what fear can teach us

https://www.ted.com/talks/karen_thompson_walker_what_fear_can_teach_us#t-666626

The overall argument and point of this TEDtalk was analyzing fear, and what we do with it, along with connecting fear to story telling. Karen Thompson starts off the TEDtalk with a story of the Essex whale ship men who are stuck at sea, due to a shipwreck and are forced to assess their options. It is shown that they assess their choices of survival based on the various fears in which they have. The closest island they can sail to has been rumored to be populated by cannibals, to the island of Hawaii they would encounter storms, and the long route of South America they would endure starvation. They end up choosing the South America route because the story that they had in their mind of the fear of cannibals and being murdered was a more vivid picture. Half of the 20 sailors starved to death and some adopted their own form of cannibalism along the way. But this is a clear example of the connection of fear to storytelling. When we are afraid of something we often make up stories of what could go wrong in our minds, like getting on a plane and it crashing, or being murdered by cannibals. We make up elaborate stories in our mind stemming from these fears, and often ask ourselves "what will happen next?"

The author of this TEDtalk on fear used a lot of pathos targeting our emotions. This is shown through the story of the sailors and us feeling sympathetic towards their situation and the fear that they must have felt and it makes us think of our own fears. Another example that targets the audience more directly so they can better relate is, when Thompson told the stories of her small fears as a child living in California, scared that their chandelier would fall due to the earthquakes. It makes the audience think back to their childhood and the "monsters under their bed" or the small fears they encountered and the stories they made up surrounding that fear.  

When shuffling through the different TEDtalks and deciding on one to watch and analyze, a few interested me but this one caught my eye the most. Just the title "What fear can teach us", intrigued me because everyone has fears and I thought it would be easy for me to relate and learn more about the concept of fear. While watching it the talk made me visualize the different fears that I have had throughout my life and how they have changed or stayed the same. I had never thought of fears as creative story telling until watching this but am amazed and fascinated by how accurate that is. Whatever fear you have small or large, you have made up in your mind a story of what might happen and how that fear may play out, which you don't realize at the time is your imagination running wild and creating a story. Though these stories can stem from real events of the past, they remain stories that stem from your fears.