Fear

Fear is an essential psychological function: it stimulates our vigilance and makes us act in case of danger. However, it can go beyond measurement and paralyze or make mistakes. It plays an important role in our relationship to others and the environment.

The fear that the ecological disaster can inspire will undoubtedly be decisive in how humanity will change its behaviour. It is she who can awaken consciences and force indifferent ones to open their eyes and ears. An excess of fear, on the other hand, may lead to psychological defences, such as excess pessimism or optimism, justification for harmful behaviour, resignation reactions, aggressive, destructive, suicidal.

Fear also influences our tendency to consume: the fear of missing, suffering, dying, comes consciously or unconsciously whenever we make the decision or let us convince ourselves to buy a superfluous product. I’m afraid my car will let me down, so I’ll buy a new one. I’m afraid I’m running out of goods in my freezer, so I buy products at the risk that they end up in the trash. I’m afraid I’m bored, I have to pay for some gadget. I’m afraid of microbes, I prefer sophisticated packaging that protects against dust or from fingers and postillons of manipulators.

It is therefore necessary to examine the possible causes of an excessive tendency to fear and its real consequences in preserving the environment. What can be the origin of an excessive level of anxiety? What are the mechanisms that can divert fear into inappropriate areas? It can be all sorts of factors, neurotic, paranoid or other, which then have to be decrypted (cultural or environmental) root causes, and to examine interactions with other components of psychism. This is the path that human ecogenetics pursues, in order to highlight the real causes of the harmful situation in which we confine our form of civilization.