Driven by Fear

This is in response although not solely to focus on a series of posts and comments on geothinks.blogspot.com.

Throughout civilization and our human cultures the two driving forces seem to be hope and fear, both of which can be considered one and the same. This post is to focus on fear. It seems to me that the initial driving force of extremists that can be harmful to society is fear. When it comes to the belief in a god, the fear, to me, seems to be that the people leading this extremism are afraid of being ultimately responsible for their own faults, while simutaneously believing that they can control their perfections. However, despite the climate of today's world, religious thought is not the only vehicle being driven by this force. One would often find that any type of systematic belief in anything can be driven by fear.

For example, the Soviets seem to have based their beliefs on the economic recovery and the nationalistic supremacy that they felt they were warranted. This was a belief that was based on a political system and not a religious system. Yet, this was driven by fear and not hope, which is why it was hindered. The political leaders, such as Stalin, were motivated by the fear that "Mother Russia" would fall and that they would not be able to compete or control their government. It is true that it started with a hope, which when Lenin was still the leader, it was governed with hope. My firm belief is that if Lenin and his beliefs survived, Soviet communism could have been an acceptable system, but that did not happen and when Stalin took the reigns of government, the motivator of that country changed.

Today, America seems to be driven largely by fear. It is not the fault of one single religion, religion is only the medium through which the fear was introduced. Looking at this and the lessons learned through history, when the inspirator of a government system is changed from fear to hope, it seems that an overthrow of government is the only option. My point? The USA, sooner or later will see a revolutionary movement. This is not a bad thing, it is only a necessary part of a cycle that each nation needs to go through in order to survive. Refusing this cycle makes a nation go the way of Rome and cease to exist.

It seems that, noticing these historical trends, hope and fear are the two key driving forces of the human races. Every system of civilization starts with hope and then decays into fear, inevitably.