Fearless, in a Digital Age
Five ways to shear the fear, keep your head above the herd, and stay human.
There’s a reason fear spreads faster than truth. There’s a reason outrage outperforms nuance. And there’s a reason media organizations return to the same emotional levers again and again.
Below are five ways to shear the fear, keep your head above the herd, and stay human.
1. As always, we begin by noticing: Pay attention to whether you are operating in/from a state of fear or love—because they cannot exist in the body at the same time.
This is not spiritual language, or metaphor; it’s neurobiology.
Allow me to explain, the heart contains its own intrinsic nervous system—sometimes called the cardiac brain—made up of tens of thousands of neurons capable of sensing, learning, and sending information. What’s often overlooked is that communication between the heart and the brain is not a one-way, brain-led, command structure. In fact, the majority of neural signals travel from the heart to the brain, primarily through the vagus nerve. These signals feed directly into regions of the brain involved in emotion, decision-making, and threat detection, including the amygdala.
When you enter a state of fear, the amygdala becomes dominant. It signals danger and overrides higher cognitive functions, narrowing perception and prioritizing survival. Heart rhythms become erratic, reinforcing this alarm state. The system locks into vigilance.
But when you experience love, awe, gratitude, or deep presence, something very different happens. The heart’s rhythm becomes more coherent and organized. Signals traveling through the vagus nerve begin to inhibit activity in the amygdala, effectively dampening the fear response. Blood flow shifts away from survival circuitry and back toward regions of the brain responsible for reasoning, empathy, and long-term perspective. Fear isn’t suppressed through force—it simply loses neurological dominance.
This is why fear and love cannot truly coexist. They rely on opposing nervous system states. One tightens, accelerates, and narrows. The other slows, regulates, and opens. Ancient texts named this long before neuroscience could explain it:
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).
Modern neuroscience describes the same phenomenon as parasympathetic regulation overriding threat circuitry. Different language, same mechanism.
2. Keep your head where your feet are.
If every screen is telling you the sky is falling, do something radical: look outside.
If people are not running toward you in terror, if no one is actively harming you, if your body is safe in this moment, then your immediate reality deserves more authority than a mediated or predicted one. The world is vast, and unfortunately terrible things happen every day—somewhere. But we don’t stop walking outside because sinkholes exist. Fear collapses the distance between you and the horrors, but wisdom restores it.
Furthermore, capacity matters. We are not meant to carry the emotional weight of the entire globe. When we are flooded with endless tragedy, we don’t become more compassionate—we become numb to adapt. Prolonged exposure to suffering, that we cannot act on, erodes empathy and leads to helplessness, not a better society. Being informed does not require being consumed by it, nor is it always helpful to “know” everything.
Sometimes this means taking a break from the internet.
3. Put your energy where your relationships are.
This is not practicing apathy, it’s guarding against it. It’s acknowledging that we only have so much headspace, so we need to engage with discernment.
Be cautious of causes you don’t understand but feel pressured to adopt—especially when they’re delivered by people you don’t really know and are motivated by peer pressure or forces you cannot see.
Your first relationships are with family and friends; if there is work to be done, start there. Those healthy units ripple outward into the world. Furthermore, relationships also exist between you and the physical places you inhabit. If you see hunger in your town, care about that. If you see animals suffering where you live, respond to that. If your community has unmet needs, engage there. If everyone invested deeply and locally, the globe would be covered.
Local causes can still include other parts of the world. I’ve joined forces with a group with familial ties to South America and thus traveled to places like Chinandega, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, several times. I’ve helped build hospitals, treated wounds, fed families, and cleaned dwellings with my own hands. I can say this with experience backing my words: direct human (and animal) service is profoundly different from online advocacy or donation alone. It restores dignity to both giver and receiver. It generates energy instead of draining it. It fills you with peace instead of overwhelm.
Arguing with abstractions—or bots masquerading as people—rarely changes the world. Showing up for real people often does. No online argument has ever rivaled the life-giving clarity of real service.
This grounding matters, because causes are all too easy to adopt online, especially when they arrive packaged with urgency and belonging. This doesn’t mean never donating financially; it means knowing and understanding what you are supporting.
4. Ask whether the emotion you’re feeling was the intended end game.
This is a simple but powerful filter. If something leaves you afraid, enraged, or filled with dread, pause and consider whether that reaction was the whole (data) point.
Fear, outrage, and despair are efficient tools for engagement. They narrow perception, reduce complexity, erode nuance, and ultimately make people easier to control or direct. When the nervous system is overwhelmed, the mind becomes reactive: you don’t ask careful questions, you share the outrage and help polarize the masses.
Before engaging, ask yourself: If this content achieves nothing else, what emotion does it leave me with? And why might someone want me to feel that way?
5. A Personal Practice: Limiting Screen Time & Refusing a Spirit of Fear
When I feel scarcity or fear creeping in—not safe, not enough time, not enough money, not enough (fill in the blank) —I pray or meditate against it.
Things are frightening at times, but living inside that space is not an option for me. I’m not always mentally strong enough to outthink the noise, but prayer or meditation consistently recenters my heart. I also have a healthy understanding of how fear shows up, corroding the spirit; I call it out loud every time I feel fear in my heart. And I ask for help to imagine what love looks like in that space instead. Love and Gratitude are guiding lights in that respect, they expand and what fear contracts.
“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.”— Frank Herbert, Dune (1965)
Here’s the thing: no one gets out of this life alive.
That truth isn’t meant to be morbid—it’s meant to clarify. We are here to experience, to love, to grow, to create and contribute; not to shrink ourselves into silence or paralysis, or fizzle out in rage.
Sincerely, NJ. Simat
Creative Director & Editor of PHIL LIT
Be fearless. Stay human.
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