Fear Of The Unknown

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." ~ H.P. Lovecraft


One thing that i'm quite interested in is fear,and what I've noticed is that most people are fearful of things that they don't fully understand. People aren't really scared of the dark, they're scared of what might be in the dark. People are only scared of ghosts and spirits because they don't understand them. Our brains literally can't handle things that we don't understand, so we become afraid. There are obvious reasons why we are scared of the unknown, like not knowing what the consequences are, and psychology suggest that we like to be able to know what the consequences. 

One of the biggest examples of being fearful of the unknown is death. Nobody knows what happens after death, however there are many conspiracies about what happens, but still people don't know what actually occurs after their passing. Another good example is people being scared of the future, not knowing what it's going to hold or where you'll be in a few years time can be an extremely daunting thought. The universe is a common topic that causes people to think deeply into things and somewhat scaring themselves, because to be honest there are no limitation, literally anything can be out there, anything at all, and I don't think we'll ever know if there are aliens or a parallel universe. 

It's not just things that can't be unanswered that people are afraid of, but also things that we know the answers to, like a dark room, when inside we know it's just the same ordinary room it was in the daylight. Genuinely swimming pools are fine, but when there's a dark lake, fear is triggered in your mind, all because we simply cannot see what is there. Horror movies tend to have this kind of tactic to make the characters/audience feel fear. A dark hallway with no light at the other end, a creaky bridge that obstructed with fog so you can't see the other side, these things make us fearful purely because we don't know what could be hiding there, but if you were in a horror movie ten there's probably some demon child or freaky ghost hiding there. 

Although this isn't a fear, I feel this is a good example, but people don't, or I should say didn't, understand how the world and everything in it was created, so the idea of God was created so that there was an explanation to something that couldn't be explained. As time went on we became more advanced and science and technology came about with answers to many things that were seemingly inexplicable. It is actually a scary thought when you start thinking about the creation of the universe, but it's not quite the same fear that links with the other examples. 

Most people have this irrational fear of the unknown, but most of the time there is nothing to be scared of, if you're in a dark room, turn on the light, if there's a foggy bridge bring your friend along with you. Unfortunately I can't explain what happens after death or if there's other intelligent life out there, those are thing's we are never going to know that answers to and that is actually a scary thought, but that's just life. Maybe instead of having a fear of the unknown, we should be curious of the unknown. 

India X