What do we actually fear?

It's a difficult quesition to answer at best. Fear is, after all, subjective, and therefore liable to change from person to person. Everyone seems to have different answeres. Is it suspense? Or how about danger to self? What does everyone's answers have in common? Ah, but in order to find out what we truly fear, first we must examine what it is we do not fear.

For example, imagine a rabbit. Nothing to fear there, right? Just a cuddly ball of fur. Eats vegetables, hops around, nibbles on grass. It's mundane, understood. But then, say you had this rabbit, but with blood around it's mouth. Suddenly, not so care free, are we? What happened to the rabbit? Why is it suddenly frightening? Because of the blood? No, no... think deeper. Before, we could understand it. It was predictable. Now, however, we do not fully understand it. Rabbits don't eat meat, so why is there blood on it's muzzle? How did it get there? Is there something about the rabbit that I should know about? Should I be scared?

And there you have it. You fear something which you do not fully understand, something you do not know how to react to. I gave the rabbit a cloak, a veil behind which to hide, the instant I put blood on it's muzzle. You sensed the deception, but you knew not what I'd hidden behind the drapes. You reacted, you feared, the unkown. And that's what makes us so afraid. We truly fear that which we cannot understand. That's what all our answers have in common, and that's what we will always be afraid of.