Musings #3: We Fear What We Do Not Know-Part 3
Even if we do know about it
Hello, hello! Thank you for stopping by and giving this post a read! This is the final part of an unintentional 3 part series. There may be more parts in the future, but it will be a while for those to manifest. Here’s are links to Parts 1 and 2. Thank you to everyone who answered the questions I asked in a previous Shout Out post and allowed me to include your answers to my Part 2 article of this series!
Since my last post, a disappointing thing happened. While I was hoping that I was going to pass my class with a very low grade of C-, I found out the day before I was set to walk the stage and graduate that I had in fact not passed the class, and will need to take another semester. I was, however, given the option to do the graduate walk early, and since I already had my undergraduation robe and things, I decided that I would indeed do The Walk. I am already signed up for my (hopefully) final final undergrad class. Different class, same professor-send good vibes my way, please! It sucks to have my plans for what I was hoping would be a nice, relaxing-ish 7-8 month break get slashed, but I’m determined to get that damn degree and move on!
All this being said, I am still going to continue writing here. Although I wasn’t able to get my Fall posts out, I have one of them partially written, and ideas saved for a few more Fall-based posts for next year too. I will be also be working on a winter-based post and hope to have it released shortly before this new year. Huzzah!
Without further ado, please enjoy Part 3 of my We Fear What We Don’t Know series! And if you’ve been Following this corner of the Stack of Subs, and have finally decided that you do have space for another Stack, clickety-tappity-samashity this button right below
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If you read from the website and/or app, don’t forget to Heart this article-essay at the end, and if you would like to, add a Comment. I do enjoy reading them as well as interacting with you in the Comment Section!
Thank you and enjoy!
Fear.
A lot of times it’s general, like you’re fearful of something but ya don’t know what the fuck it is. Sometimes it’s very specific-like a phobia. Sometimes it can be both-perhaps you have a specific fear of something but you don’t know why. An example for me, and albeit a lot of people, is acrophobia (fear of heights) and basophobia (fear of falling)1.
Being fearful happens to all of us-best, worst, both-all the time. It’s so annoying, fear, even though it can save our asses too…sometimes…not always…but still sometimes.
Why do we have fear? Why do we feel it? Fuck it, why do some of us feel anything, some of us feel everything, and some of us feel nothing at all?
Whyýŷÿyýŷÿyýŷÿ?!?!?!?
In addition to asking why we have fear, we tend to ascribe it to different areas. Morally, spiritually, ethically, individually, other -lly’s. It even affects the way we change and make changes individually and as various societies, and can make us afraid of change. Ooh, irony, you insane bitch!
Morally:
Is it because we’re afraid to be judged, even as we find ourselves putting unnecessary judgement on other people and situations, regardless of if we’re involved with said people/situations?
Spiritually:
Do we fear the unknown so much that we create ideologies and religions to help us cope with that unknown? Or do we create these things because we want to feel more in control of our supposed destiny?
Ethically:
Speaking of control and destiny, do we feel the need to be controlling of ourselves (and to an extent people) because if we don’t, we won’t know what to do with ourselves as a society? Do we call people out on their bullshit because they need it (sometimes, yes they do), or because it makes us feel better (let’s be honest here: it does sometimes feel good, right?)? Are we afraid that if we don’t have some form of control, we will always be slaves to our own selves as well as each other?
Individually:
Sometimes we fear that our differences make us weird, make us seem strange. Instead of conforming and working together to make our differences unite us, we conform to act the same, to be of the the same mind. We seem to fear the very act of “agreeing to disagree”, which leads us to not working together to compromise for the short-term while working to enact change that we can agree on for the long-term. This chorus comes to mind:
And I don’t want the world to see me/Cause I don’t think that they’d understand/When everything’s made to be broken/I just want you to know who I am
Song: Iris/Band: Goo Goo Dolls
Change:
Change is many things. It’s exciting, scary, invigorating, draining, mysterious, confusing, etc. We can sense change when it’s coming, but we don’t always see it when it arrives, and then we don’t realize the true affect and effect it has on us until the moment passes and we’re on to the next change.
For as long as we can remember, we have felt fear. We’ve convinced ourselves that it’s that ancient bogeyman that uses the dark and shadows to hide and keep us in check.
Or did we create the idea that fear of the bogeyman is somehow a good thing? Perhaps the bogeyman is actually harmless, but because we tell ourselves,
“Nope, that’s too different! It scary, it doesn’t belong here!”
or
“I can’t have these beings turn to another source of information that may or may not make what I say sound lunatic! I must give them a reason to keep listening to me!”
it turns into something harmful.
The bogeyman now evolves into whatever the fuck we make it into because our inner thoughts that we keep to ourselves while not always silently projecting onto others are just that powerful.
Religion, Politics, Science, and Culture: Frenemies Forever💜😁
Instinctively, we all know that the feeling that we have named fear was originally used to survive. Historically, we know that our fear evolved from a need to survive being hunted by predators-specifically predators that were outside of our species/genus groups, until we decided that either we are our own enemy, we made ourselves our own enemy, or somewhere in that truthful gray area where both are allowed to be true.
Religion
For a long time, religion was used to provide an explanation for why we would use fear to survive predators. So humanity turned to unseen deities and their earthly representations and written literature-that until the printing press only an elite few could actually read. Science was always there too-but due to the prevalence of religion and the idea that to look further than what one’s deity/religious texts said was considered the b-word2-it was only really used as a dual means of healing ailments and figuring out how to harm perceived enemies (that was of course disguised as being cursed/killed by a deity, demon, spirit, etc. Humans are 1000% creative that way!).
Politics
Politics is a great way for us to gaslight each other into believing that one or a few main individual(s)+admin will be able to fix our problems and make the planet fantastic again! If we’re honest with ourselves, a good majority of us who live in countries where democracy plays out pay just enough attention to politics enough to know who we plan to vote for in elections, and then go about our everyday lives like we didn’t just put people in power who could either boost or bust our lives. For the most part we know the story: That our fellow humans who we elect very rarely care about their constituents and most of them (not all, but most), do just enough to get re-elected while focusing mainly on their own interests by convincing us that their interests should be our interests too. And then we have those few people who were put in power either by us-the people-or some players behind the scenes who actively do their best to keep people divided by making small, insignificant issues into the biggest issues ever and having people ignore other, much more important issues, and bam! PoliticsRUs is born. And how do politicians get people to agree with their shit when hope and excitement for the future fail? Scapegoating and fear.
Science
To science, fear is more than just an emotional tool used to control populations into moving in the same social and/or cultural direction. Fear is more of a survival technique of any species’ evolution. Fear is a biological response (Fight, flight, freeze!) that has comfortably settled in our brain space, mainly staying in the amygdala, but sometimes moving to our frontal cortex and other parts of our brain causing us to not think however it is that we normally think. Sometimes it can make us feel focused, other times it’s an interrupter. That’s not to say that social-cultural-evolutionary ideas of fear aren’t able to be used together to make shit happen. Indeed, they are used together at various times throughout history-both personal, general, and specific.
As a result of religion, science, and politics mixing and integrating with each other in very interesting three-way, culture can be born. In this sense, culture, in its ever diverse form, can be described as habits and ideas that become socially acceptable, regardless of majority and/minority opinion. Depending on one’s beliefs and what one thinks is right, the culture can eventually become accepting of ideas, both new and old. Some beliefs and ideas, like the changing of one’s gender, controlling and ending one’s ability to reproduce, abortion, various types of gun control, deciding to involve a country and its people in any kind of war, personal existential crises, etc. will probably always be controversial to a point.
Out from these four arise many emotions, one of which is fear.
In the next section we are going to look at the basic idea of fear that has nothing to do with using it for manipulation and control outside of ourselves, but more as a survival technique that is constantly in a state of evolution. We will attempt to look at fear through the lens of anthropology.
The Evolution of Fear Through The Lens of Anthropology
As I will consistently say in many of my articles, anthropology is a lovely smörgåsbord of studying humanity by incorporating different professions and ideas into the field to understand why humanity humans and help to build bridges of understanding.
One anthropologist studied fear by trying to understand our need to take risks. This anthropologist was a British woman named Mary Douglas3. She studied under anthropologists E. E. Evans-Pritchard and M. N. Srinivas, and was potentially influenced by Émile Durkheim, who helped shape modern sociology as well as anthropology. While I’m not very familiar with her work, I came across Douglas a few years ago at the suggestion of one of my professors, who I consider a mentor, who was helping me do an independent study on uterine fibroids from a cultural anthropology perspective. The study I started is currently on hold until I can pursue it independently, but the part that my mentor wanted me to look at was a general look at Douglas’ idea of blame.
Mary Douglas was a social anthropologist4, known for her ethnographic writings, and while she wrote on many subjects, one subject she wrote on was risk. Her initial observation was that taking risks gives rise to fear. While looking for an anthropological view of fear for this article-essay, I found a paper that is now a book called The Anthropology of Fear: Cultures Beyond Emotions5. Published in 2014 by Andrea Boscoboinik and Hana Horakova, this book is an anthology of ethnographies from various authors and their observations about how different cultures and societies look at fear. While I admit I didn’t get past the introduction part, author Boscoboinik writes about Mary Douglas’ idea about risk:
For Douglas the concepts of risk are inevitably expressed through cultural conventions. The definition of what constitutes a hazard or a risk changes over time and cultures. Since fear, threat and danger are shaped by a particular notion of what constitutes a risk, what we are afraid of changes as well.
Earlier in the introduction, Boscoboinik writes:
Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm. However, as far as anthropology is concerned, fear cannot be reduced to an individual emotional condition. Surely, emotions are part of the individual.
…
From an anthropological point of view, though a feeling may be shared, it is not easily approachable via ethnographic methods. Despite the difficulty of ‘formulating an ethnography of fear’ (see Jeudy-Ballini and Voisenat 2004), one can still grasp the major concerns of a society and a culture through the sociocultural demonstrations of its collective fears. For this reason, anthropological interest lies in the origins of fear, in the situations that generate fear at a given time in a given place. Everyone must learn to live with uncertainty and control his or her fears. An anthropological approach would lead research and observations towards what individuals and groups fear the most, why and which strategies and mechanisms are used to allay, face, cope with and overcome fear. Consequently, what people fear and how they face fears can teach anthropologists a great deal about a given society.
…
(Emphasis mine)
Our personal experiences shape the imagination and our fears. Yet, many of our fears are not always based on personal experience, but rather on what we think about risks. And what we think about risks is mediated through cultural values and social belonging.
Conclusion
We’ve all experienced fear. We’ve all watched expressions of fear consume our lives and our very beings. Fear isn’t just emotional. It is biological, environmental, institutional. We will not not ever stop feeling and experiencing the feeling of fear, or being fearful. Social-wise, we seem to fear differences. Some people fear letting groups-men, women, trans, nonbinary-express themselves in healthy ways. Some people hate having to change the game of sports for various groups. For some reason, change is seen as intruding on personal space, whether it’s human, animal, AI, or social media. I admit, I can find change hard. But taking a few breaths while processing what will be changing helps a lot.
You know what I find more intruding on personal space than most topics? The unwanted smell of a specific plant wafting into my apartment from my neighbor’s apartment while I’m trying to do homework or write a Substack post because the walls are not as thick as both myself and my neighbors would like them to be, and I unintentionally get high and lose focus. I personally have nothing against marijuana, but goddammit, that was annoying as fuck and one of the many reasons why I moved. To be clear-if I wasn’t a student, and was just another working human, then I would’ve been fine with the free second-hand high. But that wasn’t the case.
Anyways, as I was coming to the end of writing this article-essay, I came across an article6 that expands a bit more on the details of the science behind fear from an anthropology perspective. It’s a very interesting and I encourage y’all to give it a read!
I would like to give a shout out to two Substack writers whose articles helped inspire this article-essay:
Thank you for waiting for this article-essay to come out! I hope you enjoyed this unintentional mini-series. Fear is a constant topic, so I may write more on it, but for now, I will focus on other topics. I hope everyone’s winter holidays are going good and I will see you soon with a winter holiday post and another Shout Out post.
As always, Carpe Diem and Huzzah!
~Kimber, Salem, and Nalia
Contrary to popular belief, these two are not the same thing and are not always related
B word=Blasphemy. Oh, what b-word were you thinking I meant?😉😏😘
Wikipedia: Mary Douglas
Social anthropology: Social anthropology is the study of human societies and cultures through a comparative lens. It examines how people live in societies, how they make their lives meaningful, and how they are connected to each other. Credit: Google AI Summary
Andrea Boscoboinik and Hana Horakova. The Anthropology of Fear: Cultures Beyond Emotions. 2014. Link directs you to Research Gate, where you can make a free account, access multiple articles, and even email the authors of those articles. Research Gate is mainly for academics and researchers to post their work, but it is also an open-source platform.
Article: The Roots of Human Fear by Kei Ben