Chatwin's Fear Hypothesis: Acquired Trait Becomes Genetic?

Armed with the dinofelis skeleton, the remains of Australopithecus Robustus, the earlier sudden climatic changes of the Miocene and the First Northern Glaciation, as well as his magnificent obsession with the human migratory propensity, Bruce Chatwin has constructed a speculative map of hominid social and psychological evolution. It is this speculation about the possible relationship between fear, its object and the crossover from acquired trait to genetic predisposition that occupied most of our reflection yesterday. As there were many people who still wanted to speak at the end of class, I invited each to send me their comments for posting as a continuing discussion thread on our website. So, with the addition of a framing quote from Chatwin,

QUOTATION

Every child appears to have an innate mental picture of the "thing" that might attack: so much so that any threatening "thing," even if it is not the real "thing," will trigger off a sequence of defensive behaviour. The screams and kicks are the first line of defence. The mother must then be prepared to fight for he child; and the father to fight for them both. The danger doubles at night, because man has no night vision and the big cats hunt at night. And surely this most Manichaean drama--of light, darkness and the Beast--lies at the heart of the human predicament.



here they are...

Chris Mork:

In class, I was going to mention that I actually take Chatwin's side of the issue. In my psychology class last year, we discussed fear and its origin. It is evident that many fears have an evolutionary perspective. Fears of the dark and snakes, for example, create an evolutionary advantage in that those things may have threatened the species (fear of the dark improved survivall ability by avoidance of the dinophelis, for example) and by avoiding them, the likelihood of survival is increased. Social Darwinism therefore plays a large role in the matter. Additionally, you seemed to be stressing the issue of where the origin of these instinctual fears arises. Thus, they have their beginning in our prehistoric ancestors and their struggle for survival.
Ryan also brought up the idea of an innate sense of fear in all humans that would cause people to fear the dinophelis for the fact that it was dangerous. However, how would one understand that the dinophelis was dangerous? That could only arise out of a previous experience that demonstrated that the animal was a threat. Thus, many fears appear to be instinctual in the human species in the present day as a result of previous experiences that initially created that fear.


Ryan Lynch:

The two sides of the fear argument are that 1.) it is innate and comes to humans subconsciously from the past, and 2.) that it is experienced through culture by each human and therefore it originates in every individual. If the second case were true, every human would need to experience fear for his-or-herself in order to have an understanding of it. Simply hearing stories about frightening things is not enough to originate fear in a human, for it is not a unique and personal experience. Rather it is must more reasonable that everyone is born with an idea and concept of fear. Thus, when these stories of monsters are heard, humans are able to associate the fear that is already in their possession with these concepts. The fear of these objects (which often have no reasonable basis due to improbability) are simply the associations of the concept of fear to the stories passed down by culture. This reasoning gives possibility to Chatwin's line of thinking. He argues that the fear of a predator shaped the culture of the ancient humans to be cautious in the dark. If fear is indeed innately common among all humans, such practices could be easily understood and assumed by future generations even without experiencing the predator directly. Thus, even when the predator is forgotten, the practices maintain reasonable use in society, where new threats and monsters replace the void left by the original predator.