The IN Crowd Part 1 - INsecurity
May 2020
I have named this article “The IN Crowd” as I believe the basic and most fundamental aspects of human beings can be described using 4 words that begin with “IN”. The first of these words is insecurity.
Insecurity
When I was a boy at a Catholic school we were taught that all people are born in original sin. This, as I understand it, is the predisposition that humans have (or Catholics would have us believe we have) to disobey God and commit sins. I was never comfortable with that idea. For a start it is based on the original sin of Adam – a man who never existed except in a rather beautiful, but flawed explanation of how people came into the world. The story of Adam is one of many creation myths of how the world and humans came into existence. These stories can be found in every early human society. I see no reason why this particular story should be given priority over any other. To see lots of other beautiful and implausible creation myths go to “Life, The Universe and Everything Else – Part 3 Creation Myths “ www.madsmeds.org/creation-myths .
My 2nd objection centres on babies. I always used to think that if I picked up a new born baby and saw the little bundle of humanity gurgling away, my first thoughts would not be “I wonder what kind of a sinner this viper in a diaper is going to turn out to be”. Babies are not like that and, at the time, I could never understand why the priests wanted us to believe it. As I got older I came to the conclusion that people are not born with original sin, but they are born with my first IN word - insecurity.
Everyone has insecurities. It does not matter how confident a person may appear to everyone else. Inside we all have our own inner fears which manifest themselves in lots of ways. Many people will have an irrational fear, for instance, of spiders or of open spaces or of enclosed spaces or of heights or of water. The list goes on. These are usually personal and, on the whole, have little if any impact on other people. Other insecurities do. One of the most obvious is being a bully. Bullies basically do not like themselves. They try to compensate for this insecurity by being over-bearing or belittling other people. This is done in the hope they will feel better about themselves. Of course, it doesn’t work, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. I am not excusing bullies. They are some of the most horrible people around and should be stood up to, but I believe this is the reason why they do what they do.
But we need to go from specific insecurities to more general ones. One of the main insecurities that people share is the fear of the unknown.
Have you ever walked through a forest at dusk on your own when the shadows are getting darker and the branches makes strange shapes? If so, you have probably realised that even though you are educated and live in a city there is still an awkward feeling that makes you think “I would like to get to where there are electric lights and other people. And the quicker the better”. This may well be due to evolution. Ninety nine times out of a hundred there will probably be nothing in the woods, but you only have to be wrong once and the big bad wolf will pounce and it could be game over for you so better to be scared and get yourself out of the situation.
In the early days of humanity, an earthquake or a flash of lightning that set fire to a tree would quite naturally have been seen as a scary event. Before science had developed to explain these things, people would resort to other explanations. There is a God or gods and they control these natural events. Zeus, for instance, controls the lightning. When we offend him or he is angry he hurls them down at us. When early humans were living in caves, they would have gathered around the fire to talk and eat their mammoth burgers. How else would you spend your pre-historic early evenings? Listening to this type of made-up story from your fellow cave-dwellers would have been entertaining. It would certainly have been more entertaining, for instance, than someone shrugging their shoulders and saying “It beats me where lightning comes from”.
As time went by, these stories of the gods were enhanced. Zeus is married to another goddess, Hera. He strays from his marriage bed and plays around. Hera is jealous and nags him. She then gets her own back on Zeus or the women or the children that result from his amorous adventures. This would no doubt resonate with some of the real life experiences of any less than faithful men and bring a smile to their lips. As I say these stories are all more interesting than a shrug of the shoulders and “Beats me!” when asked what makes natural phenomenon occur. This is one of the reasons I think that religions have developed in every society throughout the world. However, there is also another more over-arching reason – our fundamental insecurity.
Sooner or later every human must realise that they are not going to get out of this life alive. In the famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Shakespeare has Hamlet wonder what is going to happen when he dies - “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”
Shakespeare returns to this theme in several plays. Hamlet ponders suicide and the whole point of living, but Claudio in “Measure for Measure” has been condemned to death and expresses his fear of his imminent death in the following way -
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
This fear of death, this insecurity, this wondering about what will happen to us after we die both haunts and torments us. Is there a God and an afterlife? Is there a God and no afterlife? Is there an afterlife and no God?
We want to live on after death and preferably in some heaven or paradise. The thought of becoming an ever-lasting member of the hellfire club and being permanently burned alive does not appeal to most people. This is why religions have such a hold on people. It is not because we think some guy ate an apple when he was told not to and then realised he had no pants on and it is not because we think that babies are potential killers. It is because we are insecure in ourselves as a race. To relieve that insecurity people invented stories about what makes the natural world operate. We have created a god or gods and an afterlife and a fear that this divine being or beings may punish us if we are not good people. But if we behave ourselves...
The insecurity makes us believe in a supernatural world which cannot be proven to exist. All the same, it takes on a form of reality within our own minds because of our own deepest fears. This reality forms in the same way as the shadows of branches in a dark wood take on sinister shapes.
In Part 2 I shall look at the other “in” words that define us. These other words are intelligence, inconsideration and inspiration.
Solidarity
Brian Madican
May 2020
