On the Human Problem

     When fear creeps up on you, or is screaming in your ear, ask yourself "is this thing actually a threat?" Fear is a threat response. In animals it is a response given to physical danger, such as a bigger animal eating you. But for human beings, our fear response, and the survival responses in general, tend to get triggered by much, much more than just physical threats. The fear response gets triggered by perceived threats to one's identity, for example. It gets triggered by perceived threats to one's financial status. It gets triggered by a great many things that we are attached to, but that are not actual threats to the person's physical survival. The same can be asked regarding anger. Again, the question is, "Is this thing I'm angry at actually a threat which requires me to be aggressive?"

     The human brain frequently makes mountains out of molehills where survival threats are concerned. A personal desire or preference is pursued like a survival necessity. A personal dislike is feared as though it could actually cause harm. Self-control of these overactive responses takes effort and is something which must be learned and practiced, where the effortless response is to be carried from fear to aggression to feeding to sexual gratification unrestrained. The former, unnatural response restrains harm, the latter natural response causes it. It takes training and restraint from very early on in a human being's life to counter it to where human beings can interact with one another without harming each other.

     This is something which other animals simply don't comprehend. They like and dislike, but such things aren't survival threats. When a survival threat comes, they either flee or fight as the situation demands, and then let it go once it's done. Animals are very good at letting things go, something which human beings simply aren't. Our threat responses are triggered at the mere memory or thought of perceived threats. Frequently, we become aggressive or fearful of things which have not occurred anywhere else but in our own minds, and this forms many mental disorders which are simply unknown among other animals.

     Finally, this overactive threat response really forms the basis of human morality. From a very early age, we perceive those things which we like as "good" and therefore a survival necessity, and we perceive those things which we dislike as "bad" or "evil" and therefore a threat. As we age, and with training, the things we like and agree with, or dislike and disagree with, change and so do our definitions of "good" and "bad." We become attached to those things we perceive as "good," that is, what we like, and become averse to those things we perceive as "bad," that is, what we don't like.

     It is this overactive threat response (governed by an amygdala which "over-triggers" the hypothalamus) with which every human being is afflicted which the New Testament calls "hamartia," what we mistranslate into English as "sin."