“Every time there is a strong turbulence, you know that you're fundamentally safe. There is an extremely high chance that you will land safely. But in that very moment, that rational explanation, 'oh, no, air travel is actually a very safe means of transportation,' doesn't amount to anything. Because when the airplane is being shaken, you can rationalize as much as you want the fact that casualties are minimal, but it's still quite profoundly horrifying.”
sputnikintelligence.com
Asked whether knowing the source of a horror dissolves it, the philosopher describes horror as an experience locked in the present, using her own fear of airplane turbulence as the example.
Usually, I mean, a source meaning a triggering phenomenon.
…And I wonder, in terms of our own ordinary subjective horror, like, if there even is a possibility of getting down to some root and going, ah, there's the cause, does that change the horror? I mean, can true horror only really exist where maybe there is a source, but you definitely can't find
it. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think that perhaps the safest, the less grandiose way of answering that question is the following. What I'm interested in is that moment, which can be a very short-lasting moment, when your whole experience of reality is taken over by a horrifying event that is happening to you. So there is not even the mental space to speculate about, oh, you know, this may be coming from whatever source, right? Or this may pass in five minutes or five days or five years, right? I'm really interested in thinking about horror as a present-centric experience. And by present-centric, I mean an experience that really pulls you to the present circumstances in a way that it's almost like inescapable, right? There is a degree of forced powerlessness there, right? You know, there is something that is happening to you. And you can potentially speculate about why that is happening, you know, and the fact that it may get solved. But in that very moment, it's almost like future and past are shut off. You cannot quite access to any of them, to either of those true temporal projections. And so there may be a source for a horrifying experience. There may be a rational explanation that one could unpack at a later moment. But…
Yeah. You seem to know all the details about the chance of crashing.
Yeah, right. I mean, you know, that's what I, but unfortunately, they don't amount to anything useful when turbulence is happening.
No, I feel the same way as a dentist. You've kind of finished your book by saying that we ought to be afraid.