4 ideas
Fear can be manufactured and sold at scale, functioning as a commodity that drives consumption of security, insurance, news, and political loyalty. Whoever controls the supply of fear controls the market for the solutions promised to relieve it.
Real fear responds proportionately to an actual external danger, while neurotic fear attaches to objects out of proportion to any genuine threat or with no identifiable object at all. Distinguishing the two determines whether the correct response is action against the danger or examination of the fearing mind.
Courage is often not the absence of fear but the deliberate performance of composure to preserve status and reassure others. The act of feigning fearlessness serves a social function independent of the person's actual internal state.
Fear is a poor guarantor of a long life because chronic vigilance and dread degrade the very existence they claim to defend. Living in fear can be more corrosive to a life than the danger being feared.