Why are people afraid of what they don't understand?

Everyone has a common fear, the unknown. It’s something that causes humans to explore, experiment, and advance. Humans want to completely destroy everything they do not understand. What is not understood must be eliminated, either by force or by inventing a theory that explains it. The theory is taught in schools worldwide, and becomes understood. People are afraid of what they do not understand because they don’t want to do anything wrong, it could be dangerous to our race, or it could be a new thing, and we could interpret it as a threat.

Humans are perfectionists. We insist on having everything look perfect. We want you to look at us and see the best of the best, perfect that you just have to like them. One wrong move could shatter that picture. We don’t want to do anything wrong, something that could reflect badly on ourselves. So we fear it. We want to be perfect because we want to do everything right. Doing something wrong might make someone hate us, or do the exact opposite of what we want him or her to do.

Technically, humans are still a new species, being only a million or so years on earth. We prefer to think that our race will go on forever. To ensure our survival we have invented new machines and ideas. Say there was a new virus. Scientists and medical-world significants cannot find a cure. Meanwhile, the virus is wiping out whole countries. No one understands the virus, they fear it.

If people interpret anything as a threat, they want to destroy it. Especially if they don’t understand it. Aliens are the most known-unknown fear; everyone knows that some extra terrestrial creature will come to earth. They will have technology eons into the future. They will have big ray guns. The humans will attack them and we will be stuck into a Star Wars like situation because of our fear of the aliens.

Ironically, as our scientists and doctors search for medicine for sickness, to master that one thing they don’t understand, the factories that create their tools and manufacture the medicine may pollute the water and air. The many unknown things are important, but not immediately. We could end up wreaking ourselves. We should focus on the things that are happening now, the pollution, and fear that, as it is much more important than what we don’t understand.