Fear is the expulsion of a person from their spirit.
By overcoming fear, a person returns
to their Human Essence.
Where fear is overcome —
the Human begins.
The philosophy of fear does not end at the point where fear is understood as an instrument of power — it only begins its real movement there. The first part of this reflection (see article 86 in the 369 series — “Philosophy of Fear: from Power to Eternity…”) showed how fear was built into the structure of governance, how it became a system-forming element of the civilizational machine, and how, becoming a cultural code, it permeated everything — from education to justice, from religion to language. We have reached the boundary: we have exposed fear as a tool, recognized it as a historical construct, understood how it replaces freedom, generates subordination, codifies a FALSE IDENTITY. However, beyond this boundary begins the most difficult part. For fear, once exposed, does not disappear — it remains within. One can escape the fear of authority, yet not the fear of oneself. If the first article was devoted to the external side of fear, its manifestation in history, culture, and politics, then now the subject is something else — the inner alchemy of liberation.
Let us take a step inward. This is a path through the psychological, social, and metaphysical dimensions of anxiety and fear, reaching all the way to the roots that extend into the biography of humanity and of consciousness itself. We begin to speak of the human being not as a victim of fear, rather as a being CAPABLE OF TRANSFORMING fear into strength. This is the philosophy of fear as a path — not an escape, not a struggle, it is a becoming. Because fear, in my view — and I do not think this view is mistaken — is not only an enemy. It is also a test. It is a voice. It is a gate.
Today’s world generates anxiety with a new intensity. It permeates everyday life, takes the shape of uncertainty, and becomes the background of existence. It is a summons. Because anxiety points not to weakness, rather to freedom. ONLY THE FREE MAN is capable of feeling anxiety. For only the free stand before a choice. And therefore, only they are capable of stepping out of fear, passing through it — and becoming Human. It is here, in the very heart of fear, that the path begins. Not to calm, not to protection — rather to freedom. Not to peace — rather to the goal. Not backward — rather upward. The path to becoming a Human Being. The psyche, striving to survive within the stream of anxiety, creates its own defense mechanisms — and the first among them is projection. Everything that frightens within is not recognized; it is thrown outward. The external world becomes a screen onto which the psyche projects its repressed fears, unresolved conflicts, forbidden impulses. Thus, is born the image of an enemy, a stranger, a dangerous “other,” ALLEGEDLY THREATENING our well-being. Yet in truth this “other” is only the mirrored reflection of the shadow that remains unrecognized within ourselves.
Thus, projection becomes the foundation of alienation. Everything foreign is merely repressed self. The deeper the inner repression, the more ominous the external world appears. And soon anxiety, HAVING NO concrete object, transforms into a stable picture of reality: hostility everywhere, trust impossible, danger around every corner. 
This is not paranoia in the clinical sense — it is an ONTOLOGICAL DEFENSE against an unbearable encounter with oneself. However, anxiety does not arise out of nothing. It is laid down in early experience, in that primordial atmosphere of being that is created by the child’s relationship with parents. Psychoanalysts have long noted: it is not the trauma itself; it is the unaccepted emotion that becomes the source of chronic inner tension. Particularly destructive are forms of conditional or rejecting love — when a child first realizes that their existence can be “too much” for another: too noisy, too sensitive, too inconvenient. And this primary wound — BEING UNLOVED for who you are — remains a backdrop for life. It forms anxiety not as a reaction, rather as an atmosphere in which a person lives.
In this context, anxiety ceases to be a pathology. It becomes a marker of life. The one who feels anxiety is alive — one who feels responsibility for their thoughts and choices. One who is not dissolved in herd comfort, instead remaining alone with the inner silence where there are no borrowed decisions, no ready-made instructions. Only the space of choice — and silence. In this silence the transition is born: from an object of fear to a subject of meaning. The one who does not avoid anxiety but enters into it without losing themselves makes the FIRST STEP toward becoming a creator rather than a hostage. They cease to be an effect and begin to be a cause. And anxiety ceases to be a chain and becomes a door.
Anxiety is multifaceted. The essential difference between its authentic, existential nature and its neurotic distortion lies not in the fact of fear itself, rather in the ability — or inability — of a person to face this fear consciously. True anxiety — as the voice of being, as the threshold of freedom — DOES NOT DESTROY, on the contrary, it leads to growth. It demands inner effort, mobilization, insight. A person capable of withstanding this anxiety acquires depth. They do not defeat fear — they integrate it into their path. Quite another matter is neurotic anxiety. It arises not from freedom, rather from its blockage. Not from an excess of reality, rather from its distortion. It does not ask for an encounter — IT DEMANDS ESCAPE. For its source is not a clear choice, instead it is blind repression, unprocessed pain, a fracture at the very foundation of the personality. Such anxieties do not release, because the person does not even know where they come from. And therefore, does not know what to do with them. They do not live with anxiety — they live under its dictate.
However, even this boundary is not rigid. The world we live in DOES NOT PROMOTE discernment. The modern era is an era of normalized anxiety. Postmodernity, having blurred the foundations of truth, has deprived the individual of the possibility of relying on anything stable. Traditions are destroyed, religions devalued, values disputed, authorities short-lived. Everything moves, yet goes nowhere. The human being still seeks meaning, yet NO LONGER BELIEVES that they will find it. Hence anxiety becomes not a symptom, rather an environment. An inner malfunction is no longer an exception; it is an everyday condition. Even a “healthy” person feels like a malfunction. This everyday neurotization arises not only from social changes, but from the destruction of primary bonds. Where there should be acceptance, anxiety is planted. A child who feels that their presence is a burden becomes an adult convinced that their love is a burden. They begin to construct their personality AS A DEFENSE: to earn acceptance, to conform, to be needed. However, beneath this construction there always lives the conviction: “I might not be accepted.” And in this lies the primordial foundation of the background of anxiety.
Thus arises an entire generation for which anxiety is not a reaction rather a language of being. It manifests as insecurity, permanent doubt, existential longing, and refusal to choose. A person does not fear catastrophe — HE FEARS HIMSELF. He wants to be, yet cannot be. Between the natural impulse and the social reflection lies a fracture, and through it anxiety seeps.
Torn away from nature — both outer and inner — a person remains without a root. Without myth, without image, without wholeness. They search for stability yet find only adaptation. And anxiety, unresolved, returns again — in another form, in another role, under another mask. It cannot be expelled — it can only be heard.
The liberation from class, religious, and traditional frameworks brought by the bourgeois order was perceived as a victory of individual freedom. Yet, as so often happens in history, the promise of liberation TURNED INTO A NEW SLAVERY. The person who cast off the chains of old authorities suddenly found themselves facing a void, where the former foundations had disappeared and new ones had not emerged. 
The inability to rely on anything except oneself did not become a triumph of subjectivity — it became a catastrophe of the “I.” Freedom, left without measure, without model, without meaning, turned into a burden. Where once there was God — NOW CAPITALISM. Where once there was Fate — now statistics. And people, left alone with a choice they never asked for, entered an era of anxiety without orientation.
This anxiety is not fear of something concrete. It is a FEELING OF EMPTINESS behind the façade of everyday life, a vague premonition that the world is not arranged as it seems. The consumer society, by simulating well-being, merely masks existential instability. A person is allowed everything — EXCEPT AUTHENTIC BEING. And in this paradox a new escape from freedom is born: not toward an oppressor, rather toward comfort; not toward tyranny, rather toward the voluntary loss of responsibility. Freedom is no longer a great task; it is a frightening abyss. Therefore, ever more often, a person seeks to delegate it — to a leader, to a crowd, to a system, to an algorithm. Anything to avoid choosing, anything to avoid answering.
However, the price of this bargain is the LOSS OF SELF. Once a person ceases to be a subject, they cease to be a person. They become a function, a role, a mechanism. Their anxiety subsides, yet with it disappears the living tension of the spirit — the very tension in which the authentic human essence reveals itself.
Modern society, organized around the lie of comfort, provides no space for pain, anxiety, longing — those states that are in fact the gateways to transformation. Everything uncomfortable is declared pathology, everything profound — depression, everything elevated — archaism. This is why Russian philosophy not only does not seek to lull anxiety; it considers it a NECESSARY CONDITION of spiritual ascent. It does not propose forgetting fear; it demands passing through it. In this lies its deep difference from the Western tradition: not in a rational rejection of fear, rather in a metaphysical acceptance of catastrophe as a form of renewal. For Russian thought, crisis is not an accident, it is an expression of a deeper law: everything true is born through destruction, everything authentic — through suffering. Only at the boundary, only at the edge, only in the hour of the ultimate question does HUMANITY DISCOVER who they are. Death, like anxiety, is not an end, it is a transition. Fear is not a dead end; it is a threshold. Yet even this ascent is not guaranteed. Prophetic tension can degenerate into messianic pride. The desire to preserve selfhood can turn into isolation. National consciousness can slide into defensive ethnocentrism, into fear of the other, into closedness. The fear of losing identity is no longer love of oneself, it is a FEAR OF THE FUTURE, masked as patriotism. True Russia is not a fortress; it is a LIVING ORGANISM. And if it wishes to be itself, it must not fear becoming different. Not fear opening up. Not fear being.
And here we reach a key turning point. The history of philosophy is not merely a chronicle of ideas — it is a CHRONICLE OF ANXIETY. Each era formulated its own fear and its own way of meeting it. If the West long believed that knowledge would free one from fear, Russian thought has always sensed that knowledge without participation is blind. Reason without spirit is dead. Understanding without pain is superficial. And therefore, the path is not from fear to control, it is from anxiety to transformation. Not toward consolation, rather toward revelation. Not toward safety, rather toward being.
This is the ESSENTIAL CHOICE of modern man: to remain a function within an ordered system or to risk becoming alive within disorder. Let me emphasize: knowledge is important. It is necessary for breaking the cycles of ignorance, for demythologizing1 fears, for becoming aware of hidden mechanisms. However, knowledge does not save. It does not give meaning. It does not warm. Only in participation, only in a metaphysical touch of the Other — that which lies beyond — does a person become themselves again. Where instruction ends, the inner path begins. This path is impossible without anxiety. Without it, no choice is born. Without it, responsibility does not exist. Without it, the encounter with the Self cannot begin. Therefore, fear is not something to be overcome. It is a gate. It is a call. It is an initiation. Through it — toward Meaning. Through it — toward Transformation. Through it — toward what is. This is not the end. It is ONLY A THRESHOLD.
In this article we approach a deeper layer of the topic — how fear is used as a system of governance, how it is programmed, scaled, imposed, and replicated within social matrices. We will examine fear as an instrument of power, as an invisible algorithm shaping the worldview, the behavior of the masses, and even the physiology of generations. Because the TRUE CAUSES behind the embodied expression of specific stages of “civilizational development” are only the stages of development of brain genotypes — a process controlled from outside, implemented through Complexes and Objects. Therefore, modern historians must move all their “works” — from the ancient Maya, through Greco- Roman fantasies, and up to contemporary post-democracy — into the category of fiction, as products of their own imagination lacking any genuine historical foundation. And what is presented in this article GIVES AN UNDERSTANDING of how and for what purpose all the processes unfolded that were connected with the imposition upon brain genotypes of such a “component” as fear and its derivatives. It is from there — from the level of the brain’s construction and the energetic architecture of consciousness, that the real conversation about the Victory over fear begins. And therefore — over death.
Fear as the underlying nerve of Russian life is not a fleeting emotion, it is an ontological substance woven into the very fabric of historical existence. It is not merely an emotional reaction to danger, not a private anxiety before illness, poverty, or violence. The PRIMARY FEAR is the metaphysical fear before the State — before a supra-personal, abstracted force that DOES NOT EMBODY order, it SUPPRESSES LIFE. This fear does not arise suddenly — it is cultivated, reproduced, and nurtured as an ideology of subordination. 
It does not begin with a guard holding an automatic weapon at a checkpoint or with an interrogation room — it begins with the kindergarten teacher who breaks spontaneity, teaching obedience as the only possible mode of being. Freedom is presented from childhood as a threat, as a mistake, as a rebellion against order. School, the army, the bureaucratic conveyor, checkpoints, turnstiles, queues, offices — EVERYTHING BECOMES a ritual of fear, the reinforcement of an inner dependence on someone else’s will. This is not the fear of death — it is the fear of BEING NOTICED by the system. Fear — not of being, rather of being visible. Not because you have done something wrong, rather because you are. In this lies the essence of slavery, in which the body may move, yet the Soul has long been bent.
This fear does not scream — it whispers from within: “DON’T STICK OUT.” It does not paralyze at once — it seeps in slowly, drop by drop, distorting itself in the body, in language, in memory. It disaccustoms you to dreaming, thinking, and resisting. It shapes a special structure of reality — a structure in which control is more important than truth, security is more important than freedom, stability is more important than life. Yet even those who inspire this fear are THEMSELVES INFECTED BY IT.
Fear is the universal currency of the pyramid of subjugation. The strong fear those above them, and they force the weak into silence. The state hierarchy becomes a system of mutual terror. And within this closed circle, power that feeds on fear becomes its own slave. For power maintained not by trust rather by fright CANNOT be stable. It builds high walls not against enemies, rather against its own shadow.
There are two paths out of this matrix. The first is collective: when thousands of solitary fears suddenly merge into a single impulse, into an act of the street, into the cry of a people. Such eruptions, like in Khabarovsk (July 2020), occur not for the sake of slogans, rather for the sake of restoring dignity, for the sake of bearing witness that humanity is still alive. The street becomes a temple of liberation, a square of truth, a space where fear ceases to be the only language. However, this path has a limit: without philosophy, without strategy, without will, the emotional surge dissipates, and fear returns with renewed force. The second path is deeper, quieter, harder. It is the path of INNER LIBERATION — a path where a person, alone, without a crowd, without a flag, without ideology, steps beyond their fear. Not as a victor, rather as a witness. From within, not from without, one ceases to be a subject of fear. This is a philosophical, spiritual path — the path of refusing inner slavery. Not waiting for the state to change, but BEGINNING TO LIVE as if it were already different. It is the path of those who create a new field of being — a field in which a shared breakthrough later becomes possible.
And only in this field does the birth of a different kind of state become possible — a state that is not feared, rather it is trusted. Not a power imposed as punishment, rather a structure arising from the people themselves. Where the guard does not humiliate, the judge does not avenge, the teacher does not break people, and each person is perceived not as a potential threat, rather as a bearer of meaning. In such a state there is no need to “keep your head down,” because freedom is not a crime, it is the breathing of a human being. And if Russia ever overcomes its historical fear, it will not become something different — IT WILL BECOME ITSELF, for the first time in many centuries.
The path of individual struggle against fear is one of the hardest and at the same time one of the most noble routes to becoming a human being. It is not the feat of a hero whose deeds are celebrated in chronicles — it is an infinitely quieter and therefore deeper uprising of the spirit. It is a path without grandstands, without approval, without witnesses. It begins not with a shout, rather with an inner trembling, with an imperceptible shift — when one day a person awakens not from sleep, rather from numbness. And within them arises for the first time a need — to stand up. Not necessarily physically. To stand with the mind, the will, the spirit. To rise from within not in order to attack, rather in order to regain the sense of the vertical.
Most often this moment does not resemble an illumination. It begins with irritation, with a barely noticeable discomfort, with that very anxiety that NO LONGER WANTS to be silenced. And then a person is left alone with a silent challenge: either they begin to squeeze the slave out of themselves — or the slave will secure itself within them permanently, becoming their structure. In this choice there is no heroism, THERE IS GREATNESS. Because it is made within, where a person, drop by drop, frees themselves from the fear that for centuries has soaked into the flesh of their people, into the breath of history, into the language of the streets and the customs.
This path is difficult because it does not look like a feat. It is not accompanied by applause and does not enter chronicles. It is an invisible yet titanic effort — daily, hourly — against fear as habit, as automatism, as an invisible parasite upon freedom. Chekhov was right: one must squeeze the slave out of oneself slowly. If this labor is accepted, if a person does not flee back into familiar numbness, the alchemy of the spirit begins: fear, from a destructive force, becomes fuel. It no longer threatens — it illuminates. It becomes not a flame of destruction, rather of transformation. It points the way instead of hindering the journey. To walk this path, three foundations are needed — not external, not institutional, rather inner ones capable of supporting the soul in the hour of its work upon itself. The first — common sense. An essential virtue often forgotten in an era of emotional surges. Fear cannot be conquered by shouting, by spontaneous bravado, by a single act. It requires clarity, calculation, inner measure. Not every uprising is freedom if it is born not of will, rather of panic. Common sense keeps a person in balance, NOT ALLOWING them to dissolve in their own feelings. It helps one take a step not because one is afraid, rather because it is clear: there is no other way forward. The second — support. Although the path is individual, a person must not be alone. One connection, one soul, one living response is needed — someone to return to when the world cracks. Not public opinion, not a crowd, rather A LIVING PRESENCE. Without it, fear takes on an absolute character, and then the struggle against it becomes a loss — not purification, but exhaustion. Love, friendship, trust — these are not sentimentality; they are anchors without which the soul falls into the abyss. The third — knowledge of practice. Not esoteric, not magical, rather human. Simple techniques: breathing, observing, separating oneself from the emotion, recognizing automatism. The ability to see fear as an object and not as one’s essence. This is the return of control, the beginning of INNER SOVEREIGNTY. And even if fear does not disappear, it no longer rules.
However, the most important thing is understanding: the struggle against social fears is not a struggle for the people, for truth, or for progress. It is a struggle for oneself. It is an act of self-belonging. It is the RETURN TO ONESELF of one’s original nature, before it was buried under layers of subordination, convention, adaptation, and survival codes. It is the beginning of a new anthropology — of a human who not only lives, but knows that they live. And here a deep paradox opens. Power that maintains order through fear is more afraid than those it subjugates — yet it fears differently. Its fear is ontological, irrational, deeply hidden. Power fears the loss of control, yet even more — it FEARS THE FUTURE. It fears the awakening of the people, it fears thought, it fears the person who has stood up. Hence the pseudo- religious cults, incantations, rituals, magical thinking. This is not strength — it is flight from impotence. It is an attempt to cover inner emptiness with a shell of the sacred that no longer exists. Such a path is dead. It does not create strength; it only postpones collapse. For genuine strength is born not from power, and not from fear — IT IS BORN from freedom. From the one who has stood up — and did not go back.
Overcoming fear is not merely an inner act of liberation, not a psychological trick, and not a moral victory. It is an ancient ritual of the spirit, performed before the face of being. In this act a person for the first time casts off all that is superficial, revealing their true name before Eternity. Fear, which for centuries seemed a norm, suddenly unveils itself as a lie, as anIMPLANTED PROGRAM designed to keep a being within the bounds of subordination. As long as a person fears — they are not free. As long as they tremble before power, before death, before condemnation or loss — they are not yet Human. They are a function, a shadow, a trace, but NOT THE CENTER of their own life. Fear is the main currency of the old world. The world rested upon it like upon a spine: fear of gods, fear of power, fear of poverty, of exile, of “what people will say,” of the laws of flesh and the deadlines of the body. This fear is embedded in the systems of education, religion, science, and economics. It has become a STRUCTURE OF PERCEPTION. Its scent seeps into dreams; its shape is imprinted upon language. And until a person realizes that they live not as themselves, rather through fear, they continue to feed the very system that, century after century, holds the world in paralysis.
Once a person sees fear even once as a mechanism — everything begins to change. They NO LONGER NEED an enemy to awaken. It is enough to see that the enemy lives within — and that it is not a demon, rather it is a habit. The habit of fearing. The habit of staying silent. The habit of lowering one’s eyes. The habit of giving one’s power away to an external contour — to another person, to the law, to tradition. And when this habit is recognized, a new breath arises. It does not thunder. It is quiet. It brings clarity. It says: NOW YOU ARE FREE. From this moment begins the true return — not to the body, not to the nation, not to ideology, but to oneself. To that point from which the Human begins. Not a “rational animal,” not an extra in the script of power, not an executor of a role — rather a being capable of choosing, carrying, holding, and transforming. This return is not to the past and not to the future, it is to one’s OWN BEING, which does not depend on external systems. And in this moment comes the great transformation: from an object of governance, one becomes a subject of the cosmos.
Freedom is only the first frontier. Beyond it lies another, older and more silent — the FEAR OF DEATH. This is not the fear of the disappearance of the body. It is the fear of the cessation of the “I,” the fear of losing meaning, the fear that everything you have ever been will vanish without a trace. It is this fear that creates religions and the cult of immortality. It is this fear that makes one cling to habits, to identities, to lives that are no longer alive. It is the root of all other fear. And here it becomes clear: the struggle with fear is not a strategy, it is an initiation. It is not psychotherapy; it is a metaphysical act. It is preparation for the greatest of all — the OVERCOMING OF DEATH. For only the one who has stepped out from under the power of fear can enter the world where death ceases to be an axiom. Where death is not a law, it is a condition. Where death is not an end, it is a temporary protocol. And this world is approaching. It is not yet visible, yet it CAN BE FELT. Where fear disappears, a special state begins — not euphoria, not joy, rather silence. Not external, rather internal. It is not mute — it is transparent. And in this transparency, for the first time, the true voice is heard. The voice not of a teacher, not of God, not of history — the VOICE OF ONE’S OWN ETERNITY. The very one that has always lived within the human being, yet was flooded by waves of fear. This voice speaks simply: you were, you are, you will be. And in this phrase — Everything.
Overcoming fear is not an ending, it is an entrance. Not a point, rather a gate. Fear, as we have seen, permeates not only psychology but also culture, statehood, philosophy, the very fabric of social existence. It is the ancient architect of civilizations, governing the spirit of the age through systems of dependence, subordination, and control. It is the invisible cement binding the forms in which billions live: from the school desk to the tribunal, from childhood anxiety to the paralysis of will in adults. It is precisely this that makes it the MAIN FRONTIER for the conscious person. To overcome fear means not merely to feel freedom. It means to enter a new anthropology. For where fear ends, it is not courage that begins — THE “I” BEGINS. Not a mask, not a role, not a reaction, rather that which can stand in truth. Where fear no longer dictates how to live, what to say, whom to listen to, or what to exist for — a subject arises, a bearer of will and meaning. He does not fear being alone, because he is no longer solitary — he is in communion with the Eternal. He does not seek protection, because he has found a foundation — in himself, in Reason, in that which existed before systems.
Such a person is no longer of interest to the system of fear. To it, he is a danger — not because he rebels, rather because he has stepped beyond its boundaries. He does not destroy — HE SHINES. And this light acts more deeply than any prohibition. It awakens others. Under such conditions fear loses its power, as night evaporates before dawn. The old codes of authority begin to fail. Points of freedom appear, zones of the future that tear the old fabric of the world. However, in this moment lies the main turning point. A person freed from fear can either begin to build the New, or fall back into illusion — only of a different kind: the illusion of his own completeness, of HIS EXCEPTIONALITY, of his messianic role. This is a dangerous turn — the moment when fear is replaced by pride, when an awakened nation turns not toward creation rather toward isolation, protectionism, and the hunt for the “other.” And then fear returns — however, in a different guise: as a cult of identity, as fear of change, as clinging to form. Thus, a cycle emerges. It can be broken — yet only if fear is seen not only as an enemy but also as a signpost. It points to the boundary that must be crossed, not avoided. It shows the place where truth becomes not a slogan rather a choice. Where it is frightening — LIFE BEGINS. And if Russia, as a country born from thresholds, from crises, from catastrophes, manages not to hide from fear, rather to transform it into a call — IT WILL AGAIN become a source of meaning. Not the fear of death, rather the knowledge of life. Not horror before the unknown, but readiness to enter it. For beyond fear lies death — and beyond the overcoming of fear lies its end. And this gives the key to the next stage: fear is not only about subjugation; it is a preparation. It points to the highest enemy — the fear of death, the fear of the disappearance of the “I,” the fear of a meaningless void. Yet within this lies a great possibility: by turning fear into fire, we can turn death into a passage. We arrive at the point where human beings must not simply learn to live — they must learn not to die.
To be continued
1 Demythologization — a method of interpreting texts, primarily biblical ones, that seeks to free them from mythic and outdated imagery in order to reveal their contemporary meaning.