Conquer you fear.....Yoda said to Luke

I wanted to explore just how important Fear is to our lives and maybe you can help me.

To me Fear is the prime motivator that just about everything we do and think is dependant upon.

When we worry about things it is because of fear.

When we talk to others there is an undercurrent of fear. Will they undersrand? What if i stay quiet and say nothing? I need to talk otherwise I will not be understood? and so on.....

The main cause of insanity is intense fear. Including the fear of loosing our minds. The fear of getting lost and the fear of forgetting what we need to remember.

Our lives are devoted to relieving our fears. We choose the foods we eat, the excersise we do, the jobs we work at and the women or men that we love due to fear?

Are these fair statements?

What do you fear the most when you wake up in the morning?

With my work with the mentally disturbed I have found that by understanding the nature of what they fear brings great relief.

The notion that fear and insanity, or should I say in essence paranoir, is humanities greatest challenge. A challenge it has allways faced.

Superstition and some religious aspects are all the product of paranoir or fearful imaginings.

Knowing thy fear is in some ways conqueing thy fear.

What do you think? Dig deep.

 

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Intriguing topic, thanks.

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Remember the film "Groundhog Day"?

I think this is just the perfect example of how important fear is, and a certain degree of insecurity that comes with it.
Even if you had the chance to figure it all out, even if you knew what is going to happen, and be able to prepare a strategy that you think will bring you just what you want -- it doesn't work. It doesn't make you happy, it is not fulfilling. On the other hand, dare to make the first step yourself, dare to improve yourself and accept that you may not always be welcomed, stop thinking just about the things want, adopt a more respectful attitude towards others -- and things change. And they can change for your good.

I don't agree with that, it is too generalizing. It all depends on the POV, of course. But if you say that fear is the prime motivator for everything, then you also say that fear is your prime motivator for procreation, for example. What fear are you trying to overcome when you try to procreate? The fear of becoming extinct?
I think that would be slanted.

Yes, worry. "But know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum," says the song.
Meaning that some fears are not simply fear, but rather cover-ups for other things.

Isn't the fear of losing your mind already the first step to actually losing it?

I think this is slanted.
Maybe this is just semantics being tricky ... but I think that one can choose between fear and hope. Whereby this hope means a certain moderate and healthy determination to do something, and a certain fear is always present in hope. (I'm thinking of "Shawshank Redemption".)

Honestly, my greatest fear is that I would lose my teeth and/or my hair. The world can go to hell, but I want my teeth and my hair. Huh.

Yes, looking at it from the POV of the present, many religions first create some idea of what is going to happen if you don't follow their rules, and then they offer a way to follow those rules, in order to avoid punishment. It is self-fulfilling. Take away the threat, and no following of the said rules is necessary anymore.

Why people buy into it? I think that many who become religious in their adulthood do so in order to cover up some deep frustrations and fears, even phobias. Religion is then a blanket to them, a blanket they put on those fears, and then they have to keep the blanket down (=practise that religion) in order to prevent their demons from crawling from under the blanket. This way, they don't deal with their demons, they only put them away. I think this can have very bad consequences.

Naw, I don't believe in "conquering" fear. That's an overstatement. Trying to conquer your fear makes you a slave of your own fear. For all you do, you do with the mind-set of "I need to overcome this fear." I don't think trying to *conquer* fear is a productive approach to life.

What is more important, IMO, is that you figure out WHY you are afraid of something.
Some fears are natural, normal and necessary: it is good to be afraid of rabid dogs, snakes, and such -- if you see such a thing, get away from them -- is what a healthy fear tells you.

Some other fears, and I think these are the majority of fears that people have nowadays, come from other sources. Mainly the fear of not being able to live up to certain standards and ideals, supposedly posed by society. These fears can be paralyzing.
Take for example children with above average IQ, who have very demanding parents. Many of these children suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, from the fear that they won't live up to their parent's ideals -- and that they will therefore lose their love. Such children can completely get stuck at school, being unable to do anything, fearing that they won't do it good enough.

On the whole, I think fear is good. "Fear makes a human being decent." (I think this line is from Dogma.)

 

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Rosa, You write an interesting response ( as usual). I think your POV is certainly valid, compelling and practical.

I guess I was looking maybe a lot deeper. All the way in to the thinking process and motivation for thought and therefore action.

With my work with mentally distrurbed persons fear is the predominant emotion or feeling present in everything they say or do. They have provided great insight due to the exageration of their mental state into how much fear may play in our lives.

Through out the animal world fear is a dominant instinct and yes I believe that procreation is a behaviour that is rooted in fear.

I am not saying that fear is only negative. It is good if it benefits the individual but not so good if it doesn't.

If you think about it nearly all speculation is fear based. The famous "what if..." question is I believe fear orientated.

Fear in very small doses guides our thinking and allows us the ability to avoid making mistakes and motivates us towards learning.

If you think of it carefully I think you will see that fear is all pervasive. Again not necessarilly in a negative sense.

To conquer ones fear is not to overcome ones fear but to learn to use fear to our advantage.

By understanding the "why" and the "what" we can learn to find freedom from many behaviours that are counterproductive.

 

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Quantum Quack,

Hehe, thanx.

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What else can you wish for -- but "valid, compelling and practical"?
I think going further than the functional tends to be counterproductive.

Maybe that's the source of the slant. Could it be that what mentally disturbed people feel is NOT necessarily what people who are not regarded as mentally disturbed feel? Well, per definition, there should be a difference between mentally disturbed and those who aren't.

You mean like a version of the horror vacui?

No, you know what, I think this is slanted.

Your way of thinking so much of fear holds only if you go for the Christian Cosmogony and say that being on Earth is being away from God, and wanting to go back to Him who created you. But while on Earth, creatures feel fear, the same as a little child feels fear when separated from his mother.

Sure. That's why I brush my teeth and take good care of my hair. Joke.

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I know what you mean.

Convince me!

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The speculations we, you present here -- tell me, are they fear based? What fears do you have when posting here? (I'm just trying to exemplify.)

That thing there I wouldn't exactly call fear. More like "being aware of one's limitations" -- this doesn't necessarily equal fear. But yes, it often means fear for many people. It's the megalomaniac complex that's behind this fear.

Here's some personal input from me regarding counterproductive thinking:
We may have fears due to some bad things that have happened to us in the past. The clue is to differentiate between the event and the effects it had on us. The event cannot be undone, but some of the effects of it (=esp. certain "lessons" from it, and new behaviours due to them) can be undone/changed. If you don't differentiate between the two, the effects will remain unchangeable, since the event itself is unchangeable. Differentiate, and you can improve.

 

Agreed. I go so far as to say that fear is the original human emotion, and all emotions come from fear.

 

Happiness comes from fear?

 

Fearlessness come from fear. Happiness com from unhappiness.

Is fear our protector?
Maybe,in some situation. but fear make nervous, make we stop trying and start trying. Fear is not rational. The levels of the fear are not respect to real danger while respect to our deep memory, a unconscious thing. Fear may make the situation even worst. We have bad fear and good fear.
For example, a man have a irrational fear of being high. There is a fire behind him. He must jump down the building to save himself. He will jump because of the fear of death.

 

Why would one need to be aware of ones limitations if it were not for fear of over reaching.

Every decision you make is in some way determined by your level of fear
because of the fear of making a mistake.

 

So ur saying Tiassa is wrong?

 

What if one's fear doesn't enter the focus of one's mind, but only lurks under the surface? How much of a motivator can you consider it when you never consciously think of it?

I don't think it's quite that simple. Different people are motivated by different things. Some people are more motivated by fear more than others. People are also motivated a number of other emotions.

Well yeah if you spend much time worrying. I don't.

Wha? LOL. I disagree. It's sometimes true, but far too sweeping of a generalization I think. I'd say almost all of my conversations with other people completely lack fear.

I simply don't think that. I wait and see how they react, then compensate. Fear only fucks that process up and never really plays a role in most of my dealings.

Hmm.. I that's a pretty situational deal. It generally never crosses my mind. If I have something to say, I say it.

Again, I'm not sure where you're going here, but I just don't think that way. I think "I"m going to talk and see if I'm understood". If I haven't communicated anything, I can rest assured I won't be understood.

Hmm.. I don't think so. I can think of two major reasons for insanity off the top of my head and that's basically "chemical imbalance" (like when you're born with an abnormal brain or distribution of chemicals or some genetic condition or who knows what) or "mental schema wasn't compatable with stimulus", causing short circuit kind of stuff. Basically when stimulus is rejected by the POV problems arise, fear or no fear. Now I suppose you might argue fear is at the root of the rejection of stimulus, but I'd think (statistically) there'd be at least some people (if not a lot) with whom that's not really the case. Maybe I loved someone and they told me something, so I hang onto it even though my stimulus and logical circuits tell me repeatedly "that isn't true". It's my appreciation of that person that motivates me to stick with it. Now you could frame that as fear maybe.. it become sort of gray I think. My love for x gives me fear of y? Could be, hmm. I think sometimes though in this type of case, love of x is just love of x and wanting to hang onto x is simply nostalgia. Framing that as fear isn't necessarily fair, depending on the circumstances, blah. I think so anyway.

Geez you sound like you worry a lot!

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Heh. Some people are chronic worriers. I haven't figured it out for sure, I think it's just some chemical thing. My wife tends to worry, so do her dad and brother. Me? I don't worry much. I probably should worry more than I do.

Is that really the way you see it? Wow. I relive more good stuff than bad.

Man you are fear-centric. Of course your life is motivated by fear if fear is what you focus on.

Shit yeah. Nothing wrong with exploring.

It simply never occurs to me that I'm in any way fearful when I wake up in the morning. I wake up groggy, annoyed that I'm awake because sleeping was SO comfy, then I think "sweet girls!", and then 'oh shit i bet i'm late for work' (except on weekends) so i get my assingear. Being late for work doesn't scare me, I'm late pretty much every day.

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Hehe. 10 or 15 minutes anyway. No one minds so there's little to fear.

I sure but doesn't that set them on the road to not fearing it so much and isn't that the desired goal? I think you're right that fear can be a prime motivator for damned good reasons and if you're mentally screwed up, you're likely to have a lot of fear in some regard or another, but I think the more mentally healthy you are, the less fear plays a pivotal role. It's still there, but when it should be rather than as a primary.

Hmm. Well I'm not sure I'd argue against that notion. I mean, there is a lot of 'healthy fear', hmm. yeah maybe paranoia is humanity's greatest challenge. I'd never thought about it. I don't think that negates what I've already said at all.

Yeah but they are propogated by trust. So perhaps lacking ability to be reasonable is that big challenge. Maybe it's the same thing, just depends on how you state it. I'd wager that 'fearfulness' and 'reasonability' are inversely proportional.

But then it isn't a motivator any more?

That's all I got at the moment. I'll try to dig deeper.

 

I suppose it's just that if you set up "attempts to guess what is going to happen in the future" is all "motivated by fear", you kind of set up the system to fail. I other words, fear is more of a panicked thing than concern, which is fear if you want to take that perspective on it. I think the semantics of it become important because if you buy into the idea of fear being the prime motivator, then you're always fearful.

I'm still trying to figure out what i think about this topic. Are all emotions derived from fear? I don't think it can be said. I'd say you have "a capacity for emotions" which are basically feedback related contributors to your perspective on your stimulous at a given time. You fear that which threatens you, you covet that which gives you pleasure. So emotion is generally a response to a sensation of discomfort, no, more like a . Functionally, emotions alter your perception of social interactions - even with yourself. They serve to encode the desirability of a moment onto one's impression of their scenario. If you are experiencing duress, emotions help to ensure that the source of that duress is squelched in some manner, by avoiding it, killing it, or any number of things including seeking it due to a weirdness in some other aspect of your mind. If you're experiencing joy, pleasure, whatever... then appreciate, or desirability is impressed upon the moment blah blah. I think emotions are kidn of that mechanism to encode feedback onto your input such that when it's required later for whatever reason (in an animal I would say for the reason of survival, but in humans, the survival instinct is abstracted into 'winning at bingo' or 'brighter teeth' or 'understanding calculus' or whatever) information regarding how you should behave now is encoded in the experience (via the emotions experienced at the time of that experience).

"At the core of human existence lies in the infinitesimal breach between the past and the future: the present. It is the aperture through which we experience ourselves and the world that surrounds us. Initially this perspective in time might be naively inclined to view the past and future with equivalence. However, we're eventually faced with unavoidable evidence to the contrary. We discover that time is irreversible and the future is uncertain. But knowledge of future events is imperative to survival. If you don't know to dodge a boulder falling down a cliff, you don't survive. So how do we know what's coming? Our minds offer an interesting solution to this problem. Given the propensity for thought and memory, a cycle ensues. Thought and memory merge to analyze experience and mold our expectations of the future. In turn we're inspired to investigate our surroundings i.e. "Hmm, that boulder killed Fred, I better watch out for that kind of thing." This instinctive probing of reality - driven by the instinct for survival - is the catalyst for the technological advancement of the human race."
-J. Wesley Morris, 1998.

So yeah, fear is a cog in this process.

Maybe emotions are really "pleasure and pain" and all else is expressions of that. I say love as a really abstract invocation of pleasure, fear is sort of opposite.

 

SO that makes me think that "fear" is an expectation of pain. Like what is experienced by a cowering dog.

And if you're always in pain, pain is what you expect, so you live in fear.

It could be looked at as an expression of the survival instinct I suppose, but if you have the capcity for pleasure, you have the capacity for pain.. and vice versa, so I come back again to thinking that more emotions are experiences put in the framework of the two. Pleasure and pain, like emotions, can get all twisted up in abstracts, as those abstracts directly effect the very structure of your brain.

EDIT:

Does the lion live in fear? Does the gazelle? They are both capable of the emotions, but more than likely live most of their lives with some balance of pleasure and pain. Well, that and they can't remember eough to deal with fear except in the panic kind of sense. Regardless, that tells of that the kind of fear I think is under examination in this thread is learned. I need look no further than my children to see consciousness unburdened with that kind of fear. I'm not sure if I've seen either one of them actually fear anything.

 

Wes, and others thanks for your input. Much to think upon.

Wes would it be fair to say that "Doubt" is a product of "Fear"?

 

You got it.

I'd say it's wholly dependent on context. It can be but is it necessarily? I don't think so at all. I can doubt that I'm going to die later tonight and that's not fear based is it? I can doubt that someone is going to harm one's self...

I'd say that doubt itself is nuetral and the context in which it exists establishes whether or not it's a product of fear.

 

what about the fear of embarrassment? or the fear of embarrassing yourself?

 

What about it?

Okay, can you see embarassment as an abstract form of pain, like I was talking about above? If so do you think that's a reasonable characterization and does it fit as I explained it above?

 

Actually Wes, I see it AS pain and not an abstraction of pain. I agree with all you have said. My "slant" on it ( refering to Rosa's comments) is that we fear pain but welcome pleasure.

I am exploring the idea that fear is our constant companion. It is what guides us away from pain if possible.

For example, you are at work and you have to concentrate to finish a certain task. Your job is to provide value to your employer. You know this and you wish to avoid unemployment ( pain) So you concentrate, not only to keep your job but to maintain a state of mental competancy not only by your bosses reckoning but your own. The fear of not maintaining self expectations and the expectations of others.

There is an old saying that says that "we are what we fear"

As I said before I don't consider fear to be a negative or a constant awareness. For the main part it hardly crosses our minds that fear of pain is driving our sanity.

But I do believe that if we consider our actions in this light, even abstractly there is some value in doing so.

I thank yoU Wes for reminding me of the Fear of Pain. I had actually forgotten this association in those words.

 

I guess it is pretty obvious that we fear pain or the possibility of pain. I think this is a given, however what I wish to delve into is how deep this goes.

When I say embarressment is actually causing pain I mean pain in a physical sense and would suggest that to maintain contextual integrity for this discussion that pain and pleasure be considered as physical attributes. That we recognise certain emotions associated with those physical attributes.

They say the brain can't feel pain or pleasure and maybe it can't as an existential feeling but possibly it is our thinking responses that are the product of the brains feelings and as our thoughts are a product of the sensation, it is us and can not be viewed as separate thus the illusion of being your thoughts instead of being dissassociated from them and viewing our thoughts in a refracted way ( obliquely ) being viewed in hindsight and as an abstraction only.

 

for example :

It could be argued that it our fear of being over weight that is driving the increases in obesity levels in the west. I know this is a loose association and have mentioned it as such knowing this.

Abstraction:
"It was only when they started advertising "lite" and "ultra-thin" and "reduced salt" etc that obesity seemed to become an issue of groing importance.

Are we reacting to the fear of heart disease, and obesity related illnesses by actually puting weight on and not the opposite."

Are our bodies metabolic rates effected by fear?

I am sure there is ample evidence that our metabolic rate can be strongly affected by fear. Increased blood pressure, higher breathing rates, tensions and stresses, forms of paralysis such as reluctance to move freely, "stiffness" etc a form of emotional straight jacket, twitches and other involuntary movements.

Just thinking and typing as I go here.....

 

Don't other things guide you away from pain? Common sense for instance? The fact is, pain is undesirable, so you move away from it. I can't see how that isn't the function of pain, so it inhibits the behavior that induced the pain, as it is destructive to the host (as a general rule). Is all common sense rooted in fear, or wisdom? Is wisdom rooted in fear? Hmm. So yes fear performs the function of inhibiting behavior that will lead to pain, what factors lead to it being necessarily a "constant companion"? If I can offer one example where fear is not present, then has the premise been shown false, or are you looking at this as a generality. "Fear is generally with you", in which case I'd say it's definately dependent significantly on the individual. I can think of people who are the epidomy of each extreme.

Well, that's probably true for most people to some extent at some time, but what about the part where you're happy to be at work? For the most part, I greatly enjoy my work, providing value to my employer seems implicit and well.. so again I'm just re-iterating that it seems to me for sure that it's not every case. there's a lot of neurosis out there though. hey wait now that i think about it, it seems you're talking about what i generally consider a symptom of nuerosis.

Are you sure it wasn't "we, the nuerotic and obsessed, are what we fear"?

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OH, I see, you're putting it THAT way are you. Hmm? "fear of pain drives our sanity"? Hmm.. That's interesting. Lemme see. Why fear? Is fear the same thing as avoidance? If I don't like you and I avoid you, does that mean I fear you? To me, sanity is driven fundamentally by that you wouldn't survive if you weren't sane. Well, there are a number of social and I'd think, evolutionary advantages to "sanity". Hmm.. now that I think about it.. LOL. Who is sane? Yeah man I think that's 'a valid point. Who exactly is it that you accuse of sanity? LOL. Okay what I really mean, is that I don't think that there are too many resources of mind inherently dedicated to maintaining "sanity", depending on what you mean by it. My primary objection being that if you include "being reasonable" (which should be an objective condition within a species you'd think, but isn't) then I don't think very many people are really sane. For a long time I've guessed around 10% of the population as what I'd consider "mentally healthy", but shit.. defining mental health can be pretty complicated in and of itself if you're into splitting hairs and whatnot, which seems necessary sometimes.

I'd say you're right, but the cost of doing so is a general skew to the negative, in that to me the component of "fear" i'm thinking of is negative. Fear as in "hey watch out" is not bad at all. Fear as in "the fags or gonna get me, the black man eats my brains"... well that is pretty negative I'd think.

You're more than welcome. I've actually enjoyed thinking and talking about this, so thank you.