"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger."

How does fear lead to anger? I don't get it.

"Anger leads to hate." This one makes sense.
"Hate leads to suffering." As does this one.

 

fear usually leads to confusion, when one is confused they get angry, it's human nature. When one gets angry they hate.

so

fear>confusion>anger>hate

also, no one likes to have fear, when someone is scared they feel silly and threatened, like they are not in control...so anger comes into it again.

 

One could use homophobia as an example. Many would say that it is fear of something different or something not understood that leads to the "anger" and violence against gays.

 

Yoda is refering in that scene to a specific kind of fear. It's not the Stephen King being-chased-down-a-dark-hall-by-a-vampire type of fear. It's the subdued sense of fear that Anakin has at leaving his mother behind. Ki Adi Mundi says it. "Your thoughts dwell on your mother."

When you walk around in life with that kind of fear bubbling under the surface, you tend to seive things through it without even recognizing that fact. It colors your perceptions, exactly the way it colors Anakin's perceptions through AOTC and ROTS, and that can affect behavior. That fear of loss causes him to respond badly at critical moments and become angry and make even worse judgments. He rushes to attack Dooku (he sounds angry before doing it.) He slaughters the sandpeople. He disobeys the council.

It's interesting to me that Lucas gave Yoda that line in TPM now. We see Anakin go right through those steps in the next two films.

 

^
Yeah, that.

Why did Anakin turn to the Dark Side? Out of fear of (and anger over) losing those he loved - first his mother, then Padmé.

 

His fear of losing those he loves turns into anger when he realizes that he really can do nothing to stop it.

 

Yoda is refering in that scene to a specific kind of fear.

Yep, not all fear will lead to anger.

 

Hey voodoo check you're pm's once in a while!

 

It's also chemical. Fear and anger both lead to a similar hormonal reaction (in humans at least): The release of Epinephrine aka adrenaline. A fight-or-flight response.

 

Anakin - afraid to lose Padme - Anger

 

Fear of losing Shmi caused Anakin to be angry when he realized he did lose her. That made him look at who took her...the sand people. "THey are animals, and I slaughtered them like Animals, I hate THEM." He was clearly suffering as he spoke that line and in turn...he was nearing the darkside of the force. You see it in Mundane things such as computer use. People always are afraid they are going to break their computers, so much so they don't learn to use them properly. Because they never learn how to use them, they become angry when they don't work properly. Finally, they call me, the tech person after struggling for 6 hours and they tell me they hate the thing so much that they want to throw it out the window. They are clearly distraught and suffering.

Carnage