Be More Human: Fear
The Coliga team comes from different corners of the world, and our conversations in the last few weeks have made us realize how strong the sense of fear and isolation many people — including many of our contemporaries — feel around the world. To start the year, we thought to share a personal reflection on fear: things we’ve learned about it and how we tie it to our work in supporting communities. Co-written by Daniel Corral, Jorge Vega Matos, and Pedro Jardim after many conversations with people we love and respect. Edited by Ben Riddle & Jorge Vega Matos.
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“Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up?”
In 1950, just one year after the USSR tested their first nuclear device, William Faulkner included this statement in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, putting words to a collective psyche that was still coming to terms with the realization that the world could blow up in a ball of fire at any moment.
Today it seems we’re experiencing a similar ‘general and universal’ fear that we haven’t seen in decades, a collective sense of impending doom that feels so ingrained in our spirit and our bodies that it almost feels natural. This time around we are threatened not by one dramatic nuclear death, but a mix of mounting catastrophes: environmental degradation, rising political instability, emerging totalitarianism, fundamentalism, and a sense of alienation from our work and from each other.
Last year in particular seemed to throw people over the edge of fear. There are strong arguments for 2016 not being the ‘worst year ever’ as well as there are arguments for thinking we are entering a new dark age. But that’s not the point. Fear, whether justified or not, still manifests itself at all levels.
Whether at the societal or individual level, life in a state of fear or anxiety ultimately manifests violence and aggression towards oneself and others. At the macro level, we are seeing rising levels of distrust in institutions and whole groups of people, along with accompanying bouts of violence based on identity and restrictive policy-making. At the individual level, we are seeing rising levels of burnout, apathy, and mental illness.
Now more than ever, we need to understand the nature of fear at the level of society, and how we might be able to empower both communities and individuals to fight it.
What is fear?
Fear — and anxiety — are distressing emotions aroused by feelings of impending danger or threat, whether real or imagined. Fear is such a basic part of our being that it can provoke metabolic responses and cause our organ functions to change, which can alter our behavior in significant ways.
There is hardly any other emotion or reaction that is so widespread in human nature, or can be traced back so far in evolution. The ‘fight or flight’ response is understood to underpin the behavior of most living things: whether for fruit flies facing a hand, fish facing bigger fish, mice facing cats, or human facing the world around them, especially other humans.
With this said, recent research led by Joseph LeDoux is dispelling the notion that fear and anxiety are biologically rooted responses, and positions them as interpretations of a collective group of responses and signals that are built into our brains.
“In other words, fear and anxiety are not wired into the brain as basic responses to the world around us — rather, the responses that lead to them are, and they only coalesce into fear when the brain interprets them as such.” New York Magazine
If our impulses are not guided by fear and anxiety then that leads us to the question: in a world of increasing anxiety and fear, are we bound to respond with violence and mistrust? What are the survival impulses we need to overcome in order to shape pacific societies?
Fear as a conditioned State of mind
Research on fear has been a major cornerstone of behavioral science since the concept of conditioning was introduced by Ivan Pavlov in the early 1900s. By 1920, Dr. John Watson and Rosalie Rayner had shown that adult fears are often connected to early childhood and environmental experiences, as proven through the highly-unethical Little Albert experiment. To test whether they could condition a child to develop an irrational fear, the doctors would show a rat to Albert, who had no fear of the animal, and immediately produce a loud sound by striking metal with a hammer. After several rounds, the boy began to cry and exhibit signs of fear every time the rat appeared. They went on to try with other common animals and objects (rabbits, Santa beard, etc.) until Albert feared them all.
More recent research shows how even the loss of a conditioned fear — a process called extinction — is just a new association supplanting the original without eliminating it. With this, we might be able to understand how the experience of fear is continually informed by how we live and what surrounds us, and that even long-rooted fear responses are malleable.
Two societies divided by a river
Around two million years ago, the formation of the Congo river divided the population of apes that lived in the region into two isolated groups. With time two distinct ecosystems formed which prompted these groups of apes, our closest living relatives, to evolve into two species: the Bonobos and the Chimps. Despite sharing 99,6% of their genetic information, each species developed very distinct social behaviors in response to their environment, with chimps becoming a more aggressive society than bonobos.
To the north were the animals that eventually became chimpanzees. Hardened by living in relatively open, dry habitats, they competed for food and resources. To the south were the animals that became bonobos. There, in humid forests with abundant food and cover, they did not need to compete. So traits that fostered cooperation and generosity grew more prevalent (source)
Two striking differences seem to define how society functions: while chimpanzees have strict boundaries that they defend at any cost, bonobos are not territorial, and they allow for overlap in their territories and will mate across community lines. Even more important, they do not kill each other.
Bonobos’ “make love, not war” mentality greatly differs from the chimp’s warrior-society. Chimps tend to organize under strong alpha males and maintain order through aggression. Meanwhile, bonobos live under matriarchal structures in which peace is ensured through constant sexual interactions — including homosexual behavior between females — which reinforces emotional bonds and keeps males from dominating.
We always saw in violent chimps our closest animal relative, and a blueprint for our fear-based violent tendencies. But that’s changed with our very recent understanding of bonobo society — and how close we are. Genome sequencing, for example, confirmed that bonobos share the exact same percentage of DNA with humans as chimps do (98,7%).
If we can learn one thing about fear from our closest relatives, it is this: contextual circumstances can lead to fearful environments; fearful environments engender aggressive interactions, which in the longterm can even change the biology of the individuals and, consequently, their social structures.
We’ve always identified with chimps, which has supported the pre-existing Hobbesian representation of man as a frightful creature struggling not to die by the hands of its kins. This view not only informs how we perceive ourselves and others, but it also has a long lasting effect on how we shape our world. It makes us believe that we’re condemned to live in fearful societies at the edge of crises, where strong power structures that monopolize violence must be put in place in order to keep us from killing each other, bellum omnium contra omnes.
Bonobos counter this narrative. In fact, there is support to the idea that bonobos are closer than chimps to our common ancestor, making their behavior a better benchmark for knowing how we can modify our experience of fear by shaping our environment.
Luckily we don’t need to go as far as 4 million years in the past to support the notion that we can create a stable social structure based on the types of values that negate fear, like cooperation and exchange.
The Harappan Civilisation: Peace on the Indus Valley
From ancient Mesopotamia to the British Empire, the urge for a state of warfare and defining power through coercion has been the dominant driving force in nearly every civilization.
A glaring exception seems to be the Harappan civilization, which for more than 2,000 years showed impressive complexity for a bronze age society and that, at its height, included more than five million people in what is now Pakistan, India and Afghanistan (see map),
As Andrew Robinson writes in The Indus: Lost Civilizations, the Harappans left us perplexing signs. For example, in their main cities we find no clear signs of defensive or offensive armor, fortification or weapons — besides small objects such as knives, spears and arrow destined for hunting animals. Nor is there evidence of the domestication of the horse, which later became common in the region for use in raiding parties. In nearly a century of excavations, archaeologists have uncovered just one depiction of humans fighting, and it is a partly mythical scene showing a female deity.
Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum, states: “What’s left of these great Indus cities gives us no indication of a society engaged with, or threatened by, war.” The Indus people, he argues, offer a novel model of an urban civilisation, without celebration of violence or extreme concentration of individual power.
The Harappan civilization showed the vastness and organization of a complex society — their sewage system was centuries ahead of their time — but they showed no signs of conspicuous royal palaces and grand temples, no monumental depictions of kings and other rulers. They had social hierarchy, but showed significant wealth distribution: there was little difference between the size and position of the homes of rich and poor people, no signs of differing diets in the bones of buried skeletons, and no evidence of slavery.
Some deem the complete absence of war and conflict to be not credible. “There has never been a society without conflicts of greater or lesser scale,” says Richard Meadow at Harvard University’s Peabody Museum. He argues that knives, spears and the like could have been used on humans as well as animals, and points out that the ancient Maya were once thought to be exceptionally peace-loving — until their hieroglyphs were deciphered, revealing stories of exceptionally bloody battles, human sacrifice and torture. But evidence points to a very different story when it comes to the Harappan. Even the Maya had fortifications around some of their cities and widespread depictions of warrior kings, therefore Meadow’s views are currently in the minority and the Harappan may very well be the greatest peaceful, long lasting civilization known.
Fear and society today
In a world of increasing autocracy, fanaticism and terrorism, it seems far from the realm of reality that a civilization like the Harappan ever existed, or that we could consciously create one: there’s a long list of failed utopias and utopian experiments.
But in questioning our assumptions of a traditional conception of the human as a creature that is violent and fearful by nature, and accepting that collective life can successfully exist beyond fear as the basis for organization (and actually help diminish our fear-based conditioning), we should explore the possibilities of organization to minimize the effects of fear. Here are a few places to start:
1. Demystifying fear
Thinkers throughout history have accepted that fear and anxiety are a foundational part of life, including Kierkegaard who is quoted as saying “the more profoundly he is in anxiety, the greater is the man.” Neuroscientists and psychologists have also shown how certain levels of fear and anxiety can be helpful when positively acknowledged, responded to and incorporated into a healthy lifestyle. But much of the collective narrative today is fixated on a simplified idea of happiness and contentment that doesn’t create space for fear and anxiety to take their place. Communities that encourage meditating on these impulses as they arise will be successful at creating a successful approach to stifling its potentially sinister consequences.
2. Creating lines of openness
There is no doubt that the experience of fear makes us more prone to social conservatism and experience phenomena such as ‘Cultural Tightness’, “a desire for strong social norms with a low tolerance for any sort of deviant behavior.”
At the collective level, like the bonobos, communities and organizations should focus on creating linkages that help diminish the sense of alienation and othering that is often associated with fear and violence. From narratives that emphasize belonging to community designs which create opportunities for people to interact across perceived groupings, it’s been shown that the experience of fear as triggered by a perception of threat from unknowns is exponentially lowered when those artificial limits are challenged within any group.
3. Increasing the feminine
We tread lightly here, since we don’t want to attribute to people certain attitudes and behaviors based on their gender that have not been conclusively proven to be inherently biological. But organizational psychologists have studied gender-based attitudes in relation to concepts like corruption and found more sensitivity to these issues by women, showing a greater awareness of their negative effects across an organization or community. Also, a review of academic papers on gender, trust and reciprocity found some agreement on female identity correlating with trustworthiness and other values associated with social cohesion.
A final word
As we transition towards a future marked by exponential challenges in technological, environmental, political and social spheres, we believe that in order to create societies which can thrive and remain resilient amidst change, it is essential to understand how we might create and rediscover social structures which create space for restoring trust, fostering belonging and building mutual understanding. Communities who are successful in this effort, both individually and collectively, will develop the capacity to design systems and articulate visions of the world that will lead us into a better future.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on other ways that we might shape environments that transform feelings of fear and anxiety into moments that move us forward. Reach out at Community@Coliga.co or facebook.com/www.coliga.co.
Coliga gives coworking communities and other groups the ability to form their own job collectives. Our hope is that more self-organization, ownership and cooperation around our work will allow communities — and the people in them — have more meaningful impact locally and globally. If you are interested in reaching our network, reach out at Community@Coliga.co or facebook.com/www.coliga.co.
