“Isn’t he scared?” — we think when another extreme performs a risky stunt in the video. But it is one thing to be able to control your fear, and quite another not to experience it at all. Is life without fear possible and what does it look like?
“Wow!” – exclaims 44-year-old Natalia, curiously feeling … a huge tarantula. She does not know the feeling of fear. Cheerfully tells how in the winter she almost became a victim of a robbery, but the criminal, struck by her composure, chose to leave the strange woman alone. Natalia has a rare genetic disease – Urbach-Wite disease. It affects the amygdala of the human brain – the area that plays a key role in the birth of emotions, and in the first place – feelings of fear. Natalya herself does not seem to be bothered by the disease, she lives a full life … But she is not able to assess the danger that threatens her, which means she cannot avoid it.
She has three children who will never get used to the way their mother sometimes behaves. “Once a snake crawled out in the forest in front of us,” says her 12-year-old son. “We screamed, and my mother calmly took it in her hand and threw it away.” Natalya is deprived not only of a sense of fear, but also of the ability to recognize it in others. The face, distorted by horror, causes only bewilderment in her: the very idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbfear is inaccessible to her understanding.
Meanwhile, fear is one of the most important emotions. It is he who allows us to assess the degree of impending danger. and instinctively avoid that which can cause harm. “Complete fearlessness is meaningless from the point of view of evolution. A person who is not afraid of anything is unlikely to live long, ”explains geneticist Gleb Shumyatsky, leader of the research team that discovered the fear gene*. Thanks to the feeling of fear, our body learns that something is wrong in the outside world. Pathological fearlessness violates this “signal” mechanism, and a person loses touch with his own feelings.
But sometimes the most ordinary people behave surprisingly fearlessly. In a situation of threat to life (his own or loved ones), even a very shy person can show unprecedented courage. Anthropologist Joseph Jordania believes that at such moments we fall into a special state, which he calls “combat trance” **. This ability appeared due to natural selection: being in a trance, our ancestors could frighten a predator that they otherwise could not overcome. They seemed to forget about personal safety and acted in the interests of the group.
The idea of a life without fear, no matter how tempting it may seem, takes us away from reality. When we sense danger, we become aware of our vulnerability, which means we can protect ourselves.
* Neuron, 2002, vol. 34, № 2.
** J. Jordania «Why do People Sing?» (Logos, 2011).