Are you in control of what thoughts go through your head, or just responsible for the act of responding to such a thought? A thought is an electrical impulse that triggers an emotional and chemical response in your body. Through many experiments in modern science we have shown that we can stimulate and control minds of mice and other rodents with electrical impulses. Research is also being done on how microchips in human brains will help control human thought and emotion.

Modern science has taken these finding and concluded that because consciousness is electrical and chemical in nature there is no “free will” and your consciousness is not under your control. Picture yourself walking down the street and you notice you’re late for work but you also notice that there is an innocent old lady across the street being beaten up by someone trying to steal her purse.  We all have free will to choose in this situation what is more important to us. In this case we all would have to choose between getting to work as soon as possible as to not get yourself in trouble for being late, or putting yourself in harm’s way to help out an innocent person in need.  I would hope that most people out there would stop and help this old lady but it’s sad to say that I really do think the majority of the people in today’s society would because they are much too busy and fearful to stop and help an innocent.

When you are put into a position like this it is important to realize that you have a choice as to how you are going to react to a certain situation. While in this situation you may have had much more than one thought go through your head as to what you were going to do. “If I help I might get hurt,” “if I don’t help she will get hurt,” “If I’m late for work I could get fired,” “What if this guy has a gun,” and many more thoughts depending on the person who is in that situation. So with all of those thoughts going through your head it was your free will that chose whether to fight this situation or run to work in fear of all the bad things that situation could have brought to you.

What controls how you react to this situation? How fearful you are is how you respond. We all deep down want to help this innocent old lady but how we react to this situation is based on what you are most scared of. If you are most fearful that this old lady is going to get hurt you will act to protect her with all your power, If you are most fearful that you are going to get fired you will react by going to work, If you are most fearful you’re going to get hurt you will react by walking away, and if you are most fearful that this criminal might get away with a horrible crime you will react by trying to detain him.

As we age we become more fearful of things we have experienced because we can remember how we were hurt. So the next time we are in that situation that thought of being hurt like you were before becomes a part of your decision process and will normally make you avoid that situation again.  Once you become fearful of a situation it is very hard to control when that thought of fear will occur and how it will make you react. Let’s say you are driving in your car on the highway and a daddy long leg spider falls on your lap. You have a couple ways you can react.  Panic, take all attention off road and focus on the fear of the spider being on you.  Reacting to this situation with fear can be fatal because the fear of a spider that could do no real harm lead to a panic reaction that could cause a car accident or even death. If we react by not panicking and allowing ourselves to not react with fear we can calmly and safely deal with the situation that really isn’t that scary at all. But if we don’t think about this situation properly we could end up always being afraid of many things.