The end of fear .

[MikeyDB]

Hi Beve!

When conditions inside a social framework fail to appease those with nefarious agendas, emotions can and are as you say 'comodified'. "Bravery" is the response to fear that permits 'heroism' as social construct to define and chacterize "appropriate" behavior. The mafia/cosa nostra, the gangs of the "hood", Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, all conscript the use of fear to serve their agendas. Similarly, everything from fat baldness and facility to demonstrate wealth and power serve the agendas of the merchantile machine.

When we learn to fear Islam on behavior predicated on the actions of a few, that fear is magnified and expanded on by governments and the military to serve the agendas of the political and economic structures. Seldom is the fear of Catholicism or actions and behaviours of "Christian" religious sects focused on as harboring many of the same prejudices and biases as the target "belief". We (North Americans) are awash in fear, a fear cultivated and encouraged by those who use fear as the manipulator of governments and industry.

 

[Outta here]

Interesting, we humans use simple linear points of reference for the most part, such as the coin or my favourite the stick. But we should have advanced to the sphereical reference eons ago, and some have.Even use of the root analogy is rooted in the distant past (root of the tree of knowledge. Love generates as much fear as hate, love and hate are not excludable of each other and cannot be thought of separately, try it, you are forced to bounce between the two through the range of emotion, it's inescapable. Hate and love and fear and greed and lust and all the other human consideration coexist simultaneously in a sphere of human emotion. IMO

Thanks DB - I had hoped someone would bring the discussion to this - it's much too vast to try and grapple with over a single cup of coffee on a Monday morning... but there's much to what you've said here, and I do agree - there's purpose to every emotion we're gifted with - it's what intention we bring to it that makes the difference, imo...

I hope many continue to post on this topic - I'm gobbling up all the thought provoking contributions!

 

[MikeyDB]

Hi Zan!

We had a brief discussion regarding intentionality before and that discussion didn't really seem to spark much interest....

Emotions, whether fear or love are used by governments by business by the next door neighbor to manipulate perceptions and thought. "Entertainment Industry" re-shapes and re-defines the appropriateness of particular emotions giving us the anti-hero and the popularity of cinematic brutality. Fear might be a good place to start the examination of how far we've moved from the primitive to the enlightened...but I'm afraid....

 

[Outta here]

Heh Mikey - I know you posted that in jest, but there's a tidbit of truth in most humour yes? ;-)

You mention some of the uses of emotion - however in the terms you present, I see this more as an Abuse. Usefulness connotates a positive or productive outcome to me. Semantics maybe, but somehow it seems an important distinction to make in a discussion such as this.

There is use to emotions we don't enjoy ie. fear, hate etc... they exist for a reason, and if we listen to our feelings (the language of the soul) wisely, we can actually find gratitude within their existence.

I've yet to see anything positive I can assign to the abuse of such feelings.

I've been looking on-line to find some material I can bring to the discussion to help me elaborate further on the duality of our emotions, but the time I can devote to this is sporadic..

I'd love nothing more than to take a huge chunk of time off work and just gorge myself silly on discussions and readings on this subject... little bits of time here and there don't really allow for some concepts to reach their full gestation within our imagination...

 

[talloola]

and desires. Then when there is this total emptiness, when there is absolutely and literally nothing, no influences, no value, no frontier, no word, then in that complete stillness of time-space, there is that which is unnameable.

The above description to me, would be total 'boredom'. Just my person opinion .

Don't need another reply from you China, your first one was abundantly clear, nothing
more needs to be said.

 

[Outta here]

Talloola, somehow I think you have much to offer to a discussion on the presence of fear in the human experience... ... I am interested, and listening...

 

[talloola]

Talloola, somehow I think you have much to offer to a discussion on the presence of fear in the human experience... ... I am interested, and listening...

Thanks Zan, appreciate and needed that support, but I think I will leave this thread for
now, there's other areas of interest for me, have a good one.

 

[china]

talloola
Don't need another reply from you China, your first one was abundantly clear, nothing
more needs to be said.-------------------------------------------------------

Dear talloola ,sometimes I just say things without thinking ,that's not right , I 'm sorry , China

 

[china]

s_lone
China,
Do you have a fear of fear?________________________________

No s_lone ,I don't have a fear of fear .

 

[china]

What do we mean by fear? Fear of what? There are various types of fear and we need not analyse every type. But we can see that fear comes into being when our comprehension of relationship is not complete. Relationship is not only between people but between ourselves and nature, between ourselves and property, between ourselves and ideas; as long as that relationship is not fully understood, there must be fear. Life is relationship. To be is to be related and without relationship there is no life. Nothing can exist in isolation; so long as the mind is seeking isolation, there must be fear. Fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relation to something.

 

[Outta here]

What do we mean by fear? Fear of what? There are various types of fear and we need not analyse every type. But we can see that fear comes into being when our comprehension of relationship is not complete. Relationship is not only between people but between ourselves and nature, between ourselves and property, between ourselves and ideas; as long as that relationship is not fully understood, there must be fear. Life is relationship. To be is to be related and without relationship there is no life. Nothing can exist in isolation; so long as the mind is seeking isolation, there must be fear. Fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relation to something.

China - you're so right - fear cannot exist in a vacuum... without context, it becomes nothing.

But as you said, we live in relationship to everything. Jeopardize the context of those relationships we exist within, and fear results. This speaks to the duality that envelopes all life...It is how we define ourselves - we know what we are by knowing what we are not. If I am not 'this' then I must be 'that'. Fear enters the equation when we are faced with a threat to that relationship...which becomes a threat to the context of our existence...our definition of self... it forces us to peer into the chasm of the unknown.

Fear con flourish at these times, I believe. It's part of the human condition to fear anything that messes with our definition of self.

Oddly enough, it's a regular aspect of our growth as humans too... so have I just convinced myself there is no growth - no life in fact, without fear? 8O

Now I know why I rarely try to do a philosophical tango with you China, my head hurts now!!:lol:

 

[MikeyDB]

China

"Fear is not an abstraction"

Kindly post a picture of two pounds of fear and please be sure to include the color texture and other characteristics of fear that can be realized through holding "fear" in your hand.

Emotions are all abstractions China. Anytime consciousness encounters that quality of non-substantive experience which defines behavior, love, envy greed hate fear lust and the like, we are held by our emotional construct, these abstractions that exhibit neither substance nor any other quality that would render them anything other than abstraction.

This isn't to suggest that they don't have influence or "power" over us, to believe otherwise is to deny reality. Now isn't that peculiar China...? You once asked what "god" is.. Do you see a similarity here?

 

[darkbeaver]

s_lone
China,
Do you have a fear of fear?________________________________

No s_lone ,I don't have a fear of fear .

Thankyou s_lone for the wedge. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." How could you circumvent this truism China? You must fear fear or you would not be warning against it's caustic affect. In essense this thread points to that fear very clearly. You will never be without fear China.
When what is you becomes fearless it won't be you anymore. Fear has many aspects which from the basis of investigation, curiousity, ambition, spirituality and the never ending quest for completion all driven by fear of exclusion. A search for harmony begins with the fear of disharmony. Human experiance without fear is disasterous. Fear of death is our best advisor.
If you will not fear you will not live. A life without fear is a bird without feathers.

 

[china]

MikeyDB ,

Emotions are all abstractions China. Anytime consciousness encounters that quality of non-substantive experience which defines behavior, love, envy greed hate fear lust and the like, we are held by our emotional construct, these abstractions that exhibit neither substance nor any other quality that would render them anything other than abstraction.

First of all, anything that is overcome has to be conquered again and again. No problem can be finally overcome, conquered; it can be understood but not conquered. They are two completely different processes and the conquering process leads to further confusion, further fear. To resist, to dominate, to do battle with a problem or to build a defence against it is only to create further conflict, whereas if we can understand fear, go into it fully step by step, explore the whole content of it, then fear will never return in any form.
As I said, fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relationship. What do we mean by fear? Ultimately we are afraid, are we not, of not being, of not becoming. Now, when there is fear of not being, of not advancing, or fear of the unknown, of death, can that fear be overcome by determination, by a conclusion, by any choice? Obviously not. Mere suppression, sublimation, or substitution, creates further resistance, does it not? Therefore fear can never by overcome through any form of discipline, through any form of resistance. That fact must be clearly seen, felt and experienced: fear cannot be overcome through any form of defence or resistance nor can there be freedom from fear through the search for an answer or through mere intellectual or verbal explanation.

 

[china]

darkbeaver ,

No s_lone ,I don't have a fear of fear . Thankyou s_lone for the wedge. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." How could you circumvent this truism China? You must fear fear or you would not be warning against it's caustic affect. In essense this thread points to that fear very clearly. You will never be without fear China.
When what is you becomes fearless it won't be you anymore. Fear has many aspects which from the basis of investigation, curiousity, ambition, spirituality and the never ending quest for completion all driven by fear of exclusion. A search for harmony begins with the fear of disharmony. Human experiance without fear is disasterous. Fear of death is our best advisor.

Are we afraid of a fact or of an idea about the fact? Are we afraid of the thing as it is, or are we afraid of what we think it is? Take death, for example. Are we afraid of the fact of death or of the idea of death? The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another. Am I afraid of the word 'death' or of the fact itself? Because I am afraid of the word, of the idea, I never understand the fact, I never look at the fact, I am never in direct relation with the fact. It is only when I am in complete communion with the fact that there is no fear. If I am not in communion with the fact, then there is fear, and there is no communion with the fact so long as I have an idea, an opinion, a theory, about the fact, so I have to be very clear whether I am afraid of the word, the idea or of the fact. If I am face to face with the fact, there is nothing to understand about it: the fact is there, and I can deal with it. If I am afraid of the word, then I must understand the word, go into the whole process of what the word, the term, implies.For example, one is afraid of loneliness, afraid of the ache, the pain of loneliness. Surely that fear exists because one has never really looked at loneliness, one has never been in complete communion with it. The moment one is completely open to the fact of loneliness one can understand what it is, but one has an idea, an opinion about it, based on previous knowledge; it is this idea, opinion, this previous knowledge about the fact, that creates fear. Fear is obviously the outcome of naming, of terming, of projecting a symbol to represent the fact; that is fear is not independent of the word, of the term.I have a reaction, say, to loneliness; that is I say I am afraid of being nothing. Am I afraid of the fact itself or is that fear awakened because I have previous knowledge of the fact, knowledge being the word, the symbol, the image? How can there be fear of a fact? When I am face to face with a fact, in direct communion with it, I can look at it, observe it; therefore there is no fear of the fact. What causes fear is my apprehension about the fact, what the fact might be or do.It is my opinion, my idea, my experience, my knowledge about the fact, that creates fear. So long as there is verbalization of the fact, giving the fact a name and therefore identifying or condemning it, so long as thought is judging the fact as an observer, there must be fear. Thought is the product of the past, it can only exist through verbalization, through symbols, through images; so long as thought is regarding or translating the fact, there must be fear.

 

[MikeyDB]

China: Fear is not an abstraction.

China: “What do we mean by fear? Ultimately we are afraid, are we not, of not being, of not becoming.”

Is this your idea China? It sounds very similar to one of Martin Heidegger’s thoughts regarding the nature of “being”….ontology. Please help me to understand what you mean by: “As I said, fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relationship.”

If “relationship” represents a different kind of existence, an experience of existence that is relative to all other things, in essence defined not by the self but by the nature of some relationship that exists…what mechanism informs consciousness both that this “relationship” and this different reality (predicated on the dynamic of relativism) is in fact the nature of being? If we refer to your idea that the individual doesn’t exist, by what metric is the experience of existence intuited? Intellect and Intelligence won’t suffice, you’ve given us your insights on these elements, and the “individual” doesn’t exist either…..

Sophistry: A deliberately invalid argument displaying ingenuity in reasoning in the hope of deceiving someone.

Every component of “being” from the quality/nature of consciousness from which ideation of the “self” proceeds to the necessary acknowledgement of the fallibility and hence rejection of this mechanism as instrument of cognition, to propositions suggesting that emotion is substantive existence!

Applying your logic would infer that your understanding of existence, that “being”, is similar if not identical to Edmund Hussrl’s doctrine proposing that the study of human experience reject considerations of objective reality. Have you “cherry-picked from the “classical” philosophers to weave a tapestry of alternative reality?

China doesn’t exist.

Only the fear, love, hate, envy, anger lust and greed of some non-corporeal entity clad in this suit of non-abstractions lends a suggestion of phenomenal existence/“being” to the anomaly of non-chaotic data emanating from a silicon wafer bombarded by electrons….

Why would anyone waste their time attempting to conduct a dialogue with something that doesn’t exist, or rather, with a bundle of emotional accoutrements of dubious existential form (given intellect would be critical to facilitating the perception of this anomaly, and we ought reject intelligence and intellect as myths perpetrated by this interrelationship) and would better spend one’s time listening and watching those epiphenomena of our singular and isolated psychological delusions?

“Feelings” exist but substative experience doesn’t. Experience of the texture, weight and other qualia of sensory data is false and delussional while the hungry can be fed with love and their injuries and sickness can be treated with empathy…alone.

Or does China exist only through verbiage as some sort of idea cascading around the planet on the subtle non-existence of electrons?

 

[darkbeaver]

Fear is not exclusively a product of thought. All organism recoil in fear at danger without conscious thought, this is an evolutionary reflex, one of the primary building blocks of sentience I believe. The reflexes associated with danger or depravation, such as temperature, light, sound, tactile input are made of genetic memory and as such form part of the whole (human), there is no way to remove fear from the human experiance, conscious intillectual circumvention of fear still hinges on fear as the motivation. So I cannot see or understand how we will intellectualize or survive without the cardinal necessity of fear. It is my understanding that fear is hardwired and permanent in the human experiance. The glass is always full.

 

[china]

darkbeaver ,

So I cannot see or understand how we will intellectualize or survive without the cardinal necessity of fear. It is my understanding that fear is hardwired and permanent in the human experiance. The glass is always full..

Yes darkbeaver ,there is also a physical fear but that is a response we have inherited from the animals. It is psychological fears that I'm concerned with here, for when we understand the deep-rooted psychological fears we will be able to meet the animal fears, whereas to be concerned with the animal fears first will never help us to understand the psychological fears.The first thing to ask ourselves then is what is fear and how does it arise? What do we mean by the word fear itself? I am asking myself what is fear not what I am afraid of..I lead a certain kind of life; I think in a certain pattern; I have certain beliefs and dogmas and I don't want those patterns of existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I don't want them to be disturbed because the disturbance produces a state of unknowing and I dislike that. If I am torn away from everything I know and believe, I want to be reasonably certain of the state of things to which I am going. So the brain cells have created a pattern and those brain cells refuse to create another pattern which may be uncertain
The movement from certainty to uncertainty is what I call a ( psychological) fear.

 

[china]

This isn't to suggest that they don't have influence or "power" over us, to believe otherwise is to deny reality. Now isn't that peculiar China...? You once asked what "god" is.. Do you see a similarity here?

Yes I do MikeyDB, both are a product of the mind.

 

[china]

MickeyDB

Is this your idea China? It sounds very similar to one of Martin Heidegger’s thoughts regarding the nature of “being”….ontology. Please help me to understand what you mean by: “As I said, fear is not an abstraction; it exists only in relationship.”

[SIZE=-1]

To know the whole process, the totality of oneself, does not require any expert, Mr.Martin Heideggar or any other authority. The pursuit of authority only breeds fear. No expert, no specialist, can show us how to understand the process of the self. One has to study it for oneself. You MickeyDB , and I can help each other by talking about it , but none can unfold it for us, no specialist, no teacher, can explore it for us.[/SIZE]