The Fear Factor

We are fearful of the unknown; it feels dangerous. While we may be convinced that we avoid certain things because they are dangerous, the truth, more often that not, is that we think they are dangerous because we have avoided them, and thus they remain unknown and (hypothetically) dangerous. 


The un--known, that of which we are ignorant. Two consequences of our fear of the unknown are that (1) We are drawn to those whose knowledge base is limited in a similar way as our own and avoid contact with those whose knowledge base includes phenomena of which we are ignorant and, therefore, frightened and (2) We are drawn to spokesmen whose message affirms that what we do know is what's important and what we don't know is unimportant or dangerous.


When a significant portion of a population finds itself more or less sharing a given level of ignorance, the result can be the birth of speculative theories meant to explain the frightening unknown, and those theories tend, over time, to settle in as established superstition.


When a given society of the superstitious exists over generations, a spokesman emerges and then the most insecure and gullible in the group end up constituting a self-interested, reassuring organizational structure that is known as religion.


The paradox in this last, religious, iteration consists in the fact that while religion is an outgrowth of fear, this fact is concealed from view by the universal acceptance within the group of the superstitious explanation of the unknown now taken to be truth by virtue of the fact of its acceptance by prior generations.


Because of the fear-based genesis of these religions, their sense of the world as documented in foundational documents is bathed in scenes of horrifying violence. Cruelty and suffering pervade, the crowning jewel being the elevated concept of "God fearing". God epitomizes and encompasses the unknown of which the ignorant acolyte is fearful.


Now, there would be nothing wrong with these religious manifestations of our human insecurity except for the fact that there is nothing more dangerous than a powerful institution unaware of its own basis in fear. For the unconsciously fearful will sooner or later find a way to imagine strangers (i.e. those with whom they have little or no contact and who are therefore unknown and thus frightening) as the enemy whom they will perceive as to blame for their unacknowledged fear. This provides the justification for inhumane treatment of this imagined enemy.