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I believe fear is a learned reaction and not instinctual. I think that there tends to be confusion between instinctive survival reactions (fight or flight) and what is considered fear. When you blink your eyes at an incoming object, I don't think you're doing so out of fear; I think your body is reacting to a potential threat by instinctively protecting it from any debris that may enter your eye. Add to that the learned reaction of anticipating something harmful and then you have fear.
I don't think any of us are truly fearless. A lot of things have already been planted into our minds since we were infants. We may have subsequently learned to either suppress them or even overcome them, but this comes with a deliberate effort to confront a fear and defeat it. Otherwise, we are who we are because a lot of these fears resulted from learned behavior (think of how parents motivate children to stop certain behaviors---they use scare tactics---some of which we learn to dismiss right away, but still there are certain things that remain imbedded in our psyche).
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