You have no reason to fear

The message that I reinforce in my career and business workshops and consulting interventions, is that "you have no reason to fear, unless you fear reason."

You may ask, Why would anybody fear reason? Oh, there are tons of reasons. More on those later on.

For now, think of life as a battle (private or public) between Fear and Reason.

Fear attracts the fearful, and creates mindless masses of people who do what the herd is doing. No more, no less. If everybody is reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, well, they just have to read it too. If everybody is investing in dot com companies (from 1995 to 2001), well, they just have to do the same. Herd psychology is an extremely powerful driver of human behavior.

This is one of the main reasons why "the rich get richer while the poor get poorer." The rich think more and more originally all the time, while the poor think more and more the same.

The people who are trapped in such mindless herds, are paralyzed by their fears, and are incapable of original, independent thinking. Even when they do generate original ideas from independent reasoning, they are too afraid to take action. Their individual minds are fused -- welded! -- with the unthinking, uncritical mind of the masses. To step outside the herd is to face danger. So in mind as in deed, they stay (lock themselves) in the warm yet illusory security of the herd.

Reason, on the other hand, is usually possessed and mastered by independent people who are not afraid of public perception or conventional norms. Reason-empowered people also seek out knowledge by reading books, whereas most people would rather read fiction. Please note that I'm not putting down fiction books, since they can often stimulate our imagination or help us to relax or plunge us into worlds that are dramatically different from our everyday environment. The problem is that often, people read fiction books and no longer have time to read useful, practical non-fiction books on management, psychology, self-help, etc.

Here's an interesting illustration of the differences between Fear and Reason, from the world of cinema.

In George Lucas' famous Star Wars trilogy, Obiwan Kenobi is characterized as a luminous being filled with reason, whereas his pupil, Anakin Skywalker, is a dark being filled with fear. His fear is carefully nurtured by the sly and malicious Palpatine so that it grows until it overcomes the young Jedi disciple. As Anakin's life escalates into the Dark Side, the entire galaxy is plunged into an abyss of pain and suffering.

The proof that Anakin let his fear overcome his reason, is when he begins to believe that Palpatine actually has the power to bring back Padme from the dead. A second proof of fear shutting down his rational faculties, is that he believes his nightmare (where he sees Padme dying) will become reality.

If anything, his fear actually created his reality! This reminds me of a line by Bodhi (played magnificently by Patrick Swayze) in the movie Pointbreak: "Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will make your worst fears come true."

Coming up: Why people fear reason.