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?

[jekan blazer]

as some famous person once said, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself"...

[beroq]

Our main source of apprehension is death, I guess. We are curious creatures. Curious and still very forgetful. Forgetful and very coward. In Arabic, the equivalent of the word "human" means "One who can easily forget." What is it that we keep forgetting? Mostly what we are forgetting is what we are not getting. We disregard it when we could not find the answer.

One of the biggest unanswered truths that we are inclined to forget easily and very quickly is death. It must be hard for our limited foresight to grasp such big truth as death. We are limited to five senses and the electrical signals that are sent from somewhere to the perceptive neurons in our brain. We are bound to be free but not as long as we retain our worldly setbacks and the only way to get rid of those setbacks is to experience death in one way or another.

If the choice were ours, we would much prefer to remain in this imperfect world forever with our imperfect senses bounded by the limits that are set by the art of the divine creation. However though, it is not our choice. We are doomed to be free as we are doomed to die someday.

[coberst]

Our main source of apprehension is death, I guess. We are curious creatures. Curious and still very forgetful. Forgetful and very coward. In Arabic, the equivalent of the word "human" means "One who can easily forget." What is it that we keep forgetting? Mostly what we are forgetting is what we are not getting. We disregard it when we could not find the answer.

One of the biggest unanswered truths that we are inclined to forget easily and very quickly is death. It must be hard for our limited foresight to grasp such big truth as death. We are limited to five senses and the electrical signals that are sent from somewhere to the perceptive neurons in our brain. We are bound to be free but not as long as we retain our worldly setbacks and the only way to get rid of those setbacks is to experience death in one way or another.

If the choice were ours, we would much prefer to remain in this imperfect world forever with our imperfect senses bounded by the limits that are set by the art of the divine creation. However though, it is not our choice. We are doomed to be free as we are doomed to die someday.

I think that we do not forget death but that we repress our knowledge of our mortality.

Humans seek to be more than animals. We seek to be gods or at least propagate that level above animal and below God.

That which promotes life is good that which promotes death is evil. “Evil lies not in the hearts of men but in the social arrangements that men take for granted.”

Wo/man lives a debased life under tyranny and self delusion because s/he does not comprehend the conditions of natural freedom. Sapiens need hope and belief in themselves; thus illusion is necessary if it is creative for life, but is evil if it promotes death.

A psychodynamic analysis of history displays saga of death, destruction, and coercion from the outside while inside we see self-delusion and self enslavement. We seek mystification. We seek transference; we seek hypnotists as our chosen leaders.

We seek the power to ward off big evil by reflexively embracing small terrors and small fascinations in the place of overwhelming ones.

Courage is the fundamental qualifying quality for being a hero. So, why are we all so naturally cowardly? Our goal is to be a hero and we lack the courage to be so.

We constantly struggle for a life that has meaning. All meaning for us is associated with that which comes to us from the outside. Our sense of self is derived by looking at others for determining who and what we are. “Our whole world of right and wrong, good and bad, our name, precisely who we are, is grafted into us; and we never feel we have authority to offer things on our own…we feel ourselves in many ways guilty and beholden to others…indebted to them for our very birth.”

Abraham Maslow spoke of our being fearful of standing alone. We fear actualizing our potential. We have the urge to ‘be all we can be’ but we fear to attempt the fulfillment of this urge. “We fear our highest possibility…we even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in our self…yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness.” Maslow coined the phrase ‘Jonah Syndrome’ to mean the evasion of the full intensity of life.

The Jonah Syndrome is a justified fear of losing control and being torn apart—to even being killed by the experience of being all we can be. Otto Rank spoke of our natural feeling of inferiority in the face of the transcendence of life and creation.

Quotes from “The Denial of Death” by Ernest Becker

[beroq]

...We seek to be gods or at least propagate that level above animal and below God.

That which promotes life is good that which promotes death is evil. “Evil lies not in the hearts of men but in the social arrangements that men take for granted.... ”

Our place in the void is not determined by the objects that surround us; rather, by the inner quality and light that we are able dig out of the debasment into which our Self is constantly trying us to pull. We, as human beings, are in a arena of a constant fight between opposite forces of good and evil. While the good is rooted in the Heavens, the bad dwells in the darkest pit. This dual quality makes us vulnerable to creative and destructive effects of or spirituality.

I don't think goodness and badness are products of mortality and immortality as we already posses the immortality. What we are afraid of is the expectation of that sudden realisation of immortality already placed in our essence.

[The Atheist]

What are we afraid of?

Mostly the same as our parents were.


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.

As usual, we are very much in sync.

It's an expansion on having a filter, and of course, it raises the evil spectre of maths becoming a religion. Which is a shame, because it ought to be. Apparently, truths are found in religion; well, the one place I've always found guaranteed to be truth is in maths. As Winston Smith would tell you, two plus two really always does equal four.


If we do not become more intellectually sophisticated our artifacts will destroy us.

Yep. That's one theme I've been a believer in for many a long day.


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?[/b]

You, me and George Orwell!

Must be right.


Our main source of apprehension is death, I guess.

Dead right.


We constantly struggle for a life that has meaning.

There it is - the thing above the top of the pyramid.


I don't think goodness and badness are products of mortality and immortality as we already posses the immortality. What we are afraid of is the expectation of that sudden realisation of immortality already placed in our essence.

I think you're approaching the question from an entirely different angle, and from above the pyramid.

[blazeofglory]

We are afraid of many things. Every thing intimidates us, the environment we are in, the people we cohabit with, the Gods we believe in, the diseases we may be inflicted with, the inescapable death everything generates fear.

Fear is in our DNA and we are primordially fearsome species, and children are programmed to fear.

Fear is everywhere omnipresent, in our veins, in the air, in the talk, in everything we come across in point of fact.

Let us not fear fear.

[caddy_caddy]

as some famous person once said, "we have nothing to fear but fear itself"...
agree:(

[JWHooper]

We humans are afraid of theory of philosophical nature. Please read Sonnet no. 20 by Shakespeare. It tells us that the painting of nature is philosophical theory, hence solved.