What are we afraid of?

[coberst]

What are we afraid of?

 

Humans are pattern recognition creatures. We survive by the patterns of which we are conscious. Math is the science pattern; we use it constantly to explore the deepest core of nature’s pattern. To be an enlightened citizen is to be a citizen who has rationally organized a matrix of pattern detecting systems.

 

We have in our genes some pattern detecting systems. When hiking in the woods I am occasionally stopped in my tracks with a deep chill by some kind of form or movement. Among this infinity of movement and pattern one particular set penetrates my consciousness. We have evolved with this detection system so as to survive the predators.

 

Artifacts have replaced tigers and bears. Our predators were once tigers and bears but today they are humans and artifacts (something created by humans).

 

A steady diet of Twinkies and chips leads to a fat gut; a steady diet of sound bites and bumper stickers leads to a fat head!

 

Knowing is like day breaking, understanding is like lightening striking.

 

Comprehension is the payoff for struggle. There is a hierarchy of comprehension. Like a pyramid with the base being awareness, followed by consciousness (awareness plus attention) then comes knowledge with understanding at the pinnacle of the pyramid.

 

We are meaning creating creatures; we constantly create things in which we place value. We create various ideologies such as nations, religions, political parties, economic theories, and we create wars, new technologies, cars, cell phones, shopping malls, bombs, complex financial systems, etc. Many of our creations are too complex and their effects are far beyond our ability to comprehend and to control. If we do not become more intellectually sophisticated our artifacts will destroy us.

 

Reading is the key to knowing and essay writing is the canvas for creating understanding.

 

Of all the creatures perhaps humans are the only ones who fail to live up to their potential. Obesity is the evidence of a lack of physical endeavor and boredom is the consequence of an apathetic and lazy brain.

 

Reading is fundamental. Writing is the art and science of creation.

 

We can take any policy issue that might enrage any one of us and we can discover that the root cause of it is the fact that we the citizens are not doing our job. In a liberal democracy wherein the sovereignty rests on the shoulders of the citizen any outrage committed by that society can ultimately be traced back to the lack of enlightenment by the citizen.

 

Enlightened does not equal informed. Information flows over us in a daily deluge but consciousness is the missing catalyst for action. Our daily dose of information might be compared to our drive to work each morning. We are deluged with information reaching our perception on our drive to work and very little of that information becomes an object of consciousness.

 

I think that if we make the intellectual effort to understand some domain of knowledge and perhaps take the additional effort to write out our understanding of that matter, our essay will serve as our pattern for recognition for matters pertinent to that domain.

 

I consider that writing an essay is a major means for reaching an understanding of a domain of knowledge.

 

I think that these forums offer a great opportunity for practicing our writing skills. Do you agree? Is writing in your wallet?

[lemit]

In terms of what we're afraid of, I think it's instructive to watch horror movies. They are usually designed like television commercials, with a gothic insistence on proving a point. The commercials use color, brightness, texture, set design, positioning of characters, precision of dialogue, pacing, jump cuts, and those pesky subliminal phones, whistles and doorbells--all to get our attention focused on a product. Horror movies are the same except that their product is fear.

 

So how do they do it? The good ones do it by timing and patience, by developing a story so well that we don't expect something scary. But those aren't the ones I'm talking about. (As a former media critic, I'd prefer to, but that's not what I'm doing here.) The ones I'm talking about start out scary and get scarier. They have all the bells, whistles, and jump cuts of commercials since like commercials they are intended for teenagers. They don't include the things that scare those of us who have reached a certain age: wills, investments, lawyers, those damn teenagers screaming at that horror movie. Oh, yes, the teenagers. My mind wanders sometimes.

 

The teenagers. They're scared by more visceral things and are therefore more instructive about what scares us as a species. From the horror movies, then, it would seem that what scares us is fairly simple. Insects. Maybe snakes, but mostly insects.

 

I am amazed that everything that's supposed to be scary, including the lawyers, is depicted as an insect. I suppose the fact that a new, impressionable set of teenagers is being generated every few years means a new set of insects can be sold to that new set of teenagers.

 

But I have a feeling that surprise can have its uses. I have a feeling that pacing and dramatic tension have the potential to be more scary than exoskeletons, extra legs, and chartreuse goo. Of course I'm mostly afraid of lawyers.

 

And accountants! Hey! You know, there's this new movie and it has like all these accountants and you know these accountants have like four sets of legs each and like these segmented bodies and it's all like yuck, you know!

 

--lemit

[lemit]

I just heard a new study has found that conservatives are more fearful of more things than liberals are.

 

I believe the same study showed the Pope to be Catholic and that bears . . . what? I think I misunderstood that last one. I had the sound turned pretty low.

 

--lemit

[coberst]

I have been studying such things as our dread of death and how we repress this subject of our mortality because it causes us great anxiety.

 

In my effort to comprehend what this anxiety might be in its raw form I have constructed what I think might be useful in that understanding.

 

Suppose that we were placed on a platform high above the ground and were required to live there. And suppose that there were no guard rails on the boundary of the platform.

 

Do you think that this might be a useful imagination to help us understand these matters?

[lemit]

I have been studying such things as our dread of death and how we repress this subject of our mortality because it causes us great anxiety.

 

In my effort to comprehend what this anxiety might be in its raw form I have constructed what I think might be useful in that understanding.

 

Suppose that we were placed on a platform high above the ground and were required to live there. And suppose that there were no guard rails on the boundary of the platform.

 

Do you think that this might be a useful imagination to help us understand these matters?

 

I think you've got it right, if I understand. The fact that death is there as a constant might change its significance? That's right. You become used to it.

 

I'm constantly amazed by the cavalier nature of mountain roads. In an urban setting, they would be considered at best an attractive nuisance, at worst disaster zones, and would have all kinds of signs and warnings. What is the thinking, if any, in the way they're left alone? Is the threat of death or dismemberment different in one setting than it is in another?

 

Would your platform be required by somebody to have rails?

 

--lemit

[pamela]

have been studying such things as our dread of death and how we repress this subject of our mortality because it causes us great anxiety.

 

In my effort to comprehend what this anxiety might be in its raw form I have constructed what I think might be useful in that understanding.

 

Suppose that we were placed on a platform high above the ground and were required to live there. And suppose that there were no guard rails on the boundary of the platform.

 

Do you think that this might be a useful imagination to help us understand these matters?

i dunno Coberst, i think that dread of death is tied in to ego.On the one hand, the insecurity of the end of existance and on the other hand, the elevation of "i must certainly continue, i am the almighty me" The internal battle that arises from such a conflict produces anxiety on both a conscious and subconscious level. We want to have resolution and seek a means to identify and isolate those thoughts to give credence to or simply do away with.

This calls to mind yet another one of my stories, and yes there is no end to them, i am afraid.But isn't life a story? Filled with events and feelings and emotions and our interactions with the characters found in each chapter.

Chapter 19-

One evening while enroute to an engagement, i missed my exit off the highway. I turned around and attempted to gain access back on. It was just after dusk and typically any and all vehicles should have had their headlights on.As i turned to enter the ramp and viewed to my right, there was an approaching car and obviously with no lights on. Moving at approximatly 50 miles an hour and only 20 feet away, a collision was inevitable. The thought that entered my mind at that moment wasn't how to avoid the accident, that was simply impossible. But what did enter was this. I expected the car simply to go thru me and my vehicle and continue on- with no damage or consequences. How odd, i thought, that i should think that, as i sat crumpled in my destroyed car and wondering if an ambulance would arrive.It was strangely quiet and i wasn't registering the pain of my broken body. I began to contemplate my lack of fear of death.One certainly should have been terrified at such a scenario and yet i wasn't.It was merely a passing to me. From a point A to a point B yet not knowing what point B was/is and yet that didn't matter.It just was. The pain recognition finally set in and i was aware that i could only see out of one eye.And really hadn't it always been like that? only seeing part of the picture and not the whole? It was then that really both of my eyes were truly opened and they way i viewed the world and the world in me, was opened.Life and death really isn't so linear, it is a loop of self discovery and moving in and out of those things that perceive as reality and yet find to be so much deeper. The fear is replaced with anticipation and the wonder of what might be discovered yet

[arkain101]

I think the more we stray from conservative nature, the greater we fear it, as it becomes unknown.

 

What is fear? I have nightmares of bear's a times. I think this means I have a fear of bear's :ud:

[Jethro Tull]

What are we afraid of? Death.

Death anxiety influences so much of what we do. Even if we are not trying to think about death, we subconsciously know it is inevitable. The problem is, in fearing death, we forget that we are alive right now, which leads to the creation of things like mythical heavens after we physically die.

The only death there is, is spiritual death, death to the truth and the life. The way of mortals is a living death. We must wake up from our sleep and live for today, because that is all we ever have.

[coberst]

Our Western philosophical and religious heritage is based upon the mind/body dichotomy. I am convinced that this is so because we have such a strong instinct to live that we cannot abide consciousness of death. For this reason we created an after life that will thus allow us to deny our mortality. It is this repression of our mortality that sets us up for most of the problems that we now encounter. We create religion as a means to get beyond consciousness of death and to create the illusion of life eternal.

[lemit]

One evening while enroute to an engagement, i missed my exit off the highway. I turned around and attempted to gain access back on. It was just after dusk and typically any and all vehicles should have had their headlights on.As i turned to enter the ramp and viewed to my right, there was an approaching car and obviously with no lights on. Moving at approximatly 50 miles an hour and only 20 feet away, a collision was inevitable. The thought that entered my mind at that moment wasn't how to avoid the accident, that was simply impossible. But what did enter was this. I expected the car simply to go thru me and my vehicle and continue on- with no damage or consequences. How odd, i thought, that i should think that, as i sat crumpled in my destroyed car and wondering if an ambulance would arrive.It was strangely quiet and i wasn't registering the pain of my broken body. I began to contemplate my lack of fear of death.One certainly should have been terrified at such a scenario and yet i wasn't.It was merely a passing to me. From a point A to a point B yet not knowing what point B was/is and yet that didn't matter.It just was. The pain recognition finally set in and i was aware that i could only see out of one eye.And really hadn't it always been like that? only seeing part of the picture and not the whole? It was then that really both of my eyes were truly opened and they way i viewed the world and the world in me, was opened.Life and death really isn't so linear, it is a loop of self discovery and moving in and out of those things that perceive as reality and yet find to be so much deeper. The fear is replaced with anticipation and the wonder of what might be discovered yet

 

There's something very very strange here.

 

The first thing all authors say about the mystical experience is that it is ineffable. It can't be described; it can't be explained. Pamela, you have just, in maybe 300 words, effabulated that mystical experience.

 

You left out a couple of parts of the Western tradition, as described by Evelyn Underhill: Evelyn Underhill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, but they are folded into the whole anyway, so it doesn't matter. What matters most is that you got the result right.

 

I see now, thanks to your modest little post, that those other effabulators fail because they try to describe the journey. That journey is a part of what you describe as a loop. I hadn't thought about that before. You don't really see the journey as described by Kurt Vonnegut in "Slaughterhouse Five" or Thomas Berger in "Little Big Man," or as struggled with by director John Maybury in "The Jacket." In that flash, the flash that grows in retrospect to encompass a life and sometimes more, you saw that, as Berger put it, "This is a good day to die."

 

Of course, there are some forms of wisdom that can only be acquired in extremis. You have the opportunity to describe something that is, by definition, rarely described.

 

The rest of us, like Sheriff Bell in "No Country For Old Men," see what we see from the outside and could never get beyond "a hell of a thing" to describe what we see.

 

This post is unusual for you. It looks like it was hastily written and unedited, a burst of expression you needed to get out before you lost the memory or the words to describe the memory. I'm glad you had the courage to post it, to tell something pretty unscientific in a science blog. Thank you.

 

--lemit

 

p.s. About all those allusions. You don't have to read all of them; there won't be a test.

[Jway]

What are we afraid of?

 

I think that these forums offer a great opportunity for practicing our writing skills. Do you agree? Is writing in your wallet?

 

Uh huh.

 

I think these forums can offer a great opportunity for practicing writing skills. That is, if allowed to. So far, I feel the experience is more of a practice in critical thinking skills. One doesn't need to be writing or 'participating' for critical thinking to be occurring.

 

There is, what feels like overwhelming amounts of information in OP for me to respond to that I am (or perhaps was) at loss of where to start, where to go from. It also showed up to me as a bit preachy, but let's say that is just my personal and current filter at work.

 

In terms of "what are we afraid of" well I like what this thread has touched upon already. But before jumping into that, I would respond with my own take. Though a bit cliche, I think we are afraid of fear (itself). I think it is a phenomenon, but one that I believe to be metaphysical, or not tied in (exclusively) with materialistic causation.

 

I see fear and caution confused often. Caution is a raising of the guard and is what repels us from something or someone. In both my opinion and my experience, fear is like a temptation, it can draw one into it's grasp. I hasten to say that fear attracts, even while philosophically I don't agree with that proposition. Fear can be like a thrill ride, we may not wish it on our best friend, and yet it's no secret that sometimes we can't get enough of it.

 

Suppose that we were placed on a platform high above the ground and were required to live there. And suppose that there were no guard rails on the boundary of the platform.

 

Do you think that this might be a useful imagination to help us understand these matters?

 

Yes. Though like anything on a science forum, I might have umpteen hundred questions or comments that could detract from the gist of what is being purported.

 

I'm currently under the strong impression that I dream every single sleep cycle. I don't know how unique that is, but persons in my circle of relationships tell me that they do not dream all that often. While I might not remember all of my night dreams (likely remember less than 5%), I do recall daily that I have such dreams. Why do I bring this up? That's a very good question. See, I would say a recurring night dream I have has to do with heights and helplessness (or vulnerability) when up on high. On hindsight, the anxiety I feel from being placed in such circumstances, seems childish or unfounded. But within the dream world, it seems 'normal' or what I would say is typical.

 

If I was placed on this hypothetical platform of which you inquire about, direction of my observation(s) would make all the difference. If I looked up (only), I believe I would not be fearful. And if I maintained that disposition, I could see me fooling myself into saying this is no different than if I were at sea level. If I looked around me in the vicinity of parallel (or is it perpendicular?) to my eye level, I think I would be concerned or cautious. "What? I only get this small space from which to live on? Okay, I'll make due, but let it be noted that I think life sucks." And if I peered over the side and looked down, I feel it is very likely that a) I would fill high anxiety / fear and ;) I would long to jump off. If my night dreams are any indication, I would jump off sooner than later. And I would wake into comfortable reality before I hit the ground. Empirically speaking, of course.

 

I don't think death is that which we fear the most, or at base level. I think it is related to death, but is more along lines that we fear not going on, and since we don't know, or pretend like we don't know, we have angst over what we understand to be inevitable.

 

I've held the hand of a person who was passing away. In the moment of the passing, I cried like a little school girl. Uncontrollably and with sadness I felt overwhelmed me. But prior to the passing, and within 10 minutes of it, I felt enormous joy and peace. To this moment, I am convinced that death is joyous event, even while I will pretend also that I have no idea what the heck happens to me / us at that moment.

 

I truly enjoyed (re)reading Pamela's entry on personal story (Ch.19). I think there is at least one other way of relaying that story where it is not at all an enjoyable read, and is far more in category of "life sucks." My hypothesis from reading the story is that the "thought that entered the mind" before the collision is along lines of defense mechanism. But IMO, that is sorely minimizing what the effect of that mechanism invoked. Because, I would say shear terror is the typical behavior in that circumstance, and yet, even that (feeling of terror) is a defense mechanism, a la bracing for inevitable pain. My deeper hypothesis on the "thought that entered" would be of the metaphysical variety. It makes clear sense to me. But since I am on science forum, I shall restrict such commentary.

 

Anyway, great topic and thanks for allowing me to contribute both as writer and reader.

-Jway