Fear
Disconnection, Uncertainty, Humiliation, and Beyond
As I was strolling through earth’s spacetime, the weirdness of human behavior entangled my mind in confusion once again. Like you humans put it: it’s like looking at an accident, you just can’t take peel your eyes away from the scene. I noticed that people are painfully aware of their disconnection from nature and even label themselves as outsiders, stating phrases such as ”i love nature” or “let’s go to nature” as if they were able to be apart from it. While that is a curious phenomenon in itself, the human condition goes a step further as they are even disconnected from the communities and societies that they are supposedly a part of. As I peered deeper into this issue it appeared that human communication is solely based on communication via the senses, constituting a barrier that renders them vulnerable to mistakes and misunderstandings as well as emotions, one the most potent ones being fear.
A lack of knowledge and control exposes the human experience to chance and surprise, therefore elevating feelings of suspense. Communication and information are means of alleviating that suspense and developing a bridge over the gap of disconnection. But both are always incomplete, as expression and understanding rely on a myriad of factors. This flaw is the gateway to fear; fear of the uncertain and the unknown.
What amazed me even more is this: What are humans most afraid of? Other humans!
For the longest time in human history the amount of perceived unknowns remained relatively small and fear was mostly directed towards the natural environment outside of nomadic communities — such as natural phenomena and other earthly species. Humans outside these communities played a much smaller role. As humans became stationary their communities grew bigger and evolved into societies making the human environment an increasingly cultural one. The unknowns began to sprout from within what these confused humans identified as their society. The growing importance of the functional division of labor led to dependency of the individuum on other unknown humans and social institutions. The perceived control of the individual over its (social) environment seemed to shrink further the more complex societies had become. Paradoxically, though, the same process of expansion and specialization enabled humans to increase their pathetically limited ‘control’ over their natural surroundings.
With the development of mass media and education of the masses humans developed technologies that inflated the perceived knowns as well as the unknowns. Vibrating air, smeared pages and pixelated screens are windows to otherwise unperceivable sensations, but their contents remain a distant abstraction. The picture is fragmented and oftentimes sensationalized. It favors the extremes of human behavior, fabricating a bipolar picture of the world. It makes people feel inadequate compared to the many outstanding achievements of others and makes them feel afraid of the many outstanding cruelties fellow humans commit. The lack of oversight that most individuals experience makes them vulnerable to misconceptions and primes them for the acceptance of phenomena such as populism and propaganda.
Indeed a very interesting way for the powerful to keep their cattle on the right side of the fence. Therefore fear constitutes an important tool for controlling the individual’s behavior and humans seem to use it in almost all social constructs; be it politics, work, education, communities, family, or even friendly and romantic relationships. Fears tend to be used to achieve conformist behavior — like despotism in authoritarian regimes or the rule of law. But they are also part of individual relationships, sometimes wearing the mask of ‘good advice’. It seems as if humans tend to project their own experiences, misconceptions or fears onto others to keep them from making, in their opinion, bad choices. This is particularly observable in intergenerational relationships of kinship.
At the same time it appears as if many fears can only be maintained in an environment of personal responsibility. Humans’ strengthening drive towards individualism basically seems to open up an indefinite amount of possible fears which become more and more observable with the rising amount of phobias and anxiety disorders paralleling the atomization of their society. This nucleus of expanding individualism and the growing co-dependency with complex social constructs shows to be an important cornerstone of human societies. Fear foremost affects individuals, but the combined fears of human societies seem to create an environment of collective fears. These tend to feed each other in a cycle that can be very hard to break out of.
The critical factors of change seem to be major events that affect the collective, ideologies, and the soothing effect of time; as fears need to be fed by direct or indirect ‘experiences’, may they be real ones or not. For me, one of the most interesting individual fears that is very much linked to its social environment is the fear of exposure and humiliation. This fear seems to stem from the judgemental mindset of humans that appears almost impossible to overcome. Even though some pretentious beings claim to be have a non-judgemental attitude, humans seem to be incapable of avoiding judgments. Awareness and critical analysis of their own thought process seems to be the pathetic maximum, and they dare calling it enlightenment. These judgments are even more curious as everyone knows about the flaws and hilarities every human carries within; but people still tend to judge others for the very same behaviors and mistakes they used to do, or still do, themselves. Therefore humans expect that they will be judged in the same manner. As they are worried about how others judge them they seem to be afraid of showing themselves authentically in public. Maybe for the better as humans are simply ridiculous. They utilize a toolbox of etiquettes and conventions that are passed on to them, as they are always the safe and socially accepted option. It allows people to navigate through social terrain and gives them a sense of certainty and predictability. To my astonishment, I found that there are so many different social environments which are not compatible with each other that humans are mostly forced to take on very different roles for different social contexts. This variability is one of the greatest strengths I discovered in human behavior so far. Their individual adaptability, I have to admit, can reach rather impressing heights with some individuals. It allows for smoother functioning of their society even though will never reach the effectiveness of organic societies like mine.
The fear of humiliation seems to go hand in hand with the fear of being excluded from one’s community which links back to the limitations of free will and freedom in social contexts. At the same time it seems like humans lose many of their inhibitions as soon as they leave or get taken out of their social context. Then they don’t need to be afraid to “lose face” (a funny expression by the way, might alleviate most humans appearance in my unhumble opinion) as they are granted with some kind of anonymity. They don’t need to submit to their usual roles, which they took on and are known for.
Lefty and Righty will be in a similar position as they come from an entirely different, unsocial and organic context. And as they travel and change their environment frequently they will never get forced into certain roles for too long, giving them the freedom to experiment. Let’s see how this plays out.
For Observations:
Feel free to check out our other creations and let us know what you think! :)
Learn more about Escape to Earth:
More Observations (Philosophy):
Earth Stories (Alien Travels):
Surveillance Records (Photos):
To follow us on Instagram:
