The Barbarian Mind

The Joy of Openness

FEAR is the path to the dark side

Excessive Worrying
Emotions are infectious. When we are connected to others we feel as they do. When the others we are connected to are excessive worriers, however, the anxiety that grips them can and often does envelop us as well.We probably all know at least one person who seems to inexplicably go out of their way to find things to worry about and then focus on those things with obsessive negativity until they are overwhelmed by them and seek release via venting or lashing out at others.We are all, at times, overwhelmed by fear/anxiety/stress. When this happens, however, we become very dangerous because fear kills our empathy for other human beings and leads to deep self absorption w

Two Truths
People can be unpredictable. Many fear the actions of others and choose to deal with this fear by seeking to control them in some fashion. This invariably ends badly, however, as people do not like to be controlled. The law of attraction holds. Those who choose to control invariably end up creating the very thing that they fear.I believe that a much healthier and rewarding way to manage fear is to seek to understand why people do the things that they do. We fear that which we do not understand. If we have the courage to seek to understand, the fear invariably melts away.After many years, the understanding that I have come to is that there are two truths which describ

To judge or not to judge
Is it wrong to be judgmental of others?Do you wrestle with this question as I have?Is there a general rule to guide us in answering this question?I believe there is.I believe that all moral decisions are guided by the golden rule – do unto others as you would have done unto you.Morality is innate and rooted in empathy.When we are guided by empathy we naturally do unto others as we would have done unto us because we are connected to others and feel their joy and suffering as if it were our own.The root cause of all immoral behavior is fear.Fear is the one thing in the universe capable of killing

Being a good person
One curious fact of life is that every person seems to desire to convince themselves that they are a good person.The jails are overflowing with all manner of selfish remorseless thieves, rapists and murders who believe themselves to be good people who have been wronged by other evil people.I am quite certain that Adolph Hitler believed himself to be leading the forces of good by exterminating the evil Jews.It is somewhat astonishing that evil people never seem to realize that they are evil.It would seem that human beings have an innate desire to be good.We are biologically driven to act in harmony with our conscience. We are happie