Bertrand Russell says that humans have three sources for developing an abstract fate (may be resulting in the idea of God) in the life. First is the possibility of the harm, the nature causing. Second, the possibility of the danger arising from other people (they can frankly damage us). And third, the possibility of damage which is based on self attitudes -we can ruin our own lives with our desires (1). However, I think, there is one more ratio which is also highly effective on people’s fate. This is social exclusion. This can also be related to the third one from Russell here. The behaviors of ours which ends with negative consequences in social context are always the source of our fateful or unfateful reflections.
Biological, neuroscientific studies revealed that social exclusion can result in deaths for some mammalian species including humans (2). Similarly, people who lose close family members or friends have a potent of having %50 more cardiovascular problems in the meantime (3). This proves that social harm means one of the most powerful enemy to the species of human like famine or battles. It alludes that we as humans always have the fear of losing the social bonding (you can have number of instances for adaption to the society).
Moreover, as another attribute of human kind, we humans tend to have narratives in our lives. We always generalize the things, and live with a harmony with these disclosures -it is related to some characteristic of our memory, language and social cognition. Whatever we have as a knowledge for the instant tasks or more general issues, we always claim to ourselves the truth is the only truth that we need to dedicate our focus -because it helps for the survival, the homeostasis. Beyond this, in a dynamic living environment, after awhile we make the others believe in these disclosures. Of course, we do not believe all the narratives the others produce. But expectedly, there are some strong characters have an influence on the people, and their narratives stands on the center of the others to be followed.
Fear is one of the most powerful motivator for our bodies. It evokes the energy channels -dopamine pathways, for example, starting from medial temporal pathways including amygdala which is very determinant for fear issues, going through prefrontal regions which is very important executive functions. Nevertheless, social cognition has also a dominant character in our beings. The dynamic system runs these attributes together. And we have a portray like this: Social cognition triggers the fear of loss, and it results in the adaptation to the others for both behaviorally and intellectually. It is the way of the possibility which leads us into a circle between fear and fate. We fear, and have fate; we believe and have the fear again. It becomes an inevitable way of behaving. But do we have another chance to believe in something?
The interviewer asks Russell that dont we have a need for the idea of the things bigger than us? He had a clever and plain answer to this; Quote: “We have many bigger things in our lives than ourselves to have a fate on. We have our family, we have our societies, we have our world to take care, think of and give the value as a reasonable dedication for our needs as a fate”.
