In my Personal Essay class, we’re working on our second paper, on fear. Part of this includes going to people we know and discussing it with them.

So what is fear? How does the media use fear? Are humans naturally fearful — is being afraid in our genes — or are we conditioned by society to be fearful? Where does it come from? How do we overcome it? And why are we afraid to face it?

A couple of questions/prompts he gave us to help with the though processes: Are you afraid of terrorism? Also, would you like to carry around a gun?

This is my initial input (though you can expect me to comment responses and whatnot to ya). There are two different kinds of fear. There’s the natural survival instinct that causes us to fear things that threaten our lives. The second kind of fear develops in response to a traumatic event. Like, for example, I’m afraid of trusting new people because of what happened back in high school. Things like that. Can it be overcome? It can, but it’s very hard to do. Facing something you fear is obviously not a pleasant thing to do.

Now, am I afraid of terrorism? Not particularly, but it pisses me off. Look, U.S., people hate us and are trying to kill us. Did you all ever stop to think WHY? Maybe we could DO SOMETHING about it, instead of trying to kill them in response.

Would I carry a gun? Nope. And I could care less. The NRA, according to my professor, has the notion, or something, that “the ONLY way to feel safe is to have a gun.”

So… NRA… My feeling safe more or less my entire life has been a delusion because I’m not armed? Um, here, I have a better question for ya; uh, are ya fucking stupid?

But anyway, that’s my two cents for now. Let’s make this an INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION please, for fuck’s sake. Aliens are irrelevant. Plus, this is for a class, damnit. I wouldn’t be making this blog post in the first place otherwise.