The fire watchers

Texture from pixlr and stock from deviantart.com

A dancing fire is pretty, as well as tantalizingly dangerous, but there may be a much deeper reason for our attraction to it. Daniel Fessler, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has conducted research that indicates an adult's fascination with fire is a direct consequence of not having mastered it as a child. Fire has been crucial to human survival for around one million years, and in that time, Fessler argues, humans have evolved psychological mechanisms specifically dedicated to controlling it. But because most Westerners no longer learn how to start, maintain and use fire during childhood, we instead wind up with a curious attraction to it — a burning desire left to languish.
Preliminary findings indicate that humans are not universally fascinated by fire .
On the contrary, this fascination is a consequence of inadequate experience with fire during development.

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