Inherent to much of contemporary thinking is the presupposition of a dialectic, a dichotomy, one side against the other, and though the criticism for this binary juxtaposition could easily be leveled at Hegel (his own formulation is much more complex than the simplified version present later by Marx and shouldn’t be understood as the often repeated thesis + antithesis = synthesis [to continue this idea, the aforementioned rendering and the whole should really be attributed to Fichte]), it would be foolish not to acknowledge the long history of contrasting ideas used as a means of explanation and understanding of phenomena. Perhaps most clearly, as pointed out by Nietzsche, this form of thinking emerges in the intellectual position of ‘hinterwelts’, tracing back to Plato and the origins, so-called, of Western philosophy. This simplistic and often mystical understanding of the world compliments greatly the Christian worldview, hence why its propagation in philosophy and culture has been so prolific, bathing in the shadow of Selinus. But more interestingly, is the binary opposition, or rather synthesis, presented by Hölderlin, Schelling and Nietzsche himself in the form of the Apollonian and Dionysian duality of the Kunsttriebe.
Nietzsche, of course, believed this dichotomy and balance to be the key to cathartic--that is kathairein--tragedy, that which seizes the opportunity of art to wash its audience of chaos and be birthed anew. In this sense, the duality is not applicable to life outside of art, or should not be used as a lens to interpret it. Though, in many ways, life echoes art to the same degree it inspires it.
What Nietzsche, and indeed many other philosophers across Western history, did not explore (except for briefly in Morgenröete and Zarathustra) is the concept of fear. In Also Sprach, Nietzsche proclaims “Furcht ist des Menschen Erb- und Grundgefühl”, fear is humanity’s base. I too believe this, and furthermore I have before spoken on the importance of fear as a kind of similar catharsis to the work of the Greek master tragedians¹.
Fear is a natural human base. It is out of fear which grows every other emotion. And even desire, the apparent origin of all emotion and axion (though seeing any of this as with clear origin would be mistaken) springs forth from fear. Desire is only the opposition of fear, the shadow cast by it. Fear stands most plainly in the light, and it is the erasure of fear in the Neu which has eroded a secret pillar to stability.
But fear is not uniform. It is not consistent or continuous as a single entity. It is a process of warring forces vying for control. I do not mean different fears manifesting at different times, say glossophobia, instead I mean to say the fundamental elements of the process of fear are made of two distinct materials, two larger than all others, much as the process of tragedy.
These materials are not easy to categorise or understand, but they are most simply viewed as two primordial archetypes: The Forest and The Sea.
Humanity has long held relations with these primeval concepts. We were born to the prairies, to the wide open, to the space of freedom and possibility, and it was The Forest which first challenged us. As Dante highlights, its only midlife when we stray into the woods. Here, all we know is inverted. The wide open is stripped away and twisted into the claustrophobic. The beams of sun which soak the prairie are hidden behind thick leaves and brush. This is the realm of darkness. We may never know what can hide in the darkness, behind the trees. This ecosystem houses fauna and flora radically different to the plains, yet the same, all different to our homes, to our safety.
The Forest is the inversion of the familiar, the unheimlich. It is the valley of unease which rests not at the edge of our understanding but deeply entrenched within it. The Forest is a process of fear precisely because of what we know. We know the shadows may hide threats to our life. We know this place is nothing like the safe and wide prairies. We know that it is unfamiliar but in a way that mirrors our own experience, turns our strengths against us, twists our understanding of reality into a diptych of inversion. This is the shadow realm of classical archetypes. This is the shadow self, as Jung predicted. This is the mirror world featured in classic fixion. This is one of the principles of the process of fear.
Once humans conquered The Forest, they surely felt invincible. Here they had wandered into a land which completely stripped all they knew and emerged successful, actualised, with new knowledge. They could now explore the prairies and plains in ways formerly unthought of, with greater speed and efficency. They could harvest lumber and build improved huts. In this regard, The Forest is a form of fear which can be understood, can be conquered, can be used to better the world outside of itself. A petite fear. This is the apparent healthy fear which facilitates growth and offers new materials.
But in their travels, humans soon came across something quite different from The Forest. This was not a land which could be conquered. Not a land which could be understood or tamed or made safe. This was a land which mirrored their own, yes much like The Forest, but not in an inversion but a way which takes the known and makes it unknowable. Not just unheimlich, not just momentarily beyond understanding, but perpetually beyond comprehension. The wide open of the prairie remains but the ground becomes liquid. It stretches out forever, with no resources, with no places to build homes or take rest, and no means to walk on top of it--especially without conquering The Forest and acquiring lumber first. And below the mimicry of the prairie lies a world which mocks The Forest for its simplicity. The claustrophobia and darkness are exponentially enhanced. The trees become stones and coral and geysers; not materials to be harvested but hazards to be avoided. The flora is no longer shadowy echoes of the beasts in the plains but entirely alien, entirely beyond understanding. These creatures are immortal. These creatures don’t have brains or have brains which reach out into slimy tentacles. They have no spins or are so massive as to dwarf the importance of humanity beyond perspective. And that is the point. This is beyond understanding. This is The Sea.
The dual element of the fear process resembles its counterpart in many regards. Both confront with the unfamiliar, but one will never be familiar. The Sea can never be a home. Humans can sit at a dock and fish or place a lighthouse to guide boats designed for traversal, but this is merely a stopgap. The fish will stop swimming to the surface. The waves will rise and either sink the ships or the entire island the lighthouse rests on. There is no conquering The Sea, there is only acknowledging its presence briefly to claim passage.
Because, make no mistake, The Sea too is necessary. It too holds immaterial resources needed for human survival. Without it, or without mastering temporarily its upper surface, there would be no journeying to distant lands, no discovering of new natural and human made amazements, no connexion between people. The Sea is a glue holding us all together and at the same time it is our great adversary.
The fear of The Sea is not just what lies below the surface, in fact, this element greatly resembles The Forest and in many ways can be conquered with patience and dedication. The fear of The Sea comes from its apparent familiarity. It does not try to deceive us like The Forest by twisting our expectations into the unrecognisable. It appears kind, stretching out wide and open forever. A serene, immovable force that draws us in with its beauty. But that kindness is a guise. The Sea prays on our downfall. It is the fear of eternity, of that cosmically beyond us, of the great weight of the empyrean of arcadia and elysium. This is an unknowable fear. Unknown even to the unknown. This is the universe. This is God.
The process of fear, in its diptychal forces, is a process of processes, like a human being both physically and psychologically. It is a culmination and the journey towards culmination.
Think of fear. It is never static. It is always in reaxion to and then forced from something but changes innumerable times from its supposed emergence. It begins as a reaxion and then itself becomes an instigation. Thus why it is the father of all emotion, casting the shadow of the emotional matriarch desire.
So often we have neglected the dominion of fear. There is no realm where it doesn’t touch. No corner it doesn’t shade. There is no life lived without fear because a life without fear would be an immortal life, would be no life at all.
Fear allows for without restriction, without enframement. Fear opens the door to possibilities and it is only our reaxion to it which might erode those possibilities, but it might also be our reaxion to fear which allows us to reach where we never could before.
Without fear we would never wander into The Forest. Without fear we would never sail The Sea.
¹The Second Coming of Cinematic Horror