What he feared most was fear, that’s what Montaigne wrote in this essay. He describes the kind of primal fear that afflicts people when facing immediate and bodily harm.

I’ve written in the past in this space about how modern people have an overblown sense of this kind of fear. We tend to think of the risks of violent criminal attacks as being much higher than they actually are, for example.

But in this take on the essay, I want to consider the things that we aren’t fearful enough about. For example: driving a car. I find it amazing that many people are repelled by the kind of people they encounter on public transportation, but think nothing of sharing the road with the same people.

Our steel-enclosed structures and controlled environments give us a false sense of security that we are protected on the road. And yet, it is one of the most dangerous things we do on a routine basis. Other drivers are distracted, impaired, angry, impetuous and, to a surprising degree, unregulated. We’ve outsourced traffic tickets to robots and cameras to an extent that traffic police rarely enforce rules of the road.

The older I get, the more terrified I am of driving and I consider this the height of rationality. I’d much rather deal with people, their pathologies and odors, face to face than careening with them on pothole filled roadways, dodging bikes, scooters and pedestrians with headphones on.

But there are even greater things we should fear in our culture, in my opinion. First among them is the ease of which we can be manipulated. We are constantly observing and imitating the behavior around us, becoming different people every day just to fit into a dynamic environment. I’m not criticizing the inherent inauthenticity of this behavior.

Rather, I’m convinced that modern society requires so much adaptation that we’ve become fully hackable conscious beings. Social media bombards us with alternate visions of our life, products we must own, and outrages we must react to. AI chatbots are seducing us into believing they are indispensable friends. Streaming services push your type of TV shows, movies and songs at you.

Very few of us appreciate just how willing we are to go everywhere we’re led. Every day the technology gets better at moving us one direction or another and while we have plenty of generalized fears of the present and future — and specific fears of technology — we don’t seem to grasp the psychological horror at the root of it all.

Despite our talk of freedom and individuality, human beings have a deep desire to be someone else, someone who fits in better, has a clearer identity, and maintains a stable popularity that can receive popular recognition whenever it feels necessary to have it.

I fear this because this kind of compliance gives rise to movements and fanaticism and group judgments. Being different becomes dangerous. We stop seeing people and only recognize groups. And we swing wildly between in and out groups based purely on the flow of the crowd.

Yes, we’re all at risk of being exploited. But we should also look closely at ourselves and admit that we’re a danger too, based on little more than our instinct to fit in.