Notice what’s missing from that list? Taxes. Breakups. Mortgages. The amygdala doesn’t care about those. But show a human infant—one who has never seen a nature documentary—a silhouette of a snake, and their pupils dilate. Their heart rate climbs. That is not learned. That is inherited.
You are not afraid of the dark.
But if it is a snake? If the darkness does move? If the growl is real?
Primordial fear is not irrational. It is pre -rational. It is the fire alarm, not the fire. The problem is that in the modern world, the alarm gets pulled by ghosts. You cannot eliminate primordial fear. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a breathing technique that will fail when you hear a twig snap in a dark forest. But you can learn to distinguish it.