Title is misleading; article is about PTSD, phobias, and other mental disorders, rather than fear.
This is about managing the memories of fearful situations. PTSD sufferers were right to be fearful in the original case - it's just the repeating of that fear in other situations is less helpful.
It is one thing to regurgitate a widely believed aphorism, but an entirely another thing to justify it with facts.
Primordial instinctive fear is not required for the human species. Name one example where it is required (where an intelligent response is deemed insufficient).
1. Here is an example of reckless behavior associated with a lack of fear as it pertains to humans taking anti-fear drugs.
[1] http://news.nationalpost.com/news/there-was-no-fear-anymore-...
And then there are studies of animals changing their behavior to be more reckless. I am curious to see your thoughts on correlation of animal and human testing.
[2] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2011/03/scientists-di...
If one is going about life "without thinking or caring about the consequences of an action", that is more a sign of being unintelligent (quite often a case of native intelligence being hampered by such strong emotions as ideological feelings) than merely being fearless.
Animals (especially early primate ancestors of humans) do not have fully developed intelligence, so it not unsurprising that they unlike us require primitive emotions such as fear to survive as a species.
When one considers ill effects of fear, often stuff like PTSD and phobias come to mind. But normal people too are adversely affected by fear on a daily basis. As this documentary shows the masses are easily influenced (via fear) by propaganda/ public relations to make decisions that are not in their own best interest.
Name one instance of sensibility in retaining fear-response in this modern world.
Edit: Also, this book by a threat assessment specialist talks about problems faced by women in particular who have the fear response in mild form, but suppress it. His conclusion is that the emotional response can actually be a lot clearer and more accurate than the intellectual one in a dangerous situation and it is wise to listen to it. If that man chatting you up is making you nervous, it's a sign you ought to be careful.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gift-Fear-Survival-Signals-Violence/...
The lesson from the book is that fear is a second signal (in addition to reasoning) that may heighten perception of a dangerous situation and should not be ignored.
One example: a girl is being chatted up by a guy. He seems nice, says all the right things. Intellectually everything seems fine. But there's a feeling nagging at her that something isn't right. A feeling of fear.
Mr De Becker is saying that in all the cases he's examined, the women went on to ignore their fear - eg by the socially expected action of returning reciprocated trust. Someone tells you a bit of information, you return it. Someone reveals a bit more, you do the same. Ultimately, these women put themselves in danger by not listening to their fear.
Now I'm not sure what you mean by the difference between "no fear" and "ignored fear." Plainly they have ignored their fear. But if a situation seems off due to a feeling of fear, not having that feeling isn't going to help in any sense. Its a signal that is no longer available, so you lose one data point to make a decision. Decisions with less data tend to be less reliable.
If curiously approaching a deadly creature is what it takes to be labelled "pathological", I would gladly allow myself to be pathological if it means the ending of fear.
Yup, life is certainly way more fun without fear around.
> you can play with [that hungry, pissed-off tiger] all you want.
I can also choose to not play with it. That is the beauty of intelligently responding (free choice) instead of affectively responding (limited choice).
The point is that the fear-response tells you to not play with the tiger, you astounding idiot.
Last I checked, the fear-response "tells" more than not to play with the tiger. For example, it tells (via moral conditioning) not to kill or maim or wound (not to mention insult as you evidently are doing here) one's fellow humans - yet reading the daily news will confirm that such violence does happen on a regular basis (despite fear "telling" them not to do it). Therefore, is there something new you can contribute to aid human understanding?
I'm starting to wonder about your mental state, as well. You seem to be very focused on direct connections between emotion and full-on mental illness--all anger is violence, all fear is crippling phobia, all sadness is unending depression, at least to you. I can only guess at what led to these conclusions.
> I'm starting to wonder about your mental state, as well.
Your beating around the bush, via rephrasing that "you astounding idiot" insult, this time isn't going to change the fact that you'd rather go ad hominem than engage with rational discussion ... speaking of which, it may be apposite to point out that it was you who deemed human intelligence to be insufficient when it comes to such a simple act of not recklessly fooling around with dangerous creatures, to wit:
<quote> dawnbreez: The point is that the fear-response tells you to not play with the tiger, you astounding idiot. <endquote>
> You seem to be very focused on direct connections between emotion and full-on mental illness--all anger is violence, all fear is crippling phobia, all sadness is unending depression, at least to you. I can only guess at what led to these conclusions.
Guess and wonder what you will ... meanwhile the original query, asked 22 hours ago, is yet to be answered:
<quote> sridca: Name one instance of sensibility in retaining fear-response in this modern world. <endquote>
A large fire. An angry tiger. A busy street.
All of these are situations where a particular response--namely, distancing oneself from the threat--makes survival much more likely. Fear happens to produce that response, in a much faster way than higher-level cognitive processes, even in children who haven't got enough experience to reason about the danger.
Also, seriously, get a therapist. It's been shown in psychological studies that trying to suppress emotions (of any kind) tends to lead to depression.
Furthermore, fear in such instances more often than not introduces more harm than otherwise as it hampers clear thinking that is essential to successfully come out of those dangers. The list of accidents and deaths caused by human stampedes and crushes should surely give you a pause before you reach for the keyboard once again to defend the much-cherished fear and introduce ever more carefully crafted denigrations.
Lastly, there is a distinction between fear itself (the emotion/passion) and the reflex action, and that being without fear doesn't necessarily get rid of the reflex action which is indeed useful in avoiding danger, especially on those situations you mention. As for "children who haven't got enough experience to reason about the danger" - that is besides the point as this discussion is pertaining to adults.
> Also, seriously, get a therapist. It's been shown in psychological studies that trying to suppress emotions (of any kind) tends to lead to depression.
As suppression and repression (a hallmark of such practices as Vipassana and Stoicism, which HN is known to be fond of) are at much lower levels than normal in this body, your ill-informed and unsolicited suggestion to "get a therapist," stemming as it does from your "you astounding idiot" insult, is cast aside in the waste bin where it rightfully belongs.
Meanwhile here is an useful word for you:
<quote> projection |prəˈjekSH(ə)n| noun • the unconscious transfer of one's own desires or emotions to another person: we protect the self by a number of defense mechanisms, including repression and projection. <endquote>