The Shape of the Unknown: Why Fear Still Rules Us
Fear is older than language. Older than stories. Older than the first spark struck between ancient stones. Long before we built civilizations, before we named the stars, fear lived in us as instinct, warning us of danger and guiding us to safety. It is a powerful emotion that served our ancestors well and continues to do so to this day—sharpening our senses against predators, tuning our ears to unfamiliar sounds, and carving survival into our bones.
Is it not said that knowledge is power? If this is true, given humanity’s advancement in understanding and shaping the world around us, one would think there is little left to fear. We have explored our planet, studied our predators—both large and microscopic—used science to extend our lives, and developed technologies to protect us from whatever threats we can imagine, yet our dread persists. This is because, despite our efforts and advancements, we cannot know everything, and that uncertainty terrifies us.
Even in our modern, meticulously mapped world, the unknown still finds us. Sometimes subtly. Sometimes catastrophically. But always powerfully.
Our Ignorance as a Mirror
The unknown has a remarkable way of reflecting our own insecurities. When we cannot identify a threat, we fill the void with our imaginations, an ability that is equal parts brilliant and treacherous.
Writers know this intimately. Every blank page is a small abyss, its depths whispering:
What if this isn’t good enough?
What if no one understands?
What if I fail—publicly, spectacularly?
Fear thrives in the “what if.” It feeds on ambiguity and grows in the silence.
But here’s the strange magic: the same unknown we fear is also the place where creativity breathes. It’s where new ideas form, where stories are spawned, where discoveries are born. The truth beyond our reach is simultaneously the monster under the bed and the doorway to possibility.
Dangers are insidious beasts, sneaking into our lives while we’re not looking, lurking at the edge of our perception. As curious beings, humans crave answers, patterns, and explanations. Our minds hate mysteries, and when denied clarity, we invent it, using the only tool at our disposal—our imaginations. Our creative powers, however, are a double-edged sword.
Like a beast set free, our minds cannot be tamed, so this unbridled freedom often yields ideas far more frightening than reality. Thus, we enter an emotional continuum where fear stirs our imaginations, which breeds terror, much like a virus hijacking a cell to multiply its influence—and all this because we cannot know everything, and the unknown can be deadly.
Why We Still Fear What We Don’t Understand
So you see, despite our progress, we have not banished the emotion; we have simply redirected it.
Instead of the shadows beyond the firelight, it’s the uncertainty about our careers, our relationships, our health, our identity, our purpose, our futures, and our lives that haunts us. It’s the quiet tension between who we are and who we might become. It’s the not-knowing that sends our hearts racing.
Humans are wired to prefer an unpleasant certainty over an uncertain possibility. Psychologists call this “uncertainty intolerance,” and it’s the discomfort we feel when we can’t foresee or control an outcome. It activates the same survival circuitry that kept early humans alive.
In other words, your brain treats the unknown with the same primitive alarm bells it once rang for approaching predators because it doesn’t know the difference.
Fear as a Catalyst
But this feeling is not all bad. It can be a catalyst—especially for storytellers.
Fear drives questions.
Questions drive curiosity.
Curiosity drives stories.
Every plot twist, every revelation, every portal into another world begins with a single, unsettling unknown.
Dark fantasy, horror, thrillers, suspense: these genres thrive because they remind us that the boundaries of our reality are thin and permeable. They tug at our primal instincts and ask us to look into the darkness, not to flee from it.
This is why we cling to such stories, reading late into the night. It is why we willingly surrender to the thrill of uncertainty.
We fear the unknown, yes, but we’re also irresistibly drawn to it. It calls to some ancient part of us that longs to confront, to understand, to conquer.
When we choose to face our lack of knowledge—whether real or imagined—we reclaim something ancient and powerful.
We become explorers again.
Trailblazers.
Dreamers.
And in that act of brave curiosity, we discover that the unknown is not only something to fear…
…it is also something to seek. It endures because it forces us to confront the mysteries we do not understand and to chase the truths we have yet to find.
- About the Author
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J.M. Shaw lives in Airdrie, Alberta, with her husband and two young children. She and her family embarked upon a journey of understanding, acceptance, and life-long learning when they discovered their shared diagnosis of autism and ADHD. Writing is her passion and, with experience and interests in healthcare, psychology, martial arts, and personal training, she pours her unique insights and knowledge into all her creative fictions.
