Those who've known me for any length of time know that one of the things I routinely mention or discuss, with increasing regularity, is fear, and how it affects human motivations, human psychological patterns, and how it is evident in much of human conversation once you understand how to look for its signs.
Since Fear is arguably attached to the average human's sense of survival, its undercurrents are deep and not always obvious.
The frightened manner people will display when they're in a scary situation is just one manifestation, but in the day-to-day life of most humans, there is a constantly-running process in the subconscious, which is driven by fear, and that process influences all manner of decisions and thought patterns in those people.
Something I'd Never Considered
Over the course of the last decade, my fascination with the human mind, spirit and psychological mapping has unfolded a deep inner journey as well as led me through external discovery in my fellow humans. With every year that passes I gain a sharper and more distinct image of our design; with that knowledge, the fog continues to clear.
From both within and without, I see as plain as day something I almost can't believe was ever a mystery:
The vast majority of humans are, at their foundation, being powered by fear itself, and that fear is both:
- counterproductive to their own goals, desires, and thriving...
AND
- standing in direct contradiction to what makes them human
What I had never thought to consider before, was whether Fear is an essential human trait at all. I discovered it is not. When I say it is not essential, that simply means is not inseparable; not a necessary part of what makes a human.
A Massive Lie That Too Many Believe
Some of you reading this will know precisely where I am going with this, and I suspect it's those of you who've experienced it firsthand, just as I have.
For those of you who find anything I'm saying here to be extraordinary, I humbly ask you suspend your current view of even your own psychology, in order to approach this openly, as an intriguing thought experiment that just may prove to be of great value to you later on.
The lie that I once believed, and that far too many humans today believe, is that fear is our survival instinct.
I've had a thousand and more discussions about human psychology and the mind, and I see this assumption repeated either subtly (less than consciously) or with great gusto, but only recently did I realize it was wholly incorrect.
Aversion VS Fear
A natural part of our survival requires that we humans be able to sense and/or acquire conscious knowledge of when to avoid something that might be a real threat to our lives. We can have natural aversions to things that our bodies sense might be threatening, and we can develop learned aversions based on acquired knowledge about a thing.
Example of a natural aversion (born with it):
I might have a reaction to flinch when something unfamiliar touches my skin before I see it-- that is a sensory aversion that most humans are born with. If we don't yet know what something is, and it's coming into contact with us, our survival mechanism says "don't let that touch us until we see what it is".
Example of a learned aversion:
I also might have a reaction to stop and pause, and then run away if I see a rattlesnake, because I consciously learned at some point that a rattlesnake carries venom that is deadly to humans, and is known to be very capable of biting a human and causing injury or death.
Natural and learned aversions both are critical to a human's success in surviving on planet earth, but aversions are not FEAR.
If you have not read my article on my recent experience where I lost (seemingly miraculously) my life-long arachnophobia and became instead an arachnophile and tarantula enthusiast, I suggest you do, as that experience was a major illumination to this truth of the human psyche I'd not previously understood.
Humans naturally want to remain alive from the moment we are conscious (even in the womb), and it is evident in a human baby (I am a mother and so have witnessed it) that there are specific aversions to certain dangers that nearly all humans are born with. An aversion to loud noises, and an aversion to falling both can be observed in an infant. As far as any one can tell, the rest of the aversions--and later, fears--we develop throughout life beyond that are learned, and not every human learns to develop the same aversions or fears.
The massive inner experience of losing one of my major fears (and since the arachnophobia has gone, I have also noted other deep and old fears receding) revealed the following truth:
Fear is a learned emotion, at root it is an anxiety, and it is not necessary for survival.
A Powerfully Freeing Idea
What lay at the root of my phobias and fears was a deep anxiety. I remember too well what it feels like since I lived my entire life with it. I also see clearly what it was now that it has vanished.
I see now that anxiety--that painful emotional experience--was only rooted so deeply because of a lack of something. Knowledge.
I lacked knowledge about the things I was afraid of. The fear (anxiety) I experienced was not of my human rational mind, it was NOT relevant to my own survival about 99% of the time--and therein is the hint about the true nature of Fear.
Fear can only take root where one lacks knowledge about something, and therefore it cannot be rational, or be a rational part of human survival.
Before a human gains knowledge of a thing, Fear can succeed in driving us away from danger effectively, but because it is subconscious and non-rational, this emotional anxiety is like a wild force that is just as likely to irrationally drive us away from GOOD and BENEFICIAL things.
Fear, because it takes root based in a lack of knowledge, can lead us unwittingly away from our own thriving and an amazing existence that we may actually desire on a deeper level.
Humans--because we are much more than a primal instinct based in anxiety--use knowledge to survive, and we use that knowledge to build strategies to do far more than just survive.
Humans use knowledge to thrive.
Humans are the only thing on earth that have a conscious concept of thriving.
We are more than a programmed instinct routine.
Humans aspire, create art, ask questions of our existence, choose drastically different lifestyles and habit patterns from person to person and culture to culture, write music, build planes and skyscrapers and construct musical instruments, art, cars, larger and more stunning homes, and it never stops. Humans are the only thing that will carry on long dialogues and write philosophical books about the very concepts of thriving versus merely surviving.
That is what makes us more than the primal animal, more than the base instincts of a bear or deer or lion or gazelle.
The difference between my fear of spiders (phobia) and my now love of spiders (philia) is knowledge. I do not suddenly want to do irrational things such as try to acquire an intensely venomous bite, just because I now love spiders.
My lack of fear did not cause me to lose the rational ability to determine what is dangerous from what is not.
Becoming Fully Human
I don't need the fear to survive, what I need is strategy, and that can only come from knowledge.
As evident to me now as the sky above, I see that FEAR is the remains of The Animal, an ancient part of our past evolution which is increasingly disappearing.
And WHY?
Because The Human--our ability to acquire knowledge and thrive beyond imagination--no longer has any use for it. In fact, it is the only thing that holds us back.
It is Fear (which is based in ignorance after all) that blinds us to new ideas, new approaches, new strategies, and amazing experiences.