Is fear good or bad?

(This is a rough draft. This is Part 1 of 2 part series.)

Let me create a scenario here (which happens very often): You’re sitting in your new class when a really cute girk walks in. Your heart skips a beat, and you feel butterflies in the pit of the stomach. And then you see the hottie walking up behind her and smile at her. And that’s it – you start feeling nervous, feeling threatened, anger rises in your system, and you want to either run the fuck out of the class, or lunge at him. 

Let me create another scernario: You’re driving your car along an empty road, listening to really nice country music, and enjoying a scenic drive. Suddenly this sports car cuts in front of you. What happens next: Your pupils dilate, your heart rate shoots up, and you instictively slam the brakes. As soon as you stop, you notice you’re shivering, and anger is rising in your sytem.

2 very different scenarios but with a common thread – fear.  In the first case it was your fear which caused all the mental distress and in the second case, it saved your ass. So the question which had been bothering me is: Is fear good or bad?

So I decided to do some research and find out more about it. From all that I’ve read, observed and understood  about fear (and this is information I’ve collated over many years, so I don’t have links), it seems like fear is the a primary emotion which surfaces when one’s survival is threatened resulting in a fight-or-flight syndrome. 

Let’s take scenario 2: the reason you slammed the brakes is because experience has created this fear that if you don’t do it, you’ll die. 

But does the same happen in scenario 1? Very much so is what I think. The moment you saw the cute girl (or guy, whichever works for you), you felt a primal attraction towards her. Don’t beat yourself about this, it’s hard coded into our genetic structure. And you want to be with her, spend time with her, procreate etc. (Again hard wired into our genetic structure). But the arrival of the other guy threatens this dream, and consequently threatens your survivability. In this case, the development of fear most probably happens at a much slower rate. But the underlying process is similar.

So coming back to the question? Is fear good or bad? I think it’s good. Else we’d move around like a bunch of 1 year olds who find the idea of sticking their fingers into electrical sockets very exciting. But then why does so much of the world’s problems stem from fear? It has to do with the way we understand and deal with fear, rather than fear itself. I think if fear was such a bad thing, nature would’ve have eliminated (or atleast mitigated) it in so many millions of years of evolution.