, and produce a result that most would agree is positive, a healthier planet for all.
So, in truth, what is fear? Fear is the primordial instinct that burns within each human
being. Fear presents itself in moments of desperation, when the unreasonable suddenly becomes
reasonable. Fear is a subtle, lingering anxiety that advertisements capitalize on to sell more
goods. Fear is the megaphone for the power hungry, and the invisible armed force that keeps the
masses at bay. It can spread more quickly than a plague, and lingers in thoughts long after the
object of fear has gone. Fear wears a variety of different masks, but none that disguise its current
roles. Due to the numerous characteristics that make it a powerful presence in society today, it
occupies every post from motivating the individual to controlling the masses of the world, from
overt displays to subtle manipulations. Fear, in one form or another, is everywhere. Franklin
Delano Roosevelt may have said that "We have nothing to fear but fear itself", but fear itself
contains a power of epic proportions.

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Works Cited
"A Study in Pink." Sherlock, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Paul McGuigan, Hartswood
Films, 2010.
Before the Flood. 2016, image, National Geographic.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/before-the-flood/.
Dick, Philip K. "Foster, You're Dead." 1955. UTC Learn, posted by Kristine Whorton.
https://utclearn.utc.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-448364-dt-content-rid2568620_1/courses/FA16.ENGL.1150.40160/foster-youre-dead.pdf.
Lewis, Sinclair. It Can't Happen Here. 1935. Penguin Group, 1970.
LIFE ALERT-HELP, I've fallen and I can't get up!. Life Alert, www.lifealerthelp.com. Accessed 5
Nov. 2016.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. Machiavelli. Translated by Edward Dacres, vol. 1, AMS Press, Inc., 1967.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Dover Publications, Inc., 2005.
Morrison, Tony. Beloved. 1987. Penguin Group, 1998.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. On the Social Contract. 1762. Dover Publications, Inc., 2003.
Suri, Jeremi. "The Rise and Fall of an International Counterculture, 1960-1975." The American
Historical Review, vol. 114, no. 1, 2009, pp. 45-68.