fear is anticipation of pain.... no one really fears death is by death they mean complete non-existance... there is no pain possible for those who dont exist...what they fear is the unkown life that may come after death in whatever form they may find themselves...they fear the possible painful hell of religion or the judgement of others who may be waiting for them, etc...
being ignorant is often not seen as our normal position.... we never really know what is around the next bend, but often we go through each day without thinking that at all... we have a plan, a goal and a dont see any apparent road blocks, so we feel confident and forget that this is all delusions based on experiences of the past which are hardly consistant predicators of the future.
I see it a bit differently.
Emotions come out of our scale of values.
Fear comes from our value placed on what we stand to LOSE in a given circumstance.
Loss of life is loss of everything we value. Hence, fear is the strongest emotion when the strongest threat is perceived (or imagined).
Our sense of well-being, on the other hand, has layers to it.
Our self-esteem comes from confidence that we are competent to meet life's challenges.
Ignorance is a two-edged sword, it would seem to me.
What we don't know(ignorance) can hurt us leaving a blank spot where fear would follow and action would reflexively remove us from danger.
Obversely, what we don't know (ignorance) can leave a blank spot where a golden opportunity may lie in our path and no reflex will carry us to the reward.
As far as RELIGIOUS FEARS are concerned, I feel this is much more complicated.
I think these fears ride piggy back on values we have already placed on things and they act as modifiers.
A tiny example. When I use to be alone in a dark place at night I'd have my natural sense of unknown danger heightened and overstimulated by the ___implanted___belief in demonic entities lurking about seeking to harm me. This demonic mental construct rode piggy back on the perfectly natural fear of the darkness and the unknown. The religiously implanted modifier gave an Identity (read: false identity) to the lurking unknown.
When I disposed of the false belief in the supernatural I immediately lost the fear of the dark and the piggy back fear of unseen forces (demonic or otherwise.)
It is an interesting subject, no doubt about it.
By the way, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is the most limiting of all states of being. It is a way of drowning our sense of awareness. While we may blank out dangers; we simultaneously erase the enormous potential for transcendance in life.
I think of the 10 year old Einstein who is silent and slow and a disappointment to his parents. Though Jewish, they place him in Catholic school. He quickly discerns from this religious enviornment that false answers connected to imaginary contexts have no place in his life in a real world. He turns his thinking outward and begins drinking in all the facts, data, awareness he can muster. His laser-like focus coupled with a heightened imagination eventually produce in him a mind capable of unpuzzling the hidden fundamentals of nature itself.
Terry
