The Source of Fear

The Source of Fear

In the early hours of the morning, Yuanyuan woke up from a dream crying and refused to get back into bed no matter what, because, he said, there were ants on it. Of course we knew the ants existed only in his dream, but there was no way to explain to him the difference between dreams and reality. Lately, Yuanyuan has been developing sudden fears of various things from time to time. Ants are naturally one of them, but so are a strand of hair that seems to appear out of nowhere, or some inexplicable sound made by an appliance. In his world, these things may be his best playmates one moment, but the next, with a single turn, they become unfathomable monsters. After learning to speak, one phrase Yuanyuan often used to comfort himself was: “Daddy says there are no monsters in this world.” Recently, he has revised it a little: “Daddy says there are no monsters in this world; the monsters have all gone home to sleep.” In his tiny heart, monsters stand for everything frightening, and these frightening things seem endless. If they are not appearing right now, perhaps they have only gone away for a while, rather than not existing at all. Seeing him cry so hard and yet be beyond comforting, all we could do was remind each other to give him as much security as possible while he is awake, and never frighten him with imaginary things. A child’s world is not as carefree as we tend to imagine. In that world, where reality and imagination mingle, there are all kinds of inexpressible fears that must be faced by a very young heart.

A considerable part of how children respond to fear surely comes from animal instinct and inheritance: an inherited sense of danger tied to survival, and an awe before the unknown and the overwhelming power of nature. Perhaps it is precisely because of fear that our ancestors, through their rich imaginations, created countless gods to explain everything unknown and to comfort helpless, fragile souls amid wind and storm. In children’s fear of the unknown and the ways they cope with it, we can glimpse something of how our ancestors may have thought. Every unknown thing carries a certain degree of danger; in primitive times, such danger was often fatal. In the face of danger, self-preservation comes first. But afterward, one should continue exploring as much as possible: find the source of the danger, come up with a “reasonable” explanation of one’s own, or at least discover some pattern that might prevent the danger from appearing again. Mixed into these explanations and analyses are both imagination and reality, coincidence and taboo. All of these, to some extent, may help explain the origins of religion and taboo.

As the light of civilization spread, and especially with the emergence of the scientific spirit, people gradually began to scoff at traditional fears and taboos. Solar and lunar eclipses were no longer the result of divine wrath, nor were earthquakes and tsunamis caused by Gonggong crashing into the pillar that supports the heavens. With the discovery of microorganisms, mysterious deaths could be explained more reasonably as the work of microbes or other diseases, rather than as punishment for wrongdoing or the result of a curse. On the surface, many traditional taboos began to seem absurdly foolish. But have human beings truly stopped being afraid? Of course not.

It is very much like the well-known science fiction work American Gods: as the old gods die, new deities keep appearing to receive people’s devotion. Yet these new gods are, in essence, no different from the old ones. They too are fantasies and compromises born of humanity’s helplessness in the face of new fears—perhaps even greater ones. Even the joking sort of worship directed at the “god of online shopping” reflects, to a considerable extent, a latent uncertainty and fear about the economy and the commercial environment. On a larger scale, the old gods have begun to seem powerless. Never before in human history has any one person possessed the power to destroy all of humanity, and yet today, each of the handful of most powerful people in the world has that capacity. And so we hope for the Avengers, we hope for the Justice League, we even hope for the Guardians of the Galaxy to protect us from being swallowed by the fear of doomsday. This hope does not exist in the form of traditional religion, but it is rooted even more deeply in the soul.

Of course, the source of fear is the unknown. And human progress, to some extent, is the history of struggling against fear. As we confront greater fears, there is also the potential for greater progress. The only question is: in this race against time, can humanity ultimately outrun itself?