The Environment Influences Our Fears

“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here." -Marianne Williamson. As early as people can remember, they’re afraid of something. They experience some kind of stimulus from their surroundings. Some fears may be irrational or petty, and others can be legitimate and probable. But all of them stem from a presence that is constant in your life: the environment that you live in. As seen from different fears from each environment such as first world countries and third world countries, fear is rooted from our environment and circumstances that we live in.

Fears in first world countries are in a wide spectrum because of the diversity of people living in them. For example, America is known as the “Melting Pot” because of all the different people live there. People living here may have petty fears compared to people living in third world countries. But concentrated near the northeastern part of the US is the fear of contamination exhibited by the people working for The United States Army Medical Research Institute, as shown in the book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. People who especially are fearful of contamination are the workers who spend their time in Bio-Safety Level 4. Described in the book as a place where people work with pathogens that “[are] lethal viruses for which there is no vaccine and no cure” (47), this place is the epitome of a fear linked to your environment. As seen from the text, “Gene Johnson had suffered recurrent nightmares about Ebola virus ever since he began to work with it” (49), Johnson is afraid of the Ebola virus and always ends up dreaming that he gets contaminated. This shows that a stressful and dangerous environment like Bio-Safety Level 4 can impact a person by influencing his or her ...

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... the face of educational reform in Pakistan and an inspiration to the world. Her story exemplifies the real life fears Pakistanis go through. Something simple as walking to school can have dangerous consequences. The fears of people in third world countries are more valid and probable then the fears of people in first world countries.

Although fears in first world and third world countries are vastly different, the fears mean a lot to people who have them. Teenagers have to live with the fear of bad grades, losing friends, and not living up to their parents’ expectations. Adults have the fear of losing their jobs, not being able to support their kids, and numerous amounts of bills. We are all afflicted with different kinds of fears and all the fears can be conquered. The surroundings people are living in will produce fears that will differ for each environment.