Fear

 " My friends are so alone, it breaks my heart, my friends don't understand we all are lost..." Mondo Cozmo

"Fear, make me wanna hurt you..." Little Steven

At first I felt like I had so much to say, so many thoughts I had put down randomly through the years that I wanted to share. Not that I have all the answers, (or any,) but I at least felt comfortable enough with my thoughts to reflect, share and receive responses. To be clear, there have not been many responses- thanks to my one follower:), but I was and still am ready to hear alternative opinions.

These past weeks I have been thinking about fear. I am reading "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing" by Hank Green. I'm not done, and I won't ruin it for those who haven't read it, but I will just say that there is some discussion about two "competing" views of the world...those who believe we must steel ourselves and put up defenses to be prepared for new things to be dangerous or evil, and those who believe we should "send out to the universe what we would like to get back...ie love." This latter point of view opens you up to be taken advantage of and possibly (probably) hurt or disappointed at times. I have long espoused this point of view, understanding these possible ramifications.

What (I think) this book is going to try to point out, is that those of us who try for love over fear can fall into two traps...The first trap is that since we are so obviously in the right, those who do not see things our way are obviously misguided, deluded, close minded, hypocrites. And we thus set ourselves up to see the world as two competing world views. But even if we are "in the right", is pitting one group against another really a solution? And then we try to proselytize and can't for the life of us figure out why others can't see the world as we do. Then we fall into the second trap- the idea that we are somehow superior to those other fools who are ruled by their fear.

Here are some of my thoughts about it. I think we all need to acknowledge that we all live in fear and everyday we need to try to overcome it in small or large ways in order to live in the world. Some of us may have lower or higher levels of fear or anxiety but I think we all struggle with it at some level. 

I also acknowledge that not all our fear is misguided fear, but I do think that at this point in our evolution, most of it is unhealthy. Early life experiences shape our brains and influence the chemical reactions our bodies have to things we encounter later in life. Adverse childhood experiences (poverty, abuse, absent parents, war, pandemic...) clearly influence how our minds and bodies see and react to the world. They influence our sense of self and our risk of chronic diseases as well as our risk of behaving in unhealthy ways. They shape our brains. Adult adverse experiences- assault, rape, war, refugee status, poverty, homelessness to name a few, also make us more wary, more fearful in general. We have things that trigger us to experience (and reexperience) physical fear. This can surely make us see the world as a scary place especially if we do not feel we have control over our own decision making or destiny.

Even those fortunate to have either no adversity in life, or to have enough buffers/resilience to function in most circumstances, also have very different life experiences. Our families raise us with different beliefs, we live in different types of communities, with different geographies, different religions, different population densities, different levels of affluence. Some live or travel in/to a variety of places, some stay in one place. We have different educational experiences. We have different levels of privilege.

But if we acknowledge that we all have fear, that we each have fear, then we can have a conversation about how we want to be if we could let go of some of that fear- as individuals and as a species. And if we acknowledge that we all have fear and that we struggle with it daily, then we can let go of our air of  superiority and not fall into the us vs them trap. Then we can examine what our own fear is leading to...greed, anxiety, prejudice, inability to change/adapt, unwillingness to try new things, accept other people. We ALL have to do this. 

I think fear is intimately entwined with our ego and our physical self. I think it ties in with my idea of consciousness as a property of the universe, but I am certainly not the the first or the only person to promote the idea of letting go of your own ego, and to embrace the idea of your physical self as a temporary shell, to recognize yourself as just a small part of the something much bigger. - Western and Eastern philosophies/religions are based on this idea...the idea of letting go of your earthly physical concerns and recognizing that giving in to love, kindness is the way to salvation, to release. "Be not afraid, I go before you always, come follow me and I will give you rest."

Popular culture is rife with examples- "use the force Luke." 

But despite being surrounded by examples to follow, we all cling to our own lives (all species do this). We cling to life and so are we doomed to live in fear? I hope not. I hope we can acknowledge our fears, acknowledge the existence and the sources of fear in ourselves and try to understand the existence and sources of fears that others have as a start. If we acknowledge that we are part of something bigger and that we are all "the other, " really work on letting go of our own egos even a little, and if we then see how fears manifest in ourselves and in others we can begin our work as individuals and as a society to help each other.

When we "conquer" a fear, or more likely do something despite our  fear, we often feel a sense of accomplishment, pleasure, relief. But it can be very hard.

My thought is that we acknowledge our fears and their manifestations, then enlist help to try, to trust, to do and see where that leads. Every day in a small way.

Peace Out.

Sheila

Book Recommendation: "An Absolutely Remarkable Thing." Hank Green

Album recommendation: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band- "Darkness on the Edge of Town" - because really I can't say it any better than this...

Playlist: Spotify search smknerr public playlist: "Fear"

Consciousness as a Property of the Universe

  

It has been a busy, sometimes hard month and I have not posted on this blog in that time. The following are really rough notes about something I have been considering for a long time.

I invite you to think about the following and would love to hear about any further reading that any of you would suggest on the topic.

Thank you and be well.

Peace out...

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why any physical state is conscious rather than nonconscious. 

Panpsychism is the view that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality. The word itself was coined by the Italian philosopher Francesco Patrizi in the sixteenth century, and derives from the two Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind).

BUT..."what is mind?—is more difficult and contentious. Here panpsychism is on neither better nor worse footing than any other approach to mind; it argues only that one’s notion of mind, however conceived, must apply in some degree to all things.

The panpsychist conception of mind must be sufficiently broad to plausibly encompass humans and non-human objects as well. Panpsychists typically see the human mind as a unique, highly-refined instance of some more universal concept. They argue that mind in, say, lower animals, plants, or rocks is neither as sophisticated nor as complex as that of human beings. But this in turn raises new questions: What common mental quality or qualities are shared by these things? And why should we even call such qualities “mental” in the first place?

from the (Peer reviewed) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (who knew?)

But what if we understand consciousness as a property of the universe, like elecrtomagnetic radiation or gravity. All living creatures have the ability to tap into this at greater or lesser degrees and perhaps by different mechanisms. Gravity affects us all, rocks, birds, people. Electromagnetic radiation...well

 Electromagnetic radiation is a form of energy that is present all around us and takes various forms like microwaves, television waves, radio waves, gamma rays, X-rays, and visible light. 

We know different creatures experience different forms of EM radiation to greater or lesser degrees. We can see certain colors of light, but other species can experience a different range of colors (Ultraviolet is just light) 

  Our “self” or ego is the biochemical response to consciousness and is shaped by our particular circumstances and physical attributes,  but we are all part of the collective consciousness. We are all then truly the child in the detention center in Arizona, and the preteen struggling with their gender identity, and the mother and the old white gentleman. We are all the same. It is quite a concept and why should we believe that.? I don’t know but isn’t that a bit like God? Michael Pollan just released a book about the use of psychedelic drugs. It is on my list but still unread. I did listen to an interview he did and he talks of their successful use in medicine- specifically to treat anxiety and depression in concert with cognitive therapy. He also discusses their similarity to people’s reports of “near death experiences.” He describes it as kind of a “rebooting” of our egos. The drugs cause us to dissociate ourselves from our experiences. We can look at the particular stories of who we are that we tell ourselves (our egos) as if we are outside of ourselves. In this way we can see the destructive stories “objectively” and understand that we don’t have to keep telling them to ourselves. We can change. 

  But how do psychologists define ego? Freud, that sexually fixated, psychologist, did advance a framework still used today when he described the ego, id and superego. The id being our “primitive” desires/wants for immediate gratification, the superego being the “internalization of cultural rules/morality- ie our conscience and inner critic, and the ego as “our conscious awareness” whose job it is to separate out “what is real” or to “make sense of our reality”- even if we lie to ourselves/make up stories in order to have the input to our brains “make sense” (corpus collosum experiments). 

  Neuroscience tells us about the amygdala (primitive, emotion laden (fear, anger, lust, joy), immediate reward area of our brain and the prefrontal cortex (the executive planning, delayed gratification, more “rational” part of our brain) and the struggle between the two that we feel when we are presented with a decision point. We know that we are “fighting within ourselves” between which path to follow. But “who” is mediating this fight and who decides the winner? Why do we tend to follow the same paths over and over, even when they are destructive? 

 These are fascinating questions and I don’t have the answer. But the synthesis of my readings and experiences has led me to think of this idea of consciousness as a potentially viable one. What do you think? 

See also Annika Harris’s book “Consciousness” for further discussion of this idea. As well as “The Case Against Reality.”

Playlist on spotify at smknerr "Comfortably Numb"