“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.” — Patricia Alexander, American educational psychologist.
This dropped into my email in-box the other day so I grabbed it to set this Post off on the right theme.
There is much around that can generate fear, touched on in my Post a couple of days ago where I quoted Richard Branson.
For an example of fear, many will have listened to the recent interview of Professor James Lovelock on the BBC Today programme and wondered just where we are all heading. ( The interview may be listened to here. – it’s 7 minutes long but listen to it!)
Here’s a YouTube video of Lovelock being interviewed in 2009. (Also worthy of watching for the full 13 minutes and note the connection between Lovelock and Branson.)
So if you listened and watched these two interviews then one could argue that there is more than enough to be fearful of our future.
Now go back to the opening quotation: “Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.”
Being fearful is not the answer – even if no alternative appears to be a rational way of mentally processing something.
Here’s a piece from Wayne Dyer’s book, There’s a Spiritual Solution to every Problem.
We are subjected to many illusions in our daily life. The greatest one is the one that keeps us trapped in giving our energy to what always has been.
The past is behind us. Predicting the future accurately, even by eminent scientists such as James Lovelock, is very, very unreliable. Thus all we have is today. So do not be afraid, be curious.
By Paul Handover
Learning from Dogs 
Paul – very interesting, but I’m not sure I buy into the basic principle:
“Fear paralyzes; curiosity empowers. Be more interested than afraid.” — Patricia Alexander, American educational psychologist.
My problem is that I can be curious about Global Warming, for example, but UNTIL I really start to FEAR the consequences then I will probably do sod all about it – and this through laziness, inertia, greed and so on.
Agreed, TOO MUCH FEAR is very bad, leading to paranoia and irrationality – especially of foreigners, for example (Ruanda, Armenia etc) but RATIONAL fear is for me essential. It is only because we fear the consequences of yet another financial meltdown that something (maybe not enough) is being done to put in place better regulations. Previously, nobody feared this at all and so nothing was done.
In other words, a lack of fear leads to disaster. Curiosity is not enough; we need to get off our arses and DO SOMETHING because we fear for our kids.
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Chris, I see where you are coming from but disagree. I think this warrants a separate post from me.
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Fear, just as Greed, can be good. even indispensable. Such are the principle of survival and business, respectively.
Few, if any, mental regimes have no positive applications.
I know the mountains, and I also know that those who are not afraid have much shorter life spans, and even achievements, than those who know how to fear.
Long winded fashion of saying I agree with Chris, although I can see where Paul comes from…
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
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Lovelock is a dubious commentator, he is very close to Shell and Branson, has absurd notions about the safety of nuclear power, has no practical understanding of ecology and has called for suspension of democracy to win the climate war.
yes, climate change is going to become climate war, but Lovelocks social vision will take us to some kind of totalitarian environmental war-time mobilisation. In fact he explicitly wishes for this.
http://permaculture.tv/?s=lovelock
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