Fear

     
   Halloween has just passed and the holiday led me to think about an aspect of our lives which we seldom talk about…fear. This primal emotion is a vital part of our brain function, without it we would have never learned to avoid danger or harm. Our ancestors would have all walked off cliffs or been eaten by lions before we ever had a chance to develop into what we are today if it were not for fear. It has allowed us to adapt to a dangerous world, igniting our ingenuity to develop ways to stay safe, yet as it protects it also holds us back. As a species we tend to fear change, we fear diversity, and we fear the unknown.
       
   Fear in the most simplest form, the avoidance of danger, can be seen in even the most basic lifeforms on earth and has developed in complexity along the path of  evolution. A bacteria will detect and then avoid a toxin, a cockroach will flee from light, a mouse will run from a cat and a human will avoid an entire neighborhood because his knowledge tells him it is dangerous. This increase in complexity, from simple avoidance conditioning to logic based forethought, shows how far life has come in analyzing and responding to danger. This evolution has shaped the growth of every species along the span of life as creatures adapt to their environments, but what happens when a creature is presented with change that moves way faster than evolution? This is the problem facing humans today.
   

          Ask what people are most afraid of and you will get some reasonable answers:

“I’m afraid of the dark” – Humans gather a majority of our information from our eyesight, and most of our early predators were nocturnal. Being afraid of an environment where we are blind and surrounded by human eating beasts is an obvious plus.
“I’m afraid of heights” – It’s not the fall that kills us, it’s the sudden deceleration at the end.
“I’m afraid of spiders” – Again learned from an evolution where a healthy fear of creatures like spiders and snakes helped keep you alive and passing on your wussy genes.

          But then you also will get a healthy dose of seemingly nonsensical “fears” such as a fear of public speaking, a fear of failure or a fear of intimacy. These fears all developed as part of our need for social interaction. While talking to large crowd might not result in instant death, a failure to do it properly could cause you to be ostracized from the community, something that meant certain death in early humans. The same goes with other socialization based fear; our lives and happiness have evolved to be so centered around our social interactions and status that we view damaging these relations as paramount to death.

          So while social based fear might not protect us from sudden danger, it helps to motivate us to work together and contribute our best to society as well as to our friends and family. The problems only arise when you allow that fear to keep you from socializing altogether. In it’s most serious form, this type of fear can manifest in anxiety and even agoraphobia. In the same way that people let the avoidance of danger control their lives by avoiding any potentially dangerous activity or becoming overbearing parents they can allow their fear of socializing to draw them away from others.

     
   While letting fear of danger and fear of socialization control us can be damaging, the most damaging fear that I believe exists is the fear of the unknown. While this too has its roots in evolution (we feared the natural disaster that could destroy our environment or the raiding tribe that can attack and kill our families), this fear has done more to hold back the progress of humanity than any other aspect of our minds. We fear the other, leading us to racism, war and even genocide. We fear change, denying our reality that we discover through science and keeping us from embracing new ways of thinking and running our world. We fear death, causing us to spend our lives preparing and worrying about an unknown afterlife, denying ourselves the happiness we can only find in the present moment. We spend so much of our lives in fear of things that are different and that which challenges our world view.

          I want you to be part of changing that. I want you to confront that fear for the rest of your life, whether it be in yourself or others. Don’t be afraid to try something new, to travel, to engage with others, or to start a new career. Don’t hesitate to call out people who base their decisions and criticisms on petty differences such as race and nationality. Don’t let prejudices hold you back from meeting and befriending new people. Don’t let your fear of change keep you from pursuing your dreams or engaging in that activity you always wondered about.

          Fear keeps us at war with each other and with our own minds. It stops us from realizing a life of success. It blinds us to the possibilities of  life. It traps us in an imaginary world  of an unknown future, destroying our ability to be happy by drowning our lives in a million what ifs. Confront your fears and take control of your life. Become brave! Face your fears, drown you doubts and eliminate the thoughts that hold you back.

          Our world is full of danger, I am not naive about that truth. A certain level of fear will keep us safe from danger and prepared for possible disasters. The line is drawn when we cross over from that healthy, evolution derived, dose of fear and into a world of paralysis where we become mistrusting, sniveling cowards unable to embrace each other, the world around us and the endless wonder of life.