Accelerating Connections: Love and Fear; Threat and Envy

One ought to be feared and loved, but it is difficult for the two to go together... I do not agree that one ought to be feared and loved, but I do agree that it is difficult for the two to go together. Does or can love exist without fear? It seems that for most of  humans, I presume, that love does not exist without some degree of fear attached to it. We fear rejection, loss, death, unfaithfulness, our own vulnerability, and honesty. Those are just some of the fears that go along with the way we understand and practice love. But it seems that most people, as individuals, choose to love regardless of the seemingly unavoidable element of fear which goes along with it. So why do most governments choose to be feared instead of loved? Is it as Machiavelli states on page 347, "Fear is maintained by dread of punishment which never fails..." Do we need to be governed by the fear of punishment? Are we as a species unable to govern ourselves by utilizing our own power of personal responsibility? Our we so covetous of gain that we are unable to guide ourselves morally in our interactions with other peoples? It seems that we are unable to guide ourselves, individually, morally without deviating into some sort of power struggle. Even the San peoples needed their society to have rituals in place which kept the individual in check. Just the fact that they have the process of insulting the meat leads me too believe that it was a needed act to keep a hunter from thinking to highly of themselves which then leads to the misunderstanding of use of power. 

The difficulty of being loved and feared at the same time feels similar to me as feeling both threat and envy simultaneously. As Strayer states on page 392, that the first societies in Western Europe and North America to experience the modern transformation became both a threat and a source of envy to the rest of the world. It reminds me the phenomenon of those who were once subjugated that once they earn freedom become the subjugator themselves. How we can feel threatened by something and someone and at the sometime feel envy of them/it seems a strange and dubious ability in the nature of humans, and also to be the source of the ebb and flow of power which has continuously occurred throughout our 250,000 year existence as Homo sapiens. 

(wc 415)