Saint Valentine's Massacre

"Be not afraid" the biblical saying goes, and gentile and Jews alike struggle for its meaning through it all.
I was watching a number of TED talks on netflix given in 2009 or thereabouts concerning the emerging theories about cognition, emotion, and memory ("Brave Neuro World").  The leading researchers are not just researchers anymore, they are professionals who've worked tirelessly in fields outside of academia and come up with novel ways to show us the most interesting parts of our memory and how it is a predictor of future events.  There is one part missing: fear.
We are told by many people what fear is and what it's caused by, how to avoid it, how to dismiss it, and how to choose love and knowledge as alternatives to fear.  But fear is still our backbone it connects our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, makes our motor cortex more prepared for intense physical exertion, and causes system wide shutdowns when it detects unmanageable or excessive amounts of foreign stimuli.
To tell others to "be not afraid" is a tricky proposition, like asking prey not to be wary of predation.  What we can do is find better metaphors for that crux of communication.  There is a growing population of marketing "ninjas" and "assassins" meant to give people reasons to hunt their next jobs with popular start-ups   The intelligent few, aware of this need to build better systems to allow more people with meager means to buy into the system, for whatever amount of time it gives them, creates more opportunities to increase the supply of funds for interesting projects, but because our government is constantly being pulled in different directions (with antiquated ideas about healthcare and finance), in an effort to control burgeoning costs, we are not going to see the benefit of some of these campaigns until innovation pushes past committees that regulate finance.  Ventures like Kickstarter accomplish some of these things already and allows for people not to fear not having funds to start a creative venture, but the company becomes crippled by its lack of oversight for the funding of projects which may not be fully protected by patents.
I come from a family of lawyers mostly, but my grandfather was a doctor.  He advocated eating red meat, starchy foods like potatoes, whole milks, butter, and dairy as well as the occasional cup of coffee and desert.  He died in his late 70's.  This was and still is the american dream, not so much the house and two cars idea, but the well fed, educated, and insufferable stubborn temperament    This still is possible, and not problematic for those who believe and are not afraid.
One more thing, I for most of my young adult life, was an actor.  I studied the liberal arts at a school in the nation's capitol which for many was not by any means the pinaccle of conservatory schools, but for me it was everything and it made me happy that I had the chance to waste some of my parents hard earned money after many years of being lectured about the fact that anything is possible.  And yes I was lectured, harangued, harassed, and teased.  I WAS NEVER TAUGHT HOW TO "BE NOT AFRAID"!.  I acted afraid the whole time, and my actions were those of a child afraid that felt he was going to be left behind.

Fear management is an area of study which many might consider unworthy of funding, and given how much clamor for new pharmaceuticals and the push to legalize medical cannabis the population largely will not experience fear as a necessary and vital function.  After working for many years in a broken economy, I will say this about fear:  if you should die before you wake, please be not afraid of what you think's at stake.