A First Pling From The Red Submarine

I'm a afraid of a lot of things, but essentially they boil down to:

• things that inflict pysical pain, especially those that may accidentally or unexpectedly do so
• inflicting pain in all forms on other people (and to some small extent animals), intentionally or otherwise
• other people
  
• myself
• and losing myself

everything else, like sharks or clowns or rapists, or poverty or war or heartbreak:

• is too foreign or unlikely, so I can't quite imagine it or find it a waste of time
  
• is silly to be afraid of so I refuse to be
• or is, after all, just what it is, just like I don't fear death because if you die, you die

and writing this list made me wonder about the differences between fear and hate. Maybe they're just the passive and active forms of the same thing, like being fed and eating. Most things I fear I also hate, but not everything I hate I fear. Is it better to hate things than to fear them? It puts you more into control, forces you to be more assertive and take action instead of hiding and avoiding. And might make you do stupid shit like hunt wolves to extinction or bomb muslims.

Fear is good because it keeps you away from shit that could hurt or kill you. Hate is good because it makes you take action against shit that could hurt or kill you. But in the end they're both outsmarted by common sense. Crap... my brain just shortciruited from the pling of the submarine radar, the 3D image of good and bad and balance and complexity and the way things can never add up because then they'd stand still... and that made no sense to you, but I'll tell you about it someday.

I hate being afraid of stuff. Oh hey... the irony of that sentence...