Fear manifests as a survival instinct in the wild, and fear still has a role in modern living. One should always be aware of his or her immediate surroundings and pay attention to persons/things that might threaten personal safety. This is the productive role that fear plays in our lives.

Our intuitive ability to see and react to warning signs works well in the natural world, but humans were not designed to withstand the 24/7 broadcast of horrible images, death counts, predictions of doom, conflicts (both real and created by the media) and “warnings” that seem to be the staple of a 24-hour news for-profit news cycle.

Fear plants itself in our psyche, clouds our judgement, and prevents us from taking rational action. At it’s worst, fear causes us to take unethical and often immoral action in the form of self-preserving shortcuts. We are ruled by “what could happen” instead of what is statistically likely and end up with inefficient and often counter-productive solutions that do more harm than good.

Fighting a militant war on drugs by putting an entire generation of people in jail has created more criminals and failed to make a dent in either drug abuse (which is an under-funded health issue) or the profit motive (drug cartels are still large, powerful and destroying lives in multiple continents). Fighting a war on terror by terrorizing entire populations with war, prison and drone strikes often creates more terrorists than it destroys. Our enemies use our fear daily to manipulate us into holy wars that otherwise would not exist.

Setting up expensive agencies and new procedures to make us feel “safe” has proven to be both inefficient and ineffective…but hey, at least we are “doing something”. Build a wall, profile by race/religion, carry guns in public places, the list goes on…even climate change seems to have two camps: one which fears a loss of jobs/economy if we even talk about it and the other that fears we have to take immediate token actions (often at the expense of more efficient/effective long-term planning).

Fear is ultimately what causes racism and war. We have created an entire generation of children who are afraid to travel alone, afraid to take chances, afraid to make decisions without approval, afraid to even go outside. As fear escalates, the doomsday clock moves forward.

The solution? Stop being a slave to fear. Fear is a useful emotion to recognize potential danger but must be vetted by reality. If fear takes control of your rational mind the only thing left is irrational action which is more dangerous in the long run. Ask yourself: WWSD (“What would Spock do”)?

After mocking the “hope and change” campaign of Obama, the same crowd now believes a man who will build a $25B wall (and somehow make Mexico pay for it), expand torture and win so much that we “may get bored of winning”.

My new game is try and come up with the 3 craziest things that will be a part of this presidential election next and then watch while all 3 come true.

UPDATE: Trump’s latest interviews on foreign policy (incoherent ramblings and outright dangerous comments about replacing troops in Japan and South Korea with nukes) and abortion law (stating there should be some “punishment” to women that choose to have an abortion) both qualify…as does his refusal to even answer basic questions during interviews (instead choosing to get the names of everyone in the room) all qualify as things I could have guessed were coming. It is clear the man has not thought through what the job of POTUS entails  so he just “wings it” during interviews and then retracts half of his answers a day later after his PR team has a chance to scrub his answers.

It was not difficult to predict that someone would assault a reporter at a Trump speaking event. I did NOT expect it would be his campaign manager…you can’t make this stuff up for a sitcom.