Auckland Clip 2: The Four Fundamental Fears

You know, people have like three... well, there are four fundamental fears. One is fear of their own inadequacy and malevolence. That's a big fear, man. That can really do you in if you confront it accidentally and fully. Happens to soldiers sometimes in battle when they find themselves doing things they can't believe they do.

And then we're afraid of society - that would be the oppressive patriarchy because society judges us harshly and mercilessly in many ways, and we don't like to plummet in the... What would you call it? We don't like to see our reputation savaged in front of the groups that we identify with. It's extraordinarily hard on us emotionally for that to happen.

Which I wrote about, for example, in Rule 1, which is a chapter, at least in part, that details out the fact that the neurochemical systems that track your comparative status in competence hierarchies - also regulate the balance between your positive and negative emotion; such that if you suffer a social defeat, your proclivity to experience negative emotion radically increases and your proclivity to experience positive emotion radically decreases. And people seriously do not like that.

And it's no wonder - because who wants to be completely overwhelmed with sadness, and bitterness, and anxiety, and resentment, and disappointment, and frustration, and grief and then, also, devoid of happiness? You know, it's the very definition of Hell. And if a status defeat will increase that probability, then we will fight very hard to maintain our status positions, which we certainly do - that's another fear.

And then, of course, we have the fear of nature. And we should because, of course, nature, despite being "the environment" and this thing that we should be striving to protect and maintain, is also trying, with all of its might, constantly: to make us ill, and old and kill us; and is generally very successful at all three.

And so, there's every reason to be afraid of nature... and... you know, one night alone in the bush will pretty much convince you of that. And then people are also afraid of the unknown. And so those are the big categories of terror that human beings face. And to be naked on stage is to face at least two or three of those simultaneously.