Fear: The Cornerstone of Control

Tools of Oppression in Relationships

This article is part of my Tools of Oppression in Relationships series. Click here to start from the beginning.

Fear is a primary tool in “power-over” systems, used to maintain control and compliance. It manifests in various forms, from fear of exclusion to fear of physical harm.

In its natural state, fear is a protective and useful emotion, alerting us to real dangers and helping us navigate them. However, conditioned fear exploits this instinct, instilling itself where no real threat of harm exists. This type of fear is embedded, nurtured, and manipulated to maintain power, often at great cost to personal and relational authenticity. If we become more aware of and develop the ability to examine our fear responses, we often see that there is actually nothing to fear.

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” You’ve heard this quote before, right? In the case of conditioned fear, it is especially applicable. Conditioned fear capitalizes on the body’s natural responses – racing heart, shallow breath, and an overactive mind preparing for threats. These physical sensations are often indistinguishable from those triggered by real danger, which is why conditioned fear is so powerful. It hijacks our survival instincts, making us more susceptible to control. So often when we take time to examine our fear responses, we discover they are unfounded, exaggerated, or based on misinformation.

Fear in Parenting: Subtle, Pervasive, and Controlling

Parents often use fear to protect their children: “Don’t climb that tree – you’ll fall!” or “If you don’t study harder, you’ll never succeed.” While these warnings may stem from genuine care, they also plant seeds of conditioned fear, teaching children to associate exploration and failure with danger. Over time, this can suppress curiosity, risk-taking, and independence, creating adults who fear stepping outside predefined boundaries.

Fear-based approaches to parenting often stifle a child’s natural curiosity and independence.

• Fear of physical harm

  Statements like “You’ll hurt yourself!” may discourage a child from engaging in activities that foster resilience and confidence. Over time, this creates adults who avoid risk, even when it could lead to growth or reward.

• Fear of failure

  Warnings about academic or career success, such as “If you don’t work harder, you’ll never get anywhere in life,” tie a child’s self-worth to their achievements. This cultivates perfectionism, anxiety, and an aversion to trying new things, as failure becomes synonymous with personal inadequacy.

• Fear of social rejection

  Parents may reinforce societal norms by warning children against behaviors that might lead to ostracism: “Don’t wear that because people will make fun of you.” While intended to protect, this type of fear fosters self-censorship and conformity, wearing away a child’s sense of authenticity.

When fear is a primary motivator, children internalize the message that the world is a dangerous and judgmental place. This conditioning can lead to adults who avoid challenges, suppress emotions, or remain stuck in comfort zones, even when those zones no longer serve them. Ironically, the very fears parents project – of harm, failure, or rejection – often create the same vulnerabilities they sought to protect their children from.

Fear as a Systemic Tool of Oppression

Fear is not only personal, it is systemic. Power-over systems rely on fear to divide and control. This is particularly evident in the ways oppressive structures use fear to maintain hierarchies and suppress resistance.

Fear in Religion

Religion has long relied on fear to instill “moral behavior” and obedience. The concept of hell – a place of eternal punishment for sins – has been a powerful tool for maintaining control over individuals and communities. By associating disobedience with unimaginable torment, religious doctrines instill a pervasive fear that shapes behavior.

Religion can lead to believers suppressing their doubts, curiosity, or actions that contradict religious teachings, fearing divine retribution. Fear of being ostracized or condemned by one’s religious community reinforces conformity to collective norms. Parents, motivated by their own fear, may use religious narratives to instill obedience in children, perpetuating cycles of fear-based morality.

While religion can also offer hope, love, and connection, the fear of eternal punishment often becomes the most enduring motivator, shaping not just individual lives, but entire cultures.

Fear in the Justice System

Similarly, the justice system uses fear as a deterrent to prevent whatever society deems as bad behavior and maintain social order. The fear of imprisonment is intended to discourage people from breaking laws, with the promise of incarceration serving as both punishment and a cautionary tale.

Research shows that the fear of prison often fails to deter crimes born out of desperation, systemic inequality, or lack of access to resources. The justice system disproportionately targets marginalized communities, using fear of imprisonment to maintain social hierarchies and suppress dissent. When fear is the primary mechanism of control, it undermines trust between individuals and institutions, fostering alienation rather than accountability.

Fear of prison, like fear of hell, conditions people to comply with external authority rather than fostering intrinsic motivation to do what is right. It prioritizes avoidance of punishment over genuine ethical engagement, creating a society more focused on survival than collective growth.

Fear in Capitalism

Capitalism’s survival is intricately linked to its ability to instill and exploit fear. It thrives on creating a constant sense of scarcity, competition, and insecurity, which keeps people locked in cycles of compliance and consumption. Fear of losing one’s job, home, or social status forces people to accept exploitative conditions, discouraging envisioning alternatives to the system and collective action.

The fear of “not having enough” is one of the most effective tools capitalism uses to generate fear. By presenting resources – jobs, housing, healthcare, time – as perpetually limited, the system ensures individuals will compete rather than cooperate.

Capitalism conditions people to view others as rivals rather than collaborators. The system pits workers, businesses, and even entire nations against each other. When employees compete due to fear of losing their jobs, they often withhold support or collaboration to protect their own standing. This undermines solidarity and creates environments where mistrust and burnout thrive. When companies are forced to compete for market share, it leads to cycles of overproduction, planned obsolescence, and environmental degradation, all fueled by a fear of falling behind. These fears keep people and institutions locked in cycles of extraction and exploitation, preventing the innovation and collaboration needed for systemic change.

The capitalist system thrives on fear of losing security. This fear is deliberately reinforced to maintain compliance.

The precarious nature of employment – short-term contracts, gig work, and at-will hiring – ensures that workers prioritize job retention over challenging inequities. High costs of education, healthcare, and housing ensure that people remain in debt cycles, afraid to take risks or push back against exploitative financial systems. Capitalism links personal worth to wealth and possessions, creating a fear of poverty not just as material loss but as a social and personal failure. These fears keep people in survival mode, focused on immediate needs rather than questioning the structures that create such instability in the first place.

By design, capitalism stifles imagination and resistance by making the prospect of change seem riskier than maintaining the status quo. Fear of losing even the precarious stability offered by the system discourages people from envisioning alternatives.

The Effects of Fear

Fear reverberates through both micro and macro relationships, shaping how we connect with individuals and engage with larger systems. From the intimate bonds of parenting to the expansive influence of capitalism, fear undermines trust, authenticity, and collaboration at every level.

At the micro level, fear-driven parenting instills conditioned responses in children early. On a macro scale, generational fear perpetuates societal norms that prioritize conformity over growth, limiting innovation and collective progress. Religious institutions and the justice system use fear to enforce compliance, often shaping micro relationships within families and communities. Capitalism flourishes on fear: on a micro level, this creates competition eroding trust and mutual support. On a macro scale, fear of economic instability or social decline prevents collective action and sustains exploitative systems.

I have only touched the surface in this article because I could probably write a book chapter about fear. Fear serves as a cornerstone of oppressive systems, fracturing relationships and stalling progress. You will notice that every tool of oppression is rooted in fear somehow. By understanding how fear operates in both micro and macro contexts, we can begin to dismantle its hold. When we confront fear – naming it, questioning it, and challenging the systems that exploit it – we create space for relationships rooted in trust, authenticity, and collaboration.

Fear’s reach is vast, but its power is not absolute. By addressing fear in our personal lives and within societal structures, we take steps toward building relationships and systems that sustain and uplift, rather than divide and control.

Click here to read the next article in the series - Scarcity: Manufacturing a Sense of Lack