While nature may seem idle, it is also omnipotent; consequently, its progression and balance may often be too complex for mankind to comprehend. This lack of comprehension, as Aldo Leopold describes in his essay “Thinking Like a Mountain”, results in fear. In retrospect, it makes sense; unfamiliarity and fear are often synonymous in many forms of life. Ultimately, it is the actions that stir from fear that have defined catastrophic errors in judgment throughout mankind’s existence. The renowned philosopher, Thoreau, summarized this perspective many years ago stating, “In wildness is the salvation of the world.” While Thoreau is acknowledging the vast power of nature, he is simultaneously criticizing humanity.
Despite the great potential of man, we are ignorant creatures who continually allow fear to overcome our intellectual ability and reasoning. Leopold recalls from his personal experience how man feared wolves due to the threat and challenge they presented. Wolves fed on the herds of cowman and offered a challenge to hunters, as deer were common targets.
As the decision to terminate wolves possibly created short-term success and happiness, the long run effects were devastating. The excess deer desolated the land as food became scarce. Fear reversed roles; the mountain, the environment that supports human life, now had every reason to fear. Humans took the easy way out by eliminating their fears. My mother always told me “You have to stand up to your fears.” To make more of a sophisticated analysis out of this cliché adage, fear will often go unjustified and stir unguided emotions, leading to reckless actions. In order to validate fear, it needs to be detached from emotion and evaluated through a logical perspective and thorough reasoning.
Unfortunately, it is human nature for emotion to overshadow reason. To Leopold, the mountain symbolizes all the reason and logic that humans fail to demonstrate. If mankind rationalized like the mountain, they would have realized that there wasn’t anything to fear in the first place. The wolves were ultimately the mountain’s shepherd, arduously preserving the mountain, its beauty, and its functionality. Fear was a fallacy. While the death of wolves was meant to preserve life, it only proliferated the presence of death. As I seriously began to ponder over the concept of fear, I thought back to a story I read a few years ago, an essay by the great Edgar Allan Poe titled, “Premature Burial.”
While previous works mainly focused on the physical action that results from fear, Poe analyzes fear from a mental standpoint. The narrator in this story, who suffers from catalepsy, is greatly engaged in the possibility of premature burial. The narrator fears death to the extent where he dictates his life around death and prepares for the day when death will take him to the grave. He had long ago succumbed to his fear of death, to the extent where he had now accepted his fear as a reality. He lived his life with this “reality.” In other words, fear made him delusional. I was amazed how fear can develop a state of mind.
Fear can transform a lie into truth, an impossibility into likelihood, a dream into reality. Fear isolates reason and endorses misconceptions; ultimately these misconceptions will infiltrate the brain and appear as truth, likelihood, or reality. If Poe considered the situation portrayed in “Thinking Like a Mountain,” what if he claimed mankind is mentally ill? Is it plausible to characterize fear as a mental illness? Fear certainly has the ability to affect reasoning skills and allows emotion to supersede logic. Poe’s claim may not be so senseless after all. Perhaps it’s natural for humans to reflect some sense of mental deficiencies; perhaps there is a relation between fear and insanity.
Toni Morrison, in her essay “Strangers,” conveys an interesting outtake by relating fear to human nature’s reluctance to change. One morning, Morrison spotted an old woman right outside her fence fishing in her neighbor’s pond. It was effortless for Morrison to form a cliché view regarding an old woman sporting fisherman’s attire. Consequently, Morrison engaged herself in a friendly encounter. Days later, Morrison discovered this woman was nothing but a trespasser and a poacher; she was extremely disappointed, disturbed, and betrayed. This compilation of events ultimately led to Morrison’s interesting outtake on human psychology; we look through strangers and only see what we want to see in them because we fear of being hurt by the truth. We fear for our feelings, personal beliefs, and thought process. We fear of being influenced, we fear of unfamiliarity. I was curious to think what Morrison would say regarding mankind’s termination of the wolves.
Morrison would go beyond the physical implications of fear but analyze fear from a personal level. Mankind viewed wolves from one perspective, their vicious, intimidating, and aggressive nature. To challenge this viewpoint goes against human nature. To look at the impact of wolves from a broader perception would have led to new enlightenment.
It would have led to change. In life, change is a frightening facet for humans to embrace. In order to accept change or at least be open to its possibilities, you must open up your mind; you must allow yourself to be mentally vulnerable. As Morrison stated, there are aspects of ourselves that we are trying to protect, these aspects make up our identity. Identity is a sacred component to individuality. Reflecting, analyzing, thinking all lead to new perspectives and slight alterations of identity. Humans do not often want to change their thought process; they do not want to venture out of their comfort zone. Unfamiliarity is a frightening place and humans will do a lot of things to avoid it all costs.
The refusal to think and reason is simply ignorance. In their eyes, ignorance and negligence are simply means of self-defense. As I criticize mankind for killing the wolves, for their mental instability, and for their ignorance, I must also sympathize with them. Throughout my fifteen-year baseball career, I have had numerous encounters with fear and have dealt with it in multiple ways.
When I was twelve years old, my little league baseball team advanced to the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship game. This game was televised on national television by ESPN. It was a completely different experience, bright lights shining on the playing field, cameras surrounding the field capturing your every movement, both good and bad. The same horrifying thought kept matriculating through my head, any mistake I make will be broadcasted to a national audience. What if I make an error? What if I strike out? Every one of my friends at home, every one in America will watch me fail. I wasn’t able to embrace this once in a lifetime opportunity, it’s not everyday that a young boy is able to play the sport he loves on national television.
I let fear overcome me. Similarly to the narrator of “Premature Burial”, I mentally collapsed. I was not mentally capable of processing my fear; I simply accepted fear would strike me down. That game, everything I did was in an effort to not make a mistake rather then trying to succeed. As the game progressed, my fear only multiplied. During the middle of the game, a routine groundball was hit in my direction. It did not look like a baseball, it looked like a ball of failure on a collision course with my glove. Sure enough, the ball deflected off my glove and trickled into the outfield.
There it was, that moment of failure that I so feared, that moment that I had accepted, had finally become a reality. Reflecting on that moment, I simply did not manage my fear in an effective manner. In my circumstance, the best way to overcome fear was to neglect its existence. By continually thinking of fear, I was only amplifying its presence. Ultimately, its presence took me down. After this incident, fear has always become a dilemma for me on the baseball field. When you fear to fail, I have learned that failure is inevitable. Over the years, I truly regret the weighting thoughts I embedded in my head all these years.
After a few sports psychology sessions, I learned that I am privileged to even walk on the field. Baseball will end at some point in my life. Most likely, I have four more years of varsity baseball at NYU. That’s only four more years of competitive baseball; there is not enough time to express fear. My baseball career is running out of time, it’s a game that’s brought me great enjoyment and have to recollect on that enjoyment and play with a passion in my heart before time runs out. I know I will regret if I look back on my baseball career at NYU and realize I played with fear.
I want to know that I played for the love of the game every time I put that uniform on. Just as mankind loved the mountain, they also feared it. Their fear did not only lead to the slaughter of the wolves but it contributed to the destruction of the mountain. Fear is venomous; it will eradicate anything that endures in its presence. Thus, fear and love should never co-exist.
Fear strictly limits the ability to apply reason to a situation, fear walks us along the border of insanity, and fear hinders our capability to enjoy our passions. Fear blurs our logical sense. Fear is an unending phenomena and an unconquerable emotion that will paralyze human progression. However, fear encourages us to seek shelter. As Morrison described it, fear is a hidden form of protection and a mental asylum.
The human instinct to protect one self also has the potential to destroy the same life it attempts to save, as illustrated by the hunters. So does fear create more dilemmas for society or does fear’s protection overshadow its destruction? According to the Bible, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Therefore, we may not only be preserving ourselves but fear may further enhance our own knowledge. As a devout Christian, biblical edict surely stands in sharp contrast to Leopold’s theory of fear. Overall, is fear an act of ignorance or self-preservation? Perhaps there isn’t a right answer; perhaps this question is different from individual to individual.
