(I wrote this for my wonderful Aunt, the school teacher, who is always so supportive of me and takes the time to write well thought out and encouraging critiques of my work.  Sharper than a razor blade, she remains as always one of my all-time favorite people – this is an example of the kind of B.S. I’ve always tried to show off for her with)

Back in the old days when we were not-so-bright Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons or whatever, we had to rely upon instinct to survive.   The most important component of this survival instinct was fear.  By being fearful of that sabre-toothed tiger that was always lurking about, we learned where to find the best shelter, how to read the wind, whatever we had to learn because we were motivated by primal fear.  That fear is what lead us to discover fire, and once Prometheus had let Zeus’ little secret out, Zeus saw his worst fears realized, that those crafty humans would learn all of his secrets, and soon we were splitting the atom while Zeus went off to the great senior home in the sky, where he bores the other gods with the same old stories about how in his younger years he was feared and worshipped and powerful (although I hear he plays a mean shuffleboard).

Meanwhile, with the sabre-toothed tiger and other threats to our day to day survival removed, the forever evolving humans had less use for fear.   Once they sublimated fear, they gained visibility to those things that had previously been available only to the gods – love, truth and beauty to name a few.   Fear is the enemy of these things, and it fought against them so as to regain its force.  So fear created greed – what is greed after all but the fear that others may get more than you? – and greed in turn created power, the power to instill more fear.  Power manifested itself in religions and corporations and the NRA, and told people, forget about the sabre-toothed tiger, what you need to fear is each other, while you are staring in wonder at how lovely and true and beautiful that flower is, a black feminist Muslim is going to blow you up and force you to spend all of eternity underground at a barbecue hosted by this nasty red dude with a pointed tail.

Only when we recognize fear as the archaic and obsolete force it truly is will we gain access to all of those Platonic planes, as well as a few we probably don’t know about yet.