“The body tells me to rest and be safe!
The mind tell me to let go and fly!
All my decisions are a fight between them!
Should I let go and stay or should I try!”
In the book The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris; he states how the behaviour of Human being is a balance of Neophilia and NeoPhobia! The term respectively means the interest or love and fear to try new things!
We have seen how kids who do not have any fear will not stay at a place! If given a chance they would put their fingers in the electric socket (Like apparently my brother used to do!). The reason why the modern electric sockets are auto baby proofed! My uncle used to stuff pieces of paper to ‘baby’ proof them!
Am sure many parents would not have bothered by a few ‘shocks’ got by the self discovery of a curious kid!
The Neophilic nature of humans and many animals is the reason why we have development and new inventions! It if were not for the inquisitiveness of the average human, we would be still stuck in a natural cave without any clothes just like Desmond describes us!
Luckily though the human species has often been neophilic, or novelty-loving. For evolutionary reasons, we tend to respond to new stimuli in a positive way – with intrigue, interest, curiosity, and satisfaction.
Our Neophilic nature could be one of the reason of us being at the top of the evolutionary chain! But not all the time! The average human especially who is an adult or a person who knows his or her surrounding can be Neophobic too!
In connection to this a story is often told dating back to 1847 when a Hungarian physician named Ignaz Semmelweis proposed the practice of hand washing when delivering babies in the clinic!
The amazing part of this story is that it took more than 20 years for the scientific community to prove this theory to be correct and for other doctors to accept it as standard practice!
Imagine that the simple basic practice of just hand washing took so many years to gain acceptance! That is an example of Neophobia!
It has been seen that Norwegian rats, are very resistant to trying any new foods because humans have gotten much more clever with rat poison!
On the other hand, a rat who is neophilic isn’t going to live too long and will not pass on any protective genes to the next generation of rats!
So a majority of the population is genetically wired to see new ideas just like a Norwegian rat sees new foods, with skepticism and a reluctance to change from “what I’ve always done,” even when the data is clear and scientifically sound. A fine change from the curiosity killed the crow to the rat in this case!
We can observe how vital the unfamiliar is to people’s lives from the fact that we seek out anything new in general, and not just in terms of things that would have benefited our nomadic ancestors, such as venturing to new lands. We also have a hunger for new music, films, art, fashion, technology, possessions, hobbies, experiences, and so on. Of course now the neophilia is to new trends or reels or memes! The fear has taken a back seat for some time now! The very fact that we have independence now is because of the fearlessness of many! Some of whom like birthday celebrity Sukhdev Thapar are not that famous because of the popularity of the ones who stayed in the limelight without doing much! Philia or not; freedom fighters like him will always remain eternal!
Now try to curb your neophilia for the night and sleep!
Shubh ratri!
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