Malignant fears produce violent minds whilst rational fearlessness opens up avenues for an enduring and peaceful future
By B Maria Kumar
Are we really qualified to call ourselves as Homo sapiens, the so-called wise humans? Are we surely the most intelligent beings as we often claim to be? Are we truly the smartly evolved species that history has ever known? No doubt, we are led to believe in that way through exposure to corresponding supportive evidence. But our innate common sense won’t keep silent to shoot inconvenient questions like — why do we compete greedily with one another, not cooperate on a win-win equation if we are so wise? Why don’t we stand together united as a single humanity, if we are very intelligent? Why do we engage repeatedly in bloody battles with fellow humans, if we are too smart?
In an effort to ruminate further on these intriguing inquiries, we may have to delve a bit deeper into the evolutionary processes of humans. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar posits that human intelligence evolved mainly as a survival technique. The consensus among many experts points out that humans have adeptly adapted to improve their quality of life. However, there are conflicting opinions as to whether humans have been evolving forwardly or backwardly.
Threatening Uncertainties
On the one hand, Sri Lanka-born polymath Michael Muthukrishna hypothesises that humans’ cumulative culturally evolving pathways made them much smarter than other animals towards their goal of living better whereas on the other hand, Richard Wrangham, an English anthropologist, insists that humans have become ‘proactively aggressive’. Aligning with Muthukrishna’s stance, Canadian cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker feels that brighter things have been happening in modern times with declining frequency of violence over the period while English sociobiologist Desmond Morris warns, ‘the truly violent species, all appear to have exterminated themselves, a lesson we should not overlook’. If we contemplate the current state of affairs which encompasses seriously strained international relations and escalating socioeconomic insecurities, we will immediately sense that humanity is navigating through the tight grip of threatening uncertainties regarding its very existence.
The ongoing Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Hamas conflict are looming like Damocles’ Sword, casting fears of a nuclear holocaust at any time. The dreadful repercussions of unsustainable human activities are worsening the impact of climate change and global warming, amplifying constant fears of successive deterioration. The worrying trends of lingering hunger and poverty crises across the world are spewing fears of life-endangering malnutrition, weakened immunity and heightened vulnerability to diseases.
Harrowing Occurrences
These poignant instances are merely a glimpse but there are myriad harrowing occurrences in diverse contexts which compel us to ask ourselves, ‘why is there too much fear?’ This is the very insight that led the Nepali thinker Desh Subba to propound the philosophy of fearism. He went a step ahead of French existentialist Nobel laureate Jean-Paul Sartre to contend that, ‘fear of existence precedes essence’. His revolutionary statement implies that fear is the first cause of every alarming predicament the world has been experiencing. Holding the view that wars, revolutions, socioeconomic tensions etc transpire spontaneously cannot be held as an absolute truth. The real reason, as Subba attributes, is fear which acts like a ‘black hole’ pulling every aspect of human behaviour towards it.
Ego, the integral component of existence, when jeopardised, also instils fear at the same level as the hostilities or livelihood hardships do. When fear is unleashed, several mechanisms — be it aggressive rhetoric or destructive manoeuvres — come into play involving diverse resources — physical, psychological, material and more particularly nowadays, technological. Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who had already alerted the world to the rising aggressive Frankenstein in human nature, forewarned that ‘artificial intelligence (AI) could spell the end of human race’. Elon Musk, the founder of Space X, cautioned recently that AI would be ‘one of the biggest threats to humanity’.
Phobogenic Factors
There are other phobogenic factors which were inherited instinctually from primitive nightmarish existential struggles. Additionally, self-imposed practices arising out of ignorance, prejudice, irrationality and superstitions toe the line of fear. Hence, it is imperative that we have to address the problem with a radical spirit so that positive human progressive protocols are in place for safety, stability and sustainability. Since fear is the epicentre of crisis challenges, resolving the same is a priority to redirect the trajectory of human energies towards what the celebrated Canadian philosopher R Michael Fisher calls fearlessness, the antidote to fear. A pioneer of the groundbreaking fearlessness movement who founded ‘fearology’ as a novel construct, Fisher affirms that fearlessness is everyone’s birthright. When fear appears, so there does fearlessness, he explains. To manage fear confidently, he proclaims that Mother Nature has primordially provided the human species with what he terms as ‘Defence Intelligence’ or Fearlessness IQ (FLQ).
Malignant fears produce violent minds whilst rational fearlessness opens up avenues for an enduring and peaceful future. Then the subsequent consideration is how to turn the fear-oriented human cognitive framework into a fearlessness-tempered one. Pragmatic logic stipulates that one of the strategies is to avoid negativity bias in order to appreciate the fact that bad fear will only block the vision to realise true human potential. American authors John Tierney and Roy F Baumeister, who explored that humans are hardwired to fixate on negative experiences, suggest employing positive framing. Questioning the superstitious practices by inculcating a scientific outlook, adopting healthy scepticism by fostering open-mindedness, challenging unfounded assumptions by adhering to rational behavioural styles, focusing on ready alternatives by resorting to thought experiments etc are crucial for the purpose. And a benignly fearless mindset can pave the road to flourishing freedom and harmonious coexistence which can certainly tip the scales in favour of progressive evolution, lest Homo sapiens become a race of ruinous Homo insipiens (unwise humans).