It begins with the changes that took place in the European world in the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on the way the industrial, intellectual, and political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries shaped the construction of class society, the emergence of the nation state, and the rise of the European powers to world domination. The elite was formed last, coming out of society, i.e. the mores and values of society.

Where the United States fits in also happens in the
18th century with colonialism and the institution of slavery. The colonists brought with them the West, from the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century to the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, from the end of the Renaissance to the birth of Romanticism.

During the Enlightenment, members of the ruling classes decided to be their own gods, the center and the source of their own lives, the concept of sin entered and fear followed and became the energy of their lives life: anxiety, worry, fret, dread and panic became part of their vocabulary.

So it was that people who had once learned to fear God who unconditionally loves them, now feared everything-except the God who alone gives life. I add this here because this concept became part of religious teachings to the masses and the art/culture that was created.

The late 19th to mid-20th century that marked the end of European hegemony: events since 1945 including the emergence of a bipolar world and the collapse of the Soviet block, decolonization and the Americanization of Europe, and the social consensus and dissent in contemporary European society. By this time, the seeds of fear had been thoroughly sown into the collective pysche. Western civilization spread across the planet, leaving interconnected but separate systems that socialzed people who were African, white or European, Latino, and so on.

This is what I mean by collective consciousness. How else could Western civilization have spread? There are those that benefit from this and perhaps, consciously or subconsciously, some people resist understanding how they are conditioned to maintain the system. It exists, nonetheless.

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"Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own"
--Paulo Coelho, "The Alchemist"

"Know thyself"

"Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, "I will never leave you or forsake you". So we may boldly say, "The Lord is my helper, I will not fear. What can man do to me?"
-- Hebrews 13:5,6

"There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path"
--Morpheus in "The Matrix" (and a Buddhist philosophy)

"It's our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"- Dumbledore to Harry Potter "Chamber of Secrets"