by Penelope Illston

Created on: April 15, 2008   Last Updated: April 07, 2010

John Lennon once said: "It's fear of the unknown. The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that-it's all illusion. Unknown is what it is. Accept that it's unknown and it's plain sailing. Everything is unknown-then you're ahead of the game. That's what it is. Right?"

Not only could he write amazing lyrics, and started a peace revolution from his bed. He also forms the main basis for the point that fear of the unknown has been the main driver of fear at all points in time, past, present or future, because fear is fear of the unknown, which is lack of understanding.

In the medieval times, people had just as much fear as they do now except the focus of that fear is different. Back then people had a major fear of witches and witchcraft. They used to burn women at the stake and use a dunking stool to drown them (if they floated they were seen to have the devil in them, double edged sword really.)

Their reasons were that they needed a scapegoat for unexplained events such as crop failure, disease and death or cattle dying. Of course in todays society we know that weedkiller, doctors and vets provide the explanations for these events and do not need to blame it on witchcraft but back then this fear of the unknown need explanation, and so this was it.

We would think these kinds of fears today to be irrational, but people in the future may think that our fears could be irrational because they have the technology or the knowledge to prove something to have a quite simple explanation.

Maybe its possible that our fear of terrorists could be rationalised in the future because of something we may learn in the future, and that our perspective on the world may alter drastically in years to come.

The point is that we fear just as much now as we did several hundred or several thousand years ago except the focus of our fear has shifted, and will shift again in the future. Also the only reason we fear is because we fear the unknown.

Lennon was right, I also think he made another point in one of his quotes: 'All you need is love.' Maybe in todays society this would make us forget our fears less as well.

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