My ITP students went out on the street and asked (on video) about 40 people the question, “What are you afraid of?” It was remarkable how many of the respondents gave thoughtful, vulnerable answers.
Most common:
1. Failure. Most of the people who said they were afraid of failure were young. Also, one older man said if you’d asked him 10 years ago he would have said failure.
2. The future
3. Being alone/loneliness
4. Death/getting old
5. Things that are out of my control
6. Nothing. This was mostly older people, one of whom said, “I’m not even afraid of the Devil.”
Most esoteric:
1. Clowns (in a serious way)
2. Aliens (in a serious way)
3. Embarrassment
4. The dark (“you can’t see what’s around you”)
5. Torture/pain
6. Buried alive, blinded, falsely imprisoned (same respondent)
Flippant answers: snakes, spiders, rats, people.
