Just like the jaws of a raging shark
Fear grips man, stabbing his gut in the dark,
The unknown gives way to the conscious belief
That difference in this world is filled with grief.
It eats away at the foundations that form
The very courage that braves the storm,
And in a split second, that single instant
Causes us to act without moments regret.

Will Thornhill was a man from the slums
A thief, charged and sentenced to be hung,
A man whose good words came in very few,
Especially when he received an offer he couldn't refuse,
Go to the new land and lest ye be saved!
Or stay here in Britain and be condemned to your grave...
The choice was simple but inside he feared;
The land and unknown he was to now endear.
When Will finally arrived in New South Wales
He looked at the land as a crushing jail,
Ten thousand miles of the salty sea away
Was his home he wished to revisit some day.
It didn't take long for him to find out
The unknown he had feared were scattered all about
He peered at the man whom had skin colour so odd
He'd fear any many who worshiped no god...

Another time away from when had first
Placed his foreign foot upon Aboriginal earth,
His values torn to shards when he realized his fence
Held nothing out when Aboriginals knew not what it meant,
"This is our land!", He said, "Here stands our flag!"
But what's a piece of cloth compared to the history the Aboriginals had?
Tension rose again when a dear friend was dead,
A spear through the chest and thus blood was bled,
Those eyes, the one that had never looked away from him
Will stare for eternity, excruciatingly haunting,
But could one blame the blacks when one so vile
Had kept a black woman, for himself to defile?
This disgrace of a man had provoked a response
And the filthy Smasher Sullivan got a chance he would want.

Despite fear being a major cause of conflicts
Here’s a scenario that the prompt will contradict;
A nation of nations led by an ‘evil dictator;
Top half of the world just north of the Equator.
While the country keeps claiming its independence
It’s nuclear testing has caught the UN’s interest
North Korea vicariously watches America
And their epic war on so called ‘terror’
Are we all doomed for World War Three
If we are we’re condemned to lies and deceit
The hierarchy will fall and a new power will build one
What are the world’s chances against an army of a million?

So herein lies another cause of conflict
Did you miss it? You would have to blink.
It seems fear would spark this war
But really that’s not even close at all
It’s a cover for the greedy, naive fiends,
For whom power has this shiny, golden gleam...

Not all conflict need be so great
In fact it’s quite easy to domesticate
A man at work, he’s a successful lawyer
A wife at home, he always spoils her,
One day at work he got a call
An old friend needs him to break her fall.
He meets up with her in a cafe
Hugged her, and talk about “back in the day”,
That night when he got home
His wife was gone and on the bench was a note
It read, “You lying, cheating scum!
I’ve gone to my sisters and taken our son!
Don’t bother calling my phone’s switched off
And if you try to ring my sister she’ll call the cops!”
A simple misunderstanding has caused this mess
He thought, “An overreaction from my wife at best”
He couldn’t do a thing to change that now
All he could do was sit down and wait it out

Eventually the whole truth was luckily revealed
And the passion of these two lovers was sealed
The conflict was caused not by fear
But by how the half truth had appeared
Sure, fear could have been involved
But if not for a misunderstanding it wouldn’t have evolved
And don’t forget if it wasn’t for half the truth
Fear would have never been introduced!

Now, a night out on the town
A group of friends slamming drinks down
A party that will go on all night
And suddenly, out breaks a fight
The friends steer clear and move to the next bar
Where they can buy better drinks and party hard
Each drink comes at more of a price
As they get drunker with the age of the night
Next bar and a live band plays loud
Dancing on the dance floor bumping with the crowd
More and more drinks for more and more fun
It doesn’t matter what you drink as long as you’re drunk
It’s time to go home and he goes to his car
She says, “You’re gonna get very far!”
He ignores her comment, as she does him
She hails down a taxi and manages to tumble in
When he gets drink he’s like a man on a mission
Even if she had argued he never would have listened
Still, as she stands there reminiscing
Back then, she never knew, just how much she would miss him
She leaves his grave with tears in her eyes
She regrets the day she never got to say goodbye
So it’s really not hard for us to decide
There’s no fear here, only a boy who has died...

So, looking as far as I can see
And I think I can speak for the majority
It’s not just fear in the bottom layer of conflict
But a myriad of reasons for the dummy spit