a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc.,whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.and it defines terror as:
intense, sharp, overmastering fear:Ie, just more fear.
This seems incorrect. Not just in my personal parlance, but in how these words are used by people. For instance, from a TUOC post the other day about small towns dealing with opiod epidemics.
When a town mishandles its overdose deaths by criminalizing addicts and harassing people who call in overdoses and beefing up a police force with a record of violence, then I’m bothered by the senseless tragedy of the subsequent deaths but there’s a sense of ‘okay, we know what to do about this’. But when we’ve done all the things we know to do about this and things are still getting worse, then that’s just kind of terrifying.
Fear is this anxious dread that something is coming to get you, that could be avoided or prevented. It's the worry that your boss dislikes you so he's going to ignore your effort and find some reason to fire you. It's the anger at puritans who are treating a drug crisis like a morality problem rather than a health problem. It's the anxiety that someone hates you and you're going to have to spend a whole party being in the same room as them. It's thinking someone has been trailing you this night for hours and no one will hear you if you scream.
Sometimes fear is overwhelmingly strong causing you panic attacks, and sometimes it's just a background presence that adds subtle anxiety to your interactions, ergo "size of effect" is not the way to define the boundaries of fear. It's more about the specificity of the emotion, and the belief that the bad outcome could be avoided if only people didn't do bad things. If only the small town bigots had listened to you about the costs of prohibition, if only your boss wasn't sexist, if only everyone had listened to you when you said a serial killer is loose...
Fear then serves a powerful purpose: it motivates you to fix things, and provides you with a visible emotion to get others on board with your goals. This doesn't mean that it isn't real, it is very, very real in your head, as real as love or hunger or anger. As they say, fear is the mindkiller.
Terror is even worse, but also more true, and therefore in some ways better. It's when we transition from an uncertain dread to an overpowering certainty. Certainty that something is wrong, and everything is wrong. Even if everyone in town had the most enlightened attitude, drugs would still destroy your community. Even if this stalker is thwarted, death will take you some day soon. Even if your boss relaxed about you, the entire industry is dying and you hate your job with every fiber of your being. Terror is the moment in a horror movie when a giant hand comes out of nowhere and smashes the brave hero.
Terror is realizing you never had a chance. It's no one's fault and there's nothing to do, because those options presuppose that other outcomes were even imaginable.
Fear is worrying Satan has a devil set aside for you. Terror is looking upon the glory of all Creation and realizing how small you are.
Fear is being upset that your children won't honor you in your old age and after you die. Terror is contemplating how long the universe will go on after you and everyone you know has died.
You get the point. Terror either drives us into depressive nihilism, or insanity. It is not nearly as helpful an emotion at accomplishing our goals as fear is. But it is more accurate. Fear is usually an illusion, often of self-importance, that covers up the true terror of the situation.
If you press through the terror, and accept it, then you can come out the other side with a realistic assessment of your situation. You can make actual choices. That is very powerful, and what more, is the cure for the original fear. Once you've accepted something a thousand times worse than what you were worrying about, then the original anxiety has less hold on you.
You could stop being afraid of Green Party voters who sabotage the Democratic candidate. The really terrifying prospect is the millions upon millions of voters who chose an idiot fascist, or who couldn't be bothered to choose at all. And that they are a tide sweeping many nations. Where is your anxiety at Jill Stein compared to all of that?
It is very hard. There's no denying that. There is a comfort in the old fear, that there was one really evil and ignorant bad guy who polluted the whole town into dealing with drugs badly. And pushing through something that looks for all intents and purposes like insanity, is not ever socially or personally pleasant.
But the true reward of existential freedom that is your sole birthright, lies on the other side.
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