Eng Essay final draft
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Fatih Erkal
21301418
Eng 102-105
Sibel Evliyagil
27.02.2015
“Is fear a positive emotion? If yes, explain in what way. If no, explain its effects are and why they cannot be regarded as positive”
Positivity of Fear for Human Beings
Human beings, as a living and feeling creatures, live with their emotions and live with respect to their emotions as well. What is meant by "with respect to emotion" is that people usually make their choices according to their emotions throughout their lives. For example, when you love someone, you do not choose him/her according to logical parameters such as whether he/she is rich or not, or, whether his/her characteristic is close to yours or not.
Mostly, you love him/her because you just love him/her, to put it differently because your heart says that love him/her. In this example, love, an emotion, is the key criterion for your choice. If we apply this function to another emotion called fear, which is regarded as one of the most fundamental emotions of our lives, we again get a similar result which means that fear directs us in our choices and lives. In this respect, when our lives and our emotions are strongly linked to each other, the question is whether these emotions have positive effects on our lives, in other words, whether these emotions are positive or not. There will be many possible answers to this question for many emotions but if we take the fear into consideration in terms of positivity, the answer is yes, fear is a positive emotion. Why fear is positive is that because it results in many positive and beneficial consequences when mankind's survival, psychologically, social well-being are taken into consideration.
One of the reasons of why fear is regarded as a positive emotion is that fear alerts humans when they encounter a danger. Lilienfield supports this fact by saying:" It alerts us
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to potential dangers, like a predator or criminal" (17). So fear is like a control and alerting mechanism therefore
Fatih Erkal
21301418
Eng 102-105
Sibel Evliyagil
27.02.2015
“Is fear a positive emotion? If yes, explain in what way. If no, explain its effects are and why they cannot be regarded as positive”
Positivity of Fear for Human Beings
Human beings, as a living and feeling creatures, live with their emotions and live with respect to their emotions as well. What is meant by "with respect to emotion" is that people usually make their choices according to their emotions throughout their lives. For example, when you love someone, you do not choose him/her according to logical parameters such as whether he/she is rich or not, or, whether his/her characteristic is close to yours or not.
Mostly, you love him/her because you just love him/her, to put it differently because your heart says that love him/her. In this example, love, an emotion, is the key criterion for your choice. If we apply this function to another emotion called fear, which is regarded as one of the most fundamental emotions of our lives, we again get a similar result which means that fear directs us in our choices and lives. In this respect, when our lives and our emotions are strongly linked to each other, the question is whether these emotions have positive effects on our lives, in other words, whether these emotions are positive or not. There will be many possible answers to this question for many emotions but if we take the fear into consideration in terms of positivity, the answer is yes, fear is a positive emotion. Why fear is positive is that because it results in many positive and beneficial consequences when mankind's survival, psychologically, social well-being are taken into consideration.
One of the reasons of why fear is regarded as a positive emotion is that fear alerts humans when they encounter a danger. Lilienfield supports this fact by saying:" It alerts us
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to potential dangers, like a predator or criminal" (17). So fear is like a control and alerting mechanism therefore