[279] East European nations, as Margaret Mead^a has discussed; or the basic anxiety of the Red Indians, or whatever. This is not basic; this is historically determined. But there is something below this, namely the POSSIBILITY of anxiety^b, and this is the REALLY basic anxiety, which is given with man's predicament and which also has been rediscovered in connection with the problems of the human situation. Let me say a few words about this anxiety. ^cEvery living being has this anxiety because every living being is continuously threatened by nonbeing, and comes from nonbeing and goes to nonbeing. Man has advantages and disadvantages in comparison with other living beings. Man has the advantage that he can transform anxiety into fear and then fight courageously with the object of fear. Now let me explain that. Decisive for this whole analysis is the distinction between anxiety^d and fear, which is older than Kierkegaard^e and much older than Freud^f and modern analysis and existentialism^g, who ALL use this distinction. Anxiety is without a content, or as the existentialist Heidegger^h has said, it is without an object, it is related to nonbeing itself. Or as Goldsteinⁱ says: it is the state of not being able to handle life as a whole, without a special reason. Fear is always motivated by an object, by something which we can face---a sickness, an examination, a battle, and what not. This difference between fear and anxiety is absolutely decisive for the understanding of man. You can observe this in your dealing with children: if they are in a dark room and are in anxiety, there is no special object. If you are able to ask them and bring them to an answer to the question "Now what are you afraid of?", then they may laugh. And you can do that with yourself.