As long as I can remember, I have been afraid of dogs. I always knew the events of my early childhood that set this in motion¹It mostly involed our family dog recuing me from danger.. Recently, in a discussion with BigOne, I had more insight into my fear both of dogs and other unknowns.

I am convinced I have no ability to understand what action a dog might take. Barking might mean, “Hello!” Barking might mean, “Stay away! I am going to attack you!” Once I get to know a dog a little bit, I have become fond of many dogs²Especially our standard poodle, Andrew, who saved my life twice.. However, there is always a voice in my head saying, “Danger! You could be hurt!”³There was another family dog and a different result, but that is another story.

I suppose this relates to my fear of most mammals⁴The exception is cats. I admit that is a little strange.. And geese⁵But not other kids of birds. Again strange.. Reconciling these inconsistencies may be a different Letter in the future, but there is a small observation I made that I think has led to an important point I don’t consider as often as I should.

When faced with the unknown, humans often attribute characteristics to qualities that are not logical. I suppose this is a short cut that helped us survive as cultures change. I know, even if I don’t like it, that some people will hurt you. How I know which people will hurt me? That is what the short cut is for. I got hurt by a person who had the quality Q(). Therefore, everyone with the quality Q() is a danger to me.

Of course, maybe *I* didn’t get hurt. Maybe I heard about it from you. People who have the quality Q() will hurt you. I see this every day in news stories that come across my not-so-smart phone, and I am sure everyone sees stories like this. Your quality is Q(D)⁶Liberal, so you must be going to raise my taxes. Your quality is Q(R)⁷Conservative, so you want to defund the police⁸Sorry for the current events reference. #sorrynotsorry.. It doesn’t have to be danger that relates the two qualities, but I think I react most strongly when one quality points to it being a dangerous situation for me – physical or emotional.

The problem, as I see it, is that this kind of thinking is full of non-deterministic syllogisms. As we statics lovers like to say, correlation is not causation⁹More on that in another Letter too.. The Q(D) is not always in union with Q(Taxes). The Q(R) is not always in union with Q(Defund). 

Now, I think making that mistakes leads us to surprises. Some good. Some bad. But what I see is when fear is involved, making this mistake leads to unfortunate consequences. Some small. Some large.

Back in 2019, I spent a week in Hamburg, Germany in October and then a week in Brussels, Belgium in December. In both cases, I saw a lot of homeless people. I love to walk around cities, but I admit: I was afraid. Q(Sleeping on the Streets) equaled Q(Mental health issues) equaled Q(Danger to Me). I knew it was unfair to the individuals even as I flinched when the dusk fell and I was walking by people sleeping on mattresses under bridges. Even though I knew intellectually the causes of homelessness for a person are multifaceted and different from society to society, I couldn’t get over my fear.

The thing about fear, the way I see it, is the consequence of me being wrong is worse for me, personally, than the consequence of changing my behavior by discounting a danger I know could exist.

I suppose my fear of Q(Being a Dog) could have, and could still be, addressed in many different ways. However, the truth is, I just avoid dogs¹⁰For example, I could actually study animal psychology and get closer to understanding when I should be afraid of the behavior of an animal. But that would be a lot work.. 

Maybe it is enough that I am aware that these syllogisms should always be “Some Q(a) are Q(b).” If I can train myself not to automatically jump to fear and remain in observation, even when I know some Q(dogs) will Q(bite), I think I would experience less fear. Which would lead to less judgement. Which would lead to a bit more understanding in my world. Which might lead to more understanding of individuals and peoples.