Fear Paradox: How Our Obsession with Feeling Secure Imprisons Our Minds and Shapes Our Lives (Learning to Take Risks, Overcoming Anxieties)

Fear, Contemporary Society, and its ConsequencesFor anyone suffering from the global pandemic anxiety surrounding the new coronavirus, comes a long awaited exploration of one of the most powerful and primitive human emotions.A history and culture of fear. Over the last five hundred years, life for the average human being has changed dramatically—plagues no longer wipe out entire families, and no longer do we empty our chamber pots into the street. But, progress in the West has shown that no matter how many dangers we neutralize, new ones emerge. Why? Because our level of fear remains constant.Fear in contemporary society. For years, Dr. Frank Faranda studied a state of fearfulness in his patients—an evolutionary state that relentlessly drove them toward avoidance, alienation, hypercriticism, hyper-control, and eventually, depression and anxiety. He began to wonder what they were afraid of, and how embedded these fears might be in contemporary society. This book aims to break us free from what he found.Fear not. Faranda’s Fear Paradox is simple—even though fear has a prime directive to keep us safe and comfortable, it has grown into the single greatest threat to humanity and collective survival. As a consequence, fear is embedded in our culture, creating new dangers and inciting isolation. With global pandemic disruptions and rising anxiety levels, now is the time to shine a light on our deepest fears and examine the society that fear is creating.But fear not—inside, you’ll learn about:The fear of pain and the fear of the unknownHow fear has driven progress in the WestThe price paid to eradicate fearIf you learned from reading books like Fear, The Culture of Fear, or The Science of Fear; then The Fear Paradox is your next read. Come on, what are you afraid of?
We are driven by fear to reach ever more extreme levels of comfort and safety, but in doing so, we embed fear into our culture, create new sorts of dangers, isolate ourselves from one another, and distance ourselves from the very sources of our own imaginative vitality. This book aims to break us free from this trap of our own making