Fear is not a bad thing in itself. It's fearing the wrong thing that leads to trouble (and incidentally, I think fear-based paralysis is best defined as a sympt

Fear is not a bad thing in itself. It's fearing the wrong thing that leads to trouble (and incidentally, I think fear-based paralysis is best defined as a symptom of fearing the wrong thing). When faced with a threat, making a risk/reward calculation is really an attempt to be rationally driven in one's choice of what to fear. As a corollary, courage can be defined as fearing the results of not being appropriately brave more than the threat itself.