The (ir)relevance of Fear

Fear in itself is a rational and appropriate response to ‘danger’  and activates the well-known ‘fight-or-flight’  mechanism or in extreme cases of fear it might even freeze or paralyze us. Of course this is useful when being confronted with a venomous snake, wild dog, crocodile or gunned person. Fears or phobias can become a hurdle in life when they only exist in the mind or in other words when we ‘fear the fear’.

 

Fear comes in many shapes and forms but whatever it is that gives us that anxious feeling it always triggers that same fight-or-flight mechanism also known as an automated biological reaction. One of the most common fears that triggers this reaction are heights (acrophobia), spiders (arachnophobia), germs & dirt (mysophobia mostly related to OCD), snakes (ophiophobia), open or crowded spaces (agoraphobia), dogs (cynophobia), lightning and thunder (astraphobia), public speaking (glossophobia), bugs & insects (entomophobia), drowning (aquaphobia), blood & needles (trypanophobia), small spaces & no escape (claustrophobia), flying (aerophobia) and strangers (xenophobia).

 

A fear of something can obviously arise when something bad or traumatic happens to us, a car accident, dog bite or violent robbery, a ‘real fear’ constituting from a actually happened event. Ok, whether an event is actually ‘dangerous’, ‘scary’, ‘traumatic’  or ‘shocking’  is totally arbitrary and 100% depending on how someone perceives it. The same event might be the seed for a phobia to one person and in contrast totally harmless to another person. An infamous experiment in 1920 called ‘Little Albert Experiment’ by American Psychologist John Watson shows how quick and easy a ‘phobia’ can be triggered in an emotionally stable baby. The child was exposed to fluffy animals in conjunction with a hard noise, as a result ‘little Albert’ soon generated a phobia for anything fluffy including (the beard of) ‘Santa Claus’.

 

Acquiring a fear is easy, how to get rid of it is totally different ballgame. Although, studies show that by applying the reverse process of acquiring a fear, fears can be extinct. Nevertheless, this process is a complex, time-consuming, high-effort and costly process and not with a guaranteed outcome. Imagine the great benefits for society if we prevent humans to get counterproductive moreover counterhappy fears at all.

 

But that’s not all, on top of the ‘real fears’ we have the ‘imaginary fears’ that we have never experienced ourselves but which have been transmitted and passed-on to us by others whom carry fears of any type. Note that ‘imaginary fears’ can and in many cases have been passed on from generation to generations. Of course, throughout mankind it was and is of course very helpful for the evolvement of mankind to learn from the experiences of peers and ancestors. It avoids us falling in the same pitfall twice such as eating poisonous plants, approaching venomous animals and crossing hazardous terrains.

 

Nonetheless nowadays totally unnecessary fears (as a result of beliefs) are kept alive which stagnates mankind to reach full potential let alone sustainable happiness. How are some of the world’s biggest fears such as ‘public speaking’, ‘terrorist attacks’, ‘the future’, ‘technology emergence’, ‘failing a test’, not being ‘succesfull’  (whatever that means), underperforming in a group, nuclear wars, letting others down, not being perfect and many others helpful in the development of a young human? Let alone the ravage of carrying unnecessary fears for decades?

 

Why is it that a 15 year-old would far more likely have a bigger fear for ‘failing in school’, ‘speaking in public’ or ‘not getting a good job’  then fearing to be ill or dement later in life or not living a life with passion and meaning? The latter fears are far more realistic and likely to happen considering the current lifestyle of the everyman (food, inactive, sitting, stress, pollution). In chapter XX more about unhealthy lifestyle. All those fears that unnoticably became common and taken for granted in our society and are among others the root causes of the current stress-, burnout- and depression pandemics. Whereas real problems and dangers such as the far more lethal unhealthy lifestyle merely get any attention or priority and remain in the shadow of unnecessary imaginary fears.