Bertrand Russell once stated, "Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear." This means that the presence of fear prevents humans from thinking rationally and acting in a civilized way. Several pieces of art and literature prove this by epitomizing Russell's outlook on human nature. For example, in William Golding's The Lord of the Flies, a group of young boys stranded on an island begin making rash decisions, due to their fear of a "beast". Russell's idea of human nature can also be found in the "Twilight Zone" episode entitled "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street". In this example, all it takes is a power outage to transform a peaceful neighborhood into a nightmare resembling the Bertrande Red Scare. Lastly, in Arthur Miller's, The Crucible the immoral Abigail William turns the once quiet town of Salem into an inferno of violent mobs attacking those that they deemed "witches". In each of these three examples, one can see the underlying theme that fear leads finto mob mentality, which is the antithesis of civilization and society. .
A mob mentality is responsible for many outbreaks and problems in society. Peer pressure, for example, is an important issue brought on by mob mentality; people are persuaded to "follow the leader" and go with the crowd. In Lord of the Flies, the mob mentality develops partly because the boys lose their own values and principle, and begin to follow the louder and more persuasive values of Jack. In this case, Jack uses the fear of the "beast" to drive everyone towards his group. However, Jack was not the type of leader who did what was right. And the fact that he wasn't this type of person is what led to the negative consequences that the boys faced later. These boys were driven by Jack and the force of fear to do and decide all the horrible things they did while stranded on this island.
