Why do we humans fear the unknown?

Question

Many people are afraid of what they're ignorant of & try to avoid learning about it. Why is that?

Answer 1

All animals fear the unknown I had a dog that fell down some stairs when he was a pup. never when down stairs again. lived to age 15. when he needed to go down he barked. good thing he was a toy pom.

Answer 2

Fear is an emotion that protects the lives from dangers and accidents. Every live has fear to one another, irrespective of their relationship. Human is not different from other lives in front of its creator, as if one son feels about the father, that the father loves only me and not my brothers or sisters. Fear unknown and fear the known are almost equal, other than the fear on known is clubbed with love and such fear is a matter of joy later.

Answer 3

I do not think it is that they are afraid they are ignorant. After all, if they were ignorant, they wouldn't be "afraid" of being it, they would be happy because they are obviously avoiding something they don't like.

As for fearing the unknown, I think its because it is our human instincts to want to have power and control, especially over our lives. When we don't know what is going to happen, we naturally get scared because that puts us in a vulnerable position.

Answer 4

We don't. This is a common perception though. What we fear is the lack of confirmation which is often considered to be an unknown. We don't know for sure that a bus could kill us tomorrow. This may feel like a fear of the unknown, but rather it is fear of a very specific known outcome.

We don't fear the unknown. We fear certain outcomes. These outcomes can even vary -- male, female, young, old, etc. Each of us has scared ourselves silly with all the possible bad outcomes that could happen to us or to others.

Answer 5

Fear is an illusory energy founded in lack of knowledge. Once people choose to open themselves up to that knowledge, they will gain the answers they need to experience the balance that will be acquired by erasing the illusion.

The secret is to trust that whatever an outcome is going to be, it will be a positive experience, either immediately or through hindsight. If they want to lose their ignorance, they must exert themselves courageously. Not an easy task, because you are asking them to think and feel and change and grow. Oooooh. Very scary.

Answer 6

Not all humans fear the unknown. Some "fools rush in where angels fear to tread," other humans approach the unknown with caution but not fear, but the majority of humans are weak and filled with doubt and fears. Considering all our accomplishments and putting them aside for a moment, humans are very vulnerable; we don't have great physical strength, we can't see in the dark, or hear subtle changes in the environment to protect ourselves against predators, we can't see infra-red wavelengths, can't hear high frequency sounds, can't see great detail at long distances, have no internal ability to use the planet's magnetism to navigate and yet we have built amazing machines to exceed the abilities of the other mammals (at least as far as we know).
But all of our machines have not made us feel secure. Quite the opposite. Many of our machines have made us more insecure and vulnerable. Between just the US and Russia are enough nuclear warheads to destroy every human on the planet many times over. No matter what, as a species we remain fearful.

A valid argument can be made that we are all insane.

Walt Whitman summed up the human condition quite nicely, in my opinion, in his "Song of Myself." verse 32:

"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."

Answer 7

It's instinct. Our distant ancestors had to fear the unknown or abrupt change in order to survive a predator or competition from other groups in order to survive.

Now that we don't have as much to fear (except from each other) we tend to still fear many things. We fear change, because it upsets our social order, or may prove our strongly held beliefs are wrong. So those who fear something may choose not to learn about something novel or foreign, in order to keep their reality ordered and stable.

Answer 8

Have you ever been afraid of the dark? Fear is a protective skin that all creatures wear to keep them as far away form danger as possible. Its perfectly natural, and beneficial.

Answer 9

People fear the unknown because it is beyond our ability to control and often presents us with truths that would compel us to change.

Answer 10

People in general are afraid of what they don't know because they don't want to change. All knowledge effects every aspect of your life. If people want their lives to stay the same they avoid change.