Every existing species survives because its ancestors’ evolutionary experiments were thwarted by fear

Evidence

Unlike bats and worms, however, we humans know that no matter what we do, sooner or later we will lose the battle against death. This is a profoundly unnerving thought. We may think we are afraid to die because our bodies will rot, stink, and turn to dust, because we will leave our loved ones behind, because we’ve left important things unaccomplished, or because we have the sneaking suspicion that no loving God awaits us, ready to enfold us in his arms. But underlying all these concerns is that fundamental biological imperative. As Juliane Koepcke and other survivors have discovered, we will do just about anything to stay alive. Yet we live with the knowledge that this desire will inevitably be thwarted. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 42 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Albert Memmi, Le racisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1982) maintains that ‘racism, not anti-racism, is truly universal’ (p. 157), and explains the mystery of its alleged universality by reference to another mystery: the instinctive fear invariably inspired by all difference. One does not understand the different, which by the same token turns into the unknown and the unknown is a source of terror. In Memmi’s view, the horror of the unknown ‘stems from the history of our species, in the course of which the unknown was the source of danger’ (p. 208). It is suggested therefore that the putative universality of racism is a product of species learning. Having thus acquired a pre-cultural foundation, it is essentially immune to the impact of individual training. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 781 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fear of death ultimately reduces to thwarted biological survival instinct. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of…, 42; Racism’s universality rests on instinctive fear of the unknown from species history. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 781

Broader Connections

• Fear of death ultimately reduces to thwarted biological survival instinct. #corroborates (0.85) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 42
• Racism’s universality rests on instinctive fear of the unknown from species history. #expands (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 781