Mind What You Have Learned (Apr. 7, 2007)

"Fear leads to anger,
anger leads to hate,
hate leads to suffering."

This post was going to be about fear. I was planning to talk about the things people are afraid of and why, and whether fear can spur people to innovate and achieve or simply paralyses them into inaction. But then i started to think about the levels of fear. Individuals have fears, and groups of people also have fears. Even entire nations can be said to have fears, for example, "France fears German aggression". So then I thought..is there a level above that? Can it be said that humanity as a whole has collective fears? I think it can. As far as I can discern, those fears include the following:
1. Fear of obliteration
2. Fear of negative change
3. Fear of hopelessness

The first two are pretty self explanatory. Humanity fears its own destruction. Nuclear war, virulent diseases, asteroids or environmental catastrophe are manifestations of this fear. Humanity also fears negative change, for example, Nazis taking over the world, regression of living standards or a less extensive form of any of the other factors I mentioned. The third factor is a bit more ambiguous. I believe that humanity as a whole cannot survive without hope. Every person hopes for certain things, and without this hope, there is no motivation. People hope to be happier, people hope to have a better future, people hope to make a difference and people hope to find meaning in life. Even though it is difficult to imagine a situation that would rob humanity of these hoped, I believe people unconciously fear that hopelessness will someday envelop the world.

Fear in humans is an evolved response. People dislike feeling fear, and just like lust is designed by evolution to encourage reproduction and hunger is designed to encourage energy intake, fear is designed to make people take preventative measures. This was something I had planned to discuss in this post, specifically relating to the way that people address their fears. Having taken this post in another direction, the question that now presents itself is this. Do larger entities also take preventative action, concious or otherwise, to decrease the likelihood of their fears being realized?

The answer to that previous question is certainly yes if one looks at the national entities of the world. States and governments are organized largely to deal with the macro-level fears of their people. Because governments rely on the support of at least a portion of their populace, they have an incentive to act in ways that decrease the collective fear of their constituants. They gather information, design a plan, and employ the resources at their disposal to the best of their ability in order to fulfill that plan.

The really striking thing, once you think about it, is how little organization exists to deal with the problems that extend beyond the macro level. These are the problems that are manifestations of global fears. Any action taken against them at this point is from the national level, and not surprisingly, has proven ineffective. It is rather like what would occur if 200 families, all with conflicting interests, all tried to solve community-level problems such as infrastructure and resource distribution without any kind of centralized authority. Global problems are going to require global planning and global solutions. In my next post, I will discuss the specific problems I see and the things that I believe need to happen before humanity can address them. Until then...