Fear is innate. Courage needs to be learned.
By: Jijilal Ramachandran
Tags: Evolution, Courageous Living, Natural Selection, Human History, Overcoming Fear

Most of us optimize our lives to avoid the unknown. When we face the unknown — a situation where the outcome is uncertain — we call it risk and try our best to avoid it. If we cannot avoid it, we approach and engage with fear. This behavior is a defining factor in how we experience life.

In my quest to learn how to have a meaningful and enjoyable experience of whatever remaining lifetime I have, I tried to find the reason for this behavior which is so innate to us.

I found answers in two surprising places — In the history of our species and the theory of Natural selection.

History of Humankind from Yuval Noah Harari’s fantastic book Sapiens

Our species, Homo Sapiens, evolved in Africa about 2.5 million years ago. For a very large portion of the ensuing 2.5 million years, Sapiens lived as hunters and gatherers. It is only in the last 10,000 years that we started farming and herding. These last 10,000 years are nothing compared to the millions of years our species hunted and gathered. Therefore, if we need to understand our psychology and behaviors, we must look and understand how our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived — That’s the world that shaped us and the world we subconsciously still inhabit — This is point 1.

Darwin’s theory of Natural selection

Resources are always limited, and organisms compete for these limited resources. Organisms with traits which give them an advantage in the environment they live in will get more resources. They will survive and pass on those traits to their offspring, thereby increasing the frequency of these traits in future generations.

For antelopes, strong legs which enables running faster is a very advantageous trait. Antelopes who cannot run faster get eaten by lions. Antelopes who can run fast survive and pass on the trait to their offspring. Generations down, strong legs are a very common trait in antelopes.

It’s also important to understand that Natural selection is very much about advantages in the here and now and not in the distant future. Natural selection does not preserve traits that may be useful in the future. It preserves traits that are useful now. So, the traits which have immediate advantage are preserved.

This means individuals with favorable traits which provided them immediate advantages in their environment survived, reproduced and passed on those same traits to their offspring while individuals without those favorable traits perished — This is point 2.

Now let’s connect the two points and ask ourselves

What would have been a very favorable trait for our hunter gatherer ancestors to survive in the environment they lived in — Of course it’s the risk avoidance and Fear of the unknown.

Why — Think about the environment our hunter gatherer ancestors lived in.

They lived in the forests and savannahs.

They were facing the unknown every day. They would start walking in the morning trying to find food for the day, taking with them what little they could carry on their bodies and what waited for them — wild animals, huge predators, poisonous plants and many other perils. In such an environment, taking risks would mean death. A rustle in the bushes could be a rabbit or a tiger. Our ancestors — who were optimists — went into that bush to catch the rabbit. Some of them never came out. Our pessimist ancestors assumed it was a tiger every single time and ran as fast as they could. They survived to tell the tale to their offspring.

In those times — survival favored the paranoid

Our ancestors who avoided the unknown or approached it with fear every single time lived on to pass those very risk avoidance and fear-based traits to their offspring who then passed it on. This would have gone on for the tens of thousands of years of our hunter-gatherer existence. Therefore, Risk Avoidance and Fear-based behaviors are very innate to us. It has become our default behavior in an uncertain situation.

Flash Forward to present

Rarely if ever does an occasion rise in our life which can be truly termed ‘life and death’. However, we go through our life in high-rise apartments, air-conditioned offices and our single-family homes in the suburbs as if we are still living in the forests and savannahs.

We look at every uncertain situation and hear the rustle in the bushes our ancestors heard. We react as if a tiger is behind those bushes.

At work — A negative performance review from a supervisor, an angry email from a client turning down our proposal or a news of restructuring

At home — Missing a mortgage payment, losing social status, kids not meeting our expectations

All of these invoke the same fear in us which our ancestors felt when they heard that rustle in the bush — We cannot help it! It’s so innate to us!

This trait served our ancestors so well by helping them avoid life threatening risks.

Today, in us, it has become an almost automatic behavior of avoiding opportunities.

Fear is innate to us. Courage needs to be learned.

By either avoiding uncertain situations or approaching them with fear we lose huge opportunities where the downside is low, and the upside is very high.

An honest conversation with the supervisor or client who gave us the negative review can result in a significant improvement of career. An honest reassessment of our child’s capabilities and working with them is the right thing to do. Reassessing our financial situation and course correcting could be a big step towards financial stability.

For all this to happen — we need to let that initial fear pass, take a deep breath, tell ourselves it no longer serves us and then start engaging with the situation in front of us with courage instead of fear, and with openness instead of looking for a way out. This will vastly improve how we live our lives.

It’s not easy — It’s a lot of work — It’s a journey — But this is a skill you can learn — That’s the lesson!

Trust me — It’s worth the risk!

Jijilal Ramachandran

jijilal.ramachandran@gmail.com

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