What often goes unnoticed is the fear fringe topics stir in many. Bring up ghosts, ask for stories, and everyone’s got one. They share, we all laugh, it’s okay. Behind those stories and smiles, however, often fear is coiled like a rattlesnake.
A similar flutter can be discerned behind discussions of UFOs, ETI, and the ETH. We see a faint gleam of panic in eyes if such topics arise.
Fear of the unknown, that’s the phrase we use to label this largely-unexamined jumble of nervousness. Evolution gives us good reason to fear what we don’t know, what we’re not sure of: We might get bitten, poisoned, or pounced on. Reach into a dark hole and you might find your hand clamped by fangs, if not bitten off.
On the other hand, the one that’s left to us, we get nowhere and learn nothing if we fail to notice, acknowledge, consider, and explore. Venturing into caves showed us caverns where we could live in more comfort and safety. Exploring the night gave us a second half to our day, our world. Seeking differences expanded horizons.
Bravery is not a lack of fear, it is facing fears, overcoming them, and learning fact that often makes initial fear look, in retrospect, ridiculous. Our silly terror serves mostly to keep us in one place, cowering in a corner, hiding under blankets that won’t protect us except from fresh air.
Next time you wonder how certain topics can be kept quiet, scoffed away, or demonized without addressing fact, remember this fear response so many of us share. We turn away rather than confront. We shut our eyes rather than look at any manifestation of our ignorance. Pretending we know it all requires willful blindness.
Charles Fort called such ignored, discarded, and hated information, events, or beings The Damned. He wrote four books in remarkable prose not only collecting an overwhelming number of inexplicable facts, but commenting, analyzing, and exuberantly playing with ideas, concepts, and explanations. HIs compendia are compelling. His conclusion? “We’re property.”
The Book of the Damned was Fort’s first volley across the bows of blinkered science and society. The Damned are facts science and society sets aside, rather than consider, because these facts upset the smooth flow of their chosen narratives. By existing, damned fact demonstrates a cherry-picked reality. We select only what appeals. We affirm Professor Pangloss’s “best of all possible worlds”.
In adversarial law, Best Evidence refers to chosen facts supporting a given version of what must have happened. It’s the way opposing attorneys working, in theory, from the same heap of evidence, come up with clashing views. Sifting fact to suit a thesis is a practice science, in theory, frowns upon. Trouble arises when it’s people doing science.
Bias, prejudice, even preference feed into objectivity, leading to or supporting foregone conclusion. Our reality becomes insular, when this is allowed to become the standard pattern. Living in a delusional bubble may affirm a narcissist’s ego but it is not only pathetic, it is dangerous for a society to do this. Ignored risks overwhelm at times. Unnoticed risks blindside. We are prone to be ambushed by shock and surprise if we are not diligently seeking to expand our island of knowledge, to lengthen the shore of inquiry and discovery bordering the sea of ignorance surrounding us.
A twinge of fear sparks caution. It should not cause retreat or blind terror. Facing fear teaches lessons no complacent cozy comfort can give us. Facing fear and the unknown systematically, deliberately, and with intelligence is our best route to a viable future. If we are to prevail, even simply to survive, we must stop cringing. Slow and steady progress into the dark widens our territory. Standing our ground in the face of what scares us is better than losing what little ground we’ve gained in our brief existence.
Current model humanity has existed for maybe 350,000 years and expanded over Earth for fewer than 100,000 years. Civilization goes back only maybe 7000 years, although some claim 12,500 years. Even the larger number is a blink in the depths of time. Dinosaurs dominated for 700 million years.
Science and technology stemmed from the brain expansion we experienced approximately 100,000 years ago. It remains unexplained. It’s what Sir Arthur C. Clarke symbolized by the monolith touched by curious homo erectual and homo Habilis in 2001: A Space Odyssey. After that expansion, which gave us brains over 700 cubic centimeters in size, our technology expanded with us. Science became the reliable way of inquiring into the workings of the reality we inhabit, and finding ways to turn it to our advantage. Thus our rapid ascent from tribal grunting to space exploration.
It’s happened so fast, though, that we have not yet left tribal grunting, such as superstition and unwarranted fear, behind. Magical thinking, an unfamiliarity with logic, and narrow educations slotted in this or that preferential ideology, or bigotry, hobbles us. We are space-faring fearful apes. This needs to be addressed and rectified before genuine advances can be made, and this must happen before we render ourselves extinct, if indeed, via pollution kicking in greenhouse warming, we’re not already past the tipping point and well on the way to a looming doom.
Literally our only hope is ourselves. Literally the best of us uses science and technology, much of which has caused our dire plight, to fight against extinction. Once again, as terrifying such apocryphal scenes may be, fear must not dominate our response. We must face down our fears, even the factual ones, and take solid, real steps toward surviving. In one of those fringe topics, even if they prove to be 95% psychological, may await the solution to many of our most pressing problems.
We won’t know if we don’t look, and we won’t look if we’re cowering with our heads covered. Choose, and play out your gambits, accordingly.
• • °
