A brief commentary inspired by the meme appearing on a popular social media platform…
Yes. As I understand it (being barely but a layman when it comes to such matters) the ‘organism’ can be caused, through the stimulant or suppressant actions of its various complex chemical pathways either to exist in a state of ‘fear’ — meaning needing to be ready to elect a ‘flight or fight’ response dependent on its perceived best course of reaction to said source of threat… OR can be in a state of ‘growth’ which can only effectively occur when it does not feel threatened, is not fearful, and can divert the potential energy of its system to ‘development’ rather than ‘self defence’…. But it cannot exit in both states simultaneously…
Implicitly, when in a prolonged state of ‘fear’ there are no resources spared for ‘development’ — and in the case of H. sapiens this might mean physical, mental or spiritual development… The questions, its seems to me, that we need to ask are: Why would a subgroup of society choose to try to inculcate a ‘state of fear’ in the mass of humanity? Who does it benefit? How does it benefit them? Some obvious answers spring to mind: to maintain/entrench their power, to exploit for self interested purposes, to profit! … but, I am sure there may also be other reasons.
It is not just that ‘Fear’ stops ‘life’ (as per the meme) for fear is often, essentially, the key to maintaining life with respect to choosing to resist or to flee from any perceived ‘threat’… but more importantly it is that it ‘stops growth’… and without that we cannot progress towards becoming all that we could be… We have created an environment in which the media (at the behest of certain key ‘influencers’) surrounds us with ‘new fears’ every day… After a year of incessant health fears, we are now slowly emerging into another era of ‘conflict fears’, and even ‘extra-terrestrial fears’… and having endured a period of extended isolation, we are currently also being divided into the ‘Vaxxed’ and ‘Unvaxxed’ — a dichotomy which is already being exploited to foster continued ‘fears’ that could potentially lead to widespread ‘societal violence’…
Others have wisely observed that it is not ‘hate’ that is the ‘opposite’ of ‘love’…but ‘fear’! What concerns me is that ‘those who would govern the Earth’ seem to be intent on exploiting the inherent bio-chemical potential of ‘fear’ to stop ‘growth’ (including Spiritual Growth) which, therefore, also stops the necessary and efficient promotion of LOVE… for this is the true ‘threat’ to those who have selfish reasons for exploiting society!