“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
—H.P. Lovecraft
Maybe not everyone in the world has felt true love, but we have all been truly afraid.
Fear is what drives us the most and motivates us the fastest. It’s the thing we fear the most — feeling fear — and we will do almost anything to avoid it.
An Authority is the person who makes fear go away.
An Authority knows foolproof ways of making desired results happen. They also know how to keep undesirable results at bay.
An Authority is someone you can believe in, especially when you don’t believe in yourself.
An Authority knows the way and keeps you from getting lost.
An Authority exists in the world of the known, the certain, and the sure. They invite you into that world, and it’s exactly where you want to be.
An Authority also uses fear to their advantage. They prey on the afraid. Not in a bad way, hopefully, but in a same way that a man with an extra flashlight preys on someone sitting in the dark. We bring the light to them.
The Authority enhances the fear around the wrong ideas… and dissipates fear around the right answers.
The Authority sets the rules for the good of the audience, and the consequences of breaking them are to be feared.
The behind-the-scenes secret is that the Authority has fears, too. But the audience would never know. The actor on stage may be nervous, but the audience doesn’t know. They feel like they are in good hands, and they want to have a good time.
Sometimes, the audience wants to feel fear, too. Just for a second. The Authority/Actor knows this, and knows how to manifest this because they know and understand the audience.
Knowing and understanding the audience is what separates the Authority from the pretender.