Childhood Beliefs or Prejudices?

I think philosophic discussion is an important need that wants exercise in every adult. For myself, a great outlet for this is book club, the book--many times--being just a jumping off point for our contemplative thoughts finding ground in the voices of our discussing them.

This last book club, per usual, a few of us had naturally splintered into separate discussion groups, and we got talking about differences in cultures. We got thinking about where in our own lives we saw differences within our own expanding cultural horizons as young children. I spoke of my mother's embarrassment when as young child I had seen the first black person in my young life. I have no idea what age that was, and probably remember it from the story having been repeated later. As I remember hearing about it, I had stared, pointed, and questioned what was wrong with that woman's skin. I think if my mother hadn't any prejudices in her own upbringing, she could have handled the situation better. I think she had just hustled me out of the way.

Ev, who was in our split group discussing this had been brought up in NYC, and had grown up with seeing black people from that young age where we notice similarities more than differences.

Charis who was next to me said that she was frightened by the Asian eyes. That was a difference that bothered her and perhaps brought about a prejudice more than differences in color.

I couldn't see that. I always liked the look of Asian peoples, except for the monsters as depicted in the Classic Comics of my youngest years when "Japs" were represented as slant eyed monsters during World War II. Somehow I never drew a parallel between the Asians and the comic book representation of "Japs", as to me the Chinese, Japanese and any Asians were to me beautiful exotic people.

Children have their own frightening sights where they cannot comprehend how something came about, and maybe that was how Charis came to not like a difference in the shape of eyes. She cannot remember, only she says she notices eyes more than any other feature of a person, and just feels this natural gut level recoiling about the Asians.

Myself, when I was young my biggest fear had been in seeing a missing appendage in a person, whether a missing a limb... or even a finger. I remember noticing for the first time that my cousin Barbie's husband had a missing finger. It frightened me. I couldn't stand seeing someone missing anything. It was akin to seeing a bad accident. The added blood of an accident would have been traumatic, whereas the missing finger, leg, or arm was just troublesome, and conjured up a gut level fear from an unknown part of my personality... some part of our psyche where I have not heard it being plumbed by psychiatry yet, though there are perhaps books I've never heard about published about this fact.

Ev spoke about her grandchild having that fear of someone being in a wheelchair.

These fears are within us until confronted, and if never confronted, stay hidden within until we again see the sight... or perhaps hear the noise. My niece Brigetta had a primal fear of loud noises, and it wasn't realized how difficult it was for her until as a family we were at a fireworks demonstration and I remember Brigetta having to be brought to the car where they must have rolled up the windows and turned on the radio to calm her hysterics. She was probably about six years old at the time.

I guess primal fear is the description of an apprehension so deep in our psychological make up we seldom confront it, as our mind evades consciously bringing up this psychic pain.

What is your primal fear? Have you confronted it or otherwise overcome it?

I wonder what my son Alby's was, as he got a five foot poster of the Frankenstein Monster to put at the head of his bed to scare away the bogeyman of his most primal fear. At least that fear isn't something to be seen in a crowd.

I remember Jo's being clowns. Jo, who couldn't be let go of in a department store, as she was fearless and would explore the aisles like Alice in Wonderland, yet, grabbed me in fear at a Boat Show when a clown was wondering the crowd for which he had been hired to amuse.

I overcame my fear of the missing limb as a thirty something adult. I had hired a baby sitter who was also a nurse's aide at a nursing home. She was concerned about a patient who was going to lose another leg, his first one having been removed after an accident when he had hopped down off a train. I didn't ask for the gory details, but imagined how terrible this must have been for him, as, to me, this was the worst thing that could happen to a person, especially whereas that was my number one primal fear. I was into a kind of a spiritual renewal at the time, and thought it was my responsibility to go visit this poor miserable creature... and I followed up on that. Once I got used to visiting him, I found that his lack of limbs didn't bother me anymore. Shortly after this I had a dream of going through a strange type of nursing home where limbless people were being cared for. As I advanced through the place, more and more limbs were missing from each patient. At the end of this long ward of people was a talkative woman who was wired up to all kinds of machines... missing all limbs and even her body. She was just a head. In my dream I began to realize that who a person really is, is not in their limbs, but in their personality... what is between their ears--their mind and spirit. That dream made me confront my childhood's primal fear and realize it to be the narrow point of view of a child who fears this happening to herself. It made me grow up to the rational that we are who our personalities are, not how we look... whether it be skin color, the shape of our eyes, or the missing limbs or digits of our bodies.