The terror in Western history is associated with the time in the French Revolution when the guillotine was used to murder around a thousand people. But terror has a far longer and more unsavoury history in human society. It has been a determinate for change and one of the factors behind our need for Community.
To be a naked human being alone in this world is to be one of the most vulnerable animals on the face of the Earth with no sharp teeth, no claws and no skills that give us mastery of one particular environment. It’s a strange place for any animal to have evolved into, unless early on to protect itself it had other avenues available to it, and we had each other and brains that were slowly manipulating the world around us.
But a vast amount of the those tools we made are, were and will be, weapons. It is testament to the difficult Universe in which we live that we can be killed so easily. Even many clothes are merely protection from the elements, and shoes protect one of the most vulnerable and yet useful parts of our motive system. To be so weak in the face of such strength from other life, must have instilled wariness, caution and justifiable fear into all of us.
And yet we have become the most fearsome animal of all, and our terror today lies in the fear we have for each other. Fear that become hatred. In the past we have dealt with animals we do not like by taking them to extinction. We would do well to remember that is our default position, when considering with whom we are enemies.