What am I afraid of? What do I fear? The list is fearfully long I'm afraid.
Well, right off the bat, I have the basic fears necessary to survival as does every living thing. But being human, beyond that my fears are as limitless as my imagination. Being human we have the ability to create nighmarish monsters of fears and in some cases even bring them into being. Our fears are a paradoxical conflict since we also love being scared, frightened to death, terrified even as extreme sports, horror movies and video games readily testify. No one fears nothing. Everyone experiences fear regardless what they call it. Denial is fear of being afraid which is a form almost everyone of us practices to some degree or other. And somehow I doubt we can learn not to be afraid. What we perhaps may learn -- are learning to do in small degrees -- is to face fears and deal with them in ways that are not debilitating. The more we learn to take control away from fear and unto to ourselves the healthier, the more advanced we are I believe. But we can't eliminate fear. I think that would be foolish. It's a good tool that for too long has been used by others to keep us in an irrational grip for their own purposes. I'm thinking here mostly of religion, which has been one of the greatest abuses of knowledge in our entire history. As we branched out into our own species this mental ability to comprehend and grasp concepts no other species could also began to wonder the why of frightening things rather than simply hiding and protecting instinctively and coming out again when all was well as all the other animals did. No, we wondered why and began to build defenses against these fearful things. Shelter against weather, weapons against beasts of prey, and all the time asking why. I often wonder about the first bright who saw that an answer to this question was power over the others and set about strange rituals claiming a special connection to the mighty ones who brought such horror and destruction unless they all did as he told them. What came first? God or a priest. My money's on the priest. If fear could be said to have a history one of it's first major dysfunctional uses was by some to control others. Of course the cause was always just. It was always for the good of others that they must be afraid and follow the directions of the priests and shamans and whatnot. But back on point, or rather getting to it, I believe the connection between ego and fear was raised which I'm firmly convinced is that ego is but one of fears bastard children. Greed, malice, envy ... our seven deadly sins if you will, are the retinue of fears bastard offspring. The rest should be behaviorist psychology 101. While I've never actually read any of Santayana's history, I've always loved his simple remonstration that unless one learns history he is doomed to repeat it. I instantly groked and have seen it applied in and to many situations, including fear. Until we learn our fears we are doomed to repeatedly react to them destructively. "Go now. You are blest. And back he went, into the city, everywhere the electric, nowhere the subtle." WCW On Dec 26, 2:30 pm, Matthijs <[email protected]> wrote: > On this forum I read a lot about fear, fear of the unknown. Or fear to > love other people. Out of these fears we usually try to confince > ourselfs of our beliefs by telling our prespectives. Even when i write > this I ask myself why do i tell this? > So to cut the crap i want to ask all of you. What are we (or YOU) > afraid of? > > Happy New year, > Matthijs --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
