Albert Einstein, the famous scientist, stated that ‘one of the most important questions facing every individual is whether or not the universe is friendly’. It would appear that ‘most people do not believe that it is.’

‘Fear is something we all experience’. ‘No single instant is truly fearless – even the most loving or playful setting seems to hold some unseen promise of danger.’ ‘As human beings we naturally fear hunger, illness and injury. We also fear economic hardship, social disrepute, and abandonment. And we are afraid of the time when death will come to us or to our loved ones.’

Wayne Muller, a psycho-therapist, says ‘Terrifying fears we inherit from our childhood refuse to fade away. The lies, the betrayal, the abuse, the desertion – we remember each moment in vivid detail. For the child who has been hurt, fear becomes a reflexive response.’

‘Our childhood fears (are) compounded because the people who claimed to be the guardians of our safety were inevitably the same people who caused us hurt. So just as we learned to be afraid, we also came to believe that no one could be trusted give us shelter.’

Ghassan Hage, an Australian anthropologist, says that, as Australians, we are also afraid that if we took the land we live in, others may want to take it too. He says that Australians have an underlying fear of revenge for the genocide our ancestors committed, de-colonisation by aborigines, and re-colonisation by migrants and refugees. ‘We live our lives in fear, regardless of whether those fears are real or (not)’.