As a writer of thriller/horror one of the most challenging parts of my creative process is trying to figure out what people fear most, therefore I am thinking about it constantly. Yes, we all have those superficial dreads of things like spiders and heights, but I want deeper. What do people really fear? It’s hardly an easy question.
It’s been said that one of man’s most fundamental fears is the fear of the dark. Scholars will tell you that fear of the dark stems from the primitive man who lived with no electricity and in the dark of caves and at night was most vulnerable to wild animals and rivals.
Seems legit.
Surely, I am no academic equal to great scholars, but I questioned, recently, as I read about The Ring of Gyges and a psychological experiment conducted by Dr. Daniel Batson. Dr. Batson’s study furthered the idea that humans are only moral to the end of wanting to seem so but are more apt to loosen their ethical restrictions when no one is watching and/or there is no consequence. When making ethical decisions the study found that people were the least likely to make ethical decisions when they were in a room alone, but more likely to make more ethical decisions when placed in a room with a mirror, where eyes were watching, even if they were their own. Another study by Melissa Bateson which set up a communal tea room with an “honesty box” for people to leave cash for their drink concluded that people left three times as much cash when a picture of watching were set above the drink station as opposed to a picture of flowers.
To me these studies almost suggest that we fear being watched, that we are not free to be our fundamentally hedonistic selves when we are under the eyes of a watcher, but upon deeper reflection I think the exact opposite is true.
A few days ago I attended a meditation session where we were told to close our eyes and focus our minds on a dark movie theater screen, to dive into it, let it gather around us and in that place where we are still and peaceful to look for the light that comes not in bright beams of sunshine, but that comes in the form of complete inner peace and love and in that darkness we wait, some in hour long meditations and others forever in life. Some find it, some never do.
I believe that human’s fear of the dark does not rest in some primitive worry that a wolf is waiting to pounce, our fear rests in the assumption that in the dark no one can see us and therefore maybe no one is watching. Though humans struggle with hedonistic instincts that superficially wish those eyes were not there so that we don’t have to leave anything in the honesty box, the fact of the matter is like a child needing guidance, we as adults yearn for those watching eyes, those eyes that are ensuring that we meet our highest moral potential no matter how inconvenient at times. We thrive in structure because it tames the self-serving beast within us and the reasoning that makes us want those eyes is what makes us human. We are afraid of the dark because we fear that no one is watching and if no one is watching, where is God?
JeanNicole Rivers
@JeanNicole19
Author of Black Water Tales: The Secret Keepers (http://tinyurl.com/cgvgd98)