[shahar2k]

I'm reading through this book, "feel the fear and do it anyways" my dad gave it to me, and I know, it's a self help book, but it really has a lot of interesting tidbits.
basically I've read the first few chapters, and while they don't go into detail they discuss what the author feels the nature of feer is, not gripping fear, as in the fight of flight effect, but the kind of fear people face every day. much like what is described in the (abnoxiously long ) "Sorry girls, it has to be said..."
where everyone goes into their problems/solutions with the dealings of love and friendship

basically this book, in the first chapter, says that all fears can be boiled down to one simple Idea, you are afraid that you cannot handle what will happen next. simple as that. and that is what's blocking you from really reaching your goal.
now I've gone through my life, fearing, I'm a scared little bastard I was afraid of even speaking to a girl untill I was in 10th grade, thing is, I've changed since then, drastically. and this book, helped put to words, what I allready knew.

fear never goes away, fear is always there in the back of your head, you'r always going to be afraid of what you are afraid now. however, fear, is not what is stopping you. you are what is stopping you.
and the only way to really understand that, is to leaern to ignore fear, to basically go out and "do it" and the more you do something, the better you understand your fear of it, the less it will affect you.

anyways, what's your definition of fear? how do you deal with it... do you deal with it?


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Maybe I'm paranoid... maybe it's you!

[faustgfx]

"fight fire with fire" applies to fear quite well. 's all i'm going to say.



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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone

[email protected]
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[shahar2k]

uhm... faust, what exactly does that MEAN? maybe it's cus its 6 AM, but i'm not sure I can understand your comment

[Spitfire]

I am constantly afraid. Only by working, reading, interacting or playing games i can supress it and not be afraid. The moment there�s nothing on my mind, the fear takes over.



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Sincerely yours, I�ve disowned us.

[faustgfx]

sharar2k, my philosophy says, if it's a threat, beat it down.

so if the source of fear is something definable / existing, just bring it down by whatever means necessary.



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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone

[email protected]
icq#35983387
http://faustgfx.0wns.org (soon)

[shahar2k]

fuast,
I don't think you understand the question though, it's not what do you do when you are afraid, I was asking what is it that causes you to be afraid?
I mean when you, say, go up to a girl, and can't bring yourself to ask her out, why are you doing it? why is it that you can't bring yourself to do certain things. I think it's because of fear, and too many people live by their fears, and that is the only reason we aren't successfull.

[faustgfx]

you chose the wrong example now.




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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone

[email protected]
icq#35983387
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[-- Transcendent --]

I think we all fear death. We live, work, and repress to overcome, deal with, and push away the notion of mortality to the darkerst corners of our minds.

Death, and procreation are the two instincts which define the black and white. The rest is just the grey matter in between. (that sentence actually turned out pretty well )

[Ben Barker]

Fear and death the only motivators? That's Freud almost exactly.
I would say there are different kinds of fear, one for each kind of state your thinking on (Maslow's hierarchy of needs). The basic state would be physiological, like food and water, then safety, then love, esteem, and finally self actualization. Fear on any one of those levels is a fear of not succeding on fulfilling that level's requirement.
Lower levels take complete precedence over higher levels.

[above]

i fear faust. dun dun dun :P

[-- Transcendent --]

quote

Quote:

I mean when you, say, go up to a girl, and can't bring yourself to ask her out, why are you doing it? why is it that you can't bring yourself to do certain things. I think it's because of fear, and too many people live by their fears, and that is the only reason we aren't successful.

Wrong, embarrassing ourselves in front of the opposite sex isn't going to make us any more successful. If the inverse occurred, would you have complied ? Do you picture yourself as the girl, and wonder how you would react in such a circumstance ? Is that fear ? Why do we need female acquaintances ? Procreation ? Tradition ? Social Acceptance ? Material Assistance ? Repression ?

Yup, just a lame rip off Freud's work. But remember, Maslow's hierarchy of needs do revolve around procreation, death, and repression. So I can't find a more basic truth than that.

[-- Transcendent --]

Oops, forgot to add, if you didn't have food, you woulden't be fearful, just hungry. If you didn't have love, we would feel depressed, not fearful.

Yabba yabba yabba.

[Ben Barker]

Well, there is a stress that comes along with trying to find food. And there is DEFINITELY a fear of not finding anyone to love you.
Maybe lots of words we have for these feelings are just different names for that flavor of fear.

[Bradford]

face the fear.

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[email protected]
icq#:3704871

[shahar2k]

argh! words... twisted....

no, I wasn't talking about iminent fears, and I did not say fear was the driving force, all I said is that most of us let fear controll out lives.

when you talk about fear of not being able to find food, well all I am saying is that behind that is the basic fear that you just wouldn't know how to handle what happened next. I'm talking about paralizing fear, the kind of thing that happens, when you have a choice to make, and constantly delay it.

say you are faced with a great looking friendly girl. would you rather talk to her? or would you, knowing that she is friendly towards you, ask her out imidiately? 90% of the time, you'd just talk.

Fear is not a motivating force, infact it's not a force at all, it's a feeling that you get whenever you encounter the unknown. and the response to most fears is avoidance, so if you fear rejection by that girl, you will avoid situations that *might* get you rejected.

allso, I really did not read freud, or at least, not specifically his work, I took several classes in philosophy, and psychology, but I'll be damned if I could quote anyone specifically without referring to a book.
it's just the way I learn, I understand theories, and learn them quickly, but no way in hell will my brain ever store a single fact on where who or what was involved in the creation of those theories. So please next time, give me some clue as to which work of freud, or Maslow's you are referring to? (although I do know the basic needs since I recently refered to them in another thread... again from a book)

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Maybe I'm paranoid... maybe it's you!

[Bradford]

fear comes in different forms for everyone. one person might be scared to death to ask another girl out, while the other laughs and does it without a problem. some people have prolonged fear about becomming too successfull, while others crave the idea. it just differs from person to person. a lot of it has to do with how you are raised. sorry that probly doesn't fit anywhere into what you were asking.

[edit] spitfire couldn't agree with you more

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[email protected]
icq#:3704871

[This message has been edited by Bradford (edited December 31, 2000).]

[Spitfire]

Freud never wrote about what to do when there's nothing to be afraid of, yet you are.

Psychologist are fuckers, THEY have never been scared.

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Sincerely yours, I�ve disowned us.

[Starseed]

Congrats, this is a huge philosophical questions.

Feel the fear and do it anyways was one of the Huge books, I believe. I ran across it a few years back and read a little. When boiled down, the message was very simple, if I remember correctly - the message you've been elaborating.

But consider this. Fear is and always will be a huge part of our lives. Also, now, I would never right it off the way that book does. How easy it is to deal with, etc. Fear is a natural first reaction, and it seems to be that it is often a safe-guard from pain, whether it be physical or emotional.

Basically, I think I can count more instances where by trusting my fear and not doing anything, its helped me more than the instances where I've overcome the fear to accomplish something.

So, I'd basically say that my philosophy on fear, is that it is essential and under-rated. The older we get, the more fear there is, because of our expanding awareness of what we live in, and the possibilities open to us. Growing knowledge makes living much harder - but when you think about it, harder is better. Challenge is good. Growing fear is good. As long as you can keep your mind in a simplified space ( compartmentalize )where you aren't considering all of this /shit/ that you have become aware of with age.

Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

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everything is relative

[faustgfx]

it's odd. right now, and for the last 2 months, i've not felt fear.

well, i fear my project supervisor 'cause he has too much power over things. but that does not count as natural fear.

thus, i suck.



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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone/ministry
the law of lead now reigns!@#!/earth crisis

[email protected]
icq#35983387
http://faustgfx.0wns.org

[Starseed]

faust, maybe you don't know the definition of fear that I'm getting at. The whole concept of my post was the fact that you probably aren't aware that fear plays a huge part in your very existence, living day to day.

For instance, your alarm goes off. Why do you wake up? Likely because if you dont, you know the negative of being late for work will happen, so to avoid that negative, you wake up even though it woudl feel much better to go back to sleep. You prepare yourself the way you want, grooming to your style. You fear what not doing that might have people think of you. Like grooming yourself like an accountant and coming into work and the reactions of your coworkers. You dont eat the rat poison in the trap in the corner of your appartment because you fear that it would kill you. You even handle things like this with care because you fear that they could harm you if you didn't. Legitimate fear, btw. I'm talking about all of these legitimate fears that you don't even think of, but they keep you alive. I could probably list thousands that happen through the day if I wanted to (which I dont.)

Fear is huge. You don't have to be macho and proclaim that you rarely fear anything

-mt

[faustgfx]

just to be my usual self, i'll say that i do not fear those things you just listed.

i sleep and wake up at work. i'm big enough of a cock here to stand up and assault when needed / always anyway.

i thought about the whole fear subject for 'bout 20 minutes while working right just a moment ago, and i really can't figure out anything that i'd truely fear. not from my own point of view, and not from the point of view of an outsider looking at me.

*shrug*

oh, i do fear girls. but that's a completely another thing. :|




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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone/ministry
the law of lead now reigns!@#!/earth crisis

[email protected]
icq#35983387
http://faustgfx.0wns.org

[-- Transcendent --]

I'm certain fear is not merely us dealing with the unknown. Or death. Yes, it's me contradicting my self. But, honestly, I don't care.

We fear things everyday which we deal with. Just look at phobias - it's a stimuli which triggers a chemical reaction in the brain which causes fears.

Speaking of behaviorism, I had another unusual "altered state of sleep" (isn't that unusual ?) yesterday (I can't explain in simple terms), which was basically about me looking at a brightly lit bedroom with nice vases and other "happy" things. But when I woke up, I was fearful - the "happy" dream seemed like a nightmare. I was paralyzed. But I could move. I was just afraid to move.

Why ? And after much thought, I couldn't understand why I felt that surge of fear. Sure, it could have been some hidden, innate form of psychological repression, but I'm certain it's more simple than that.

Odd ?

[shahar2k]

ah, but phobias aren't fears. let me explain, when you are agoraphobic (fear of open spaces) your fear is no diffrent than everyone else's fear. however, it's the way you deal with it that's the problem, quite simply, you can't deal with it, so you avoid it. the major staple of phobias is that "avoidance" thing where you will go to any length to avoid that fealing of fear. that's why I can say I am honestly afraid of needles (to the poing of cold sweats at the mention that I have to get near one...) but I can't say I'm suffering from any phobia, because I can mentaly overcome the simptoms of that fear by just forcing myself to deal with them. thing is, the fear never goes away. you just become better and better with dealing with it, I still get nervous at every shot, but I'm used to it, it's nothing more than the phisical response anymore, I just know what to expect.
same thing with everyday life. if you are afraid of something, the fealing of fear, that dread you get when you know you have to face it, will NEVER go away. but you will know that it's there, you will know that if't just that, a feeling, and you don't have to act on it specifically.

Perhaps that's what you mean faust when you say you aren't afraid? that you don't act on your fears? because if you aren't afraid, there's something wrong with your natural warning system

m'thinks I'll try and get into an abnormal psychology class this semester... the last one seemed fun

oh and transcendent, are you sure you could move?
there is a condition which causes you to wake up but be paralized, you see when you sleep, your medula (top of the spinal column) blocks out all signals going to your body, so that your dreams don't affect you. infact the oposite of paralysis when you are awake is sleepwalking where your dreams DO go through to your body.... and you can see that some people twitch when they dream, that is allso a kind of faliur of that mechanism....

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Maybe I'm paranoid... maybe it's you!


[This message has been edited by shahar2k (edited January 03, 2001).]

[Chronic Beauty]

Fear is a built in pyschological mechanism just like lust, shock and rage. Our problem is, ever since our primal ages, when we as humans served a purpose, our mechanism were in place to guide us where our limited intelligence failed us. As we have become less animal and more man, our inner psychological mechanisms have become unbalanced. Anger and rage are no longer things we can control with any great efficiency, they have become so under trained and in-experianced through lives of shelter, that in essence we are all ticking time bombs. These inner mechanisms that were once used to guide us through life have contorted our views as they became more unbalanced, and as a result fear rules us.
So as we have progressed and evolved as *humans* we have gradually become more unbalanced and unstable.

The more we shelter ourselves and our loved ones from the world the more damaged and removed from reality we are. Other than sperm the human male no longer serves a purpose in today's society. It takes self discipline, enlightenment and courage to give ourselves purpose, and only with purpose can we prevent fear from ruling us.

[cable]

fear!!! ooh. i love philosophy.
the thought of what might happen in the future. like the philosphy says "for every action there is a reaction" and so in that train of thought we go through every day with choices and the fear of what might happen if you make the wrong decision or what might happen if you dont make a decision right away. fear could also be the train of thought that you are not in control and the thought of you cannot control the future. In other words the fear of the unknown. we humans are controls freaks and thats why in all the movies when the monster breaks loose we try to kill it instead of what it wants. instead of learning more about it we distroy it kind of like what we do to the things we dont understand or the things we cannot control. to take the fear undercontrol you need to think about your obtions and weigh them in your head to find out which will benifit you or the people around you most. fear can be a good or bad thing. it all counts on the situation though.

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everybody dies.
Not everybody really lives

WHY NOT LAUGH A LITTLE

[Starseed]

Eloquently spoken, Chronic.

I'm pretty sure I know what you mean. And I know as a male, its easy to jump in and say, "Hey! We damn well do serve a purpose" . . . but I can't think of one that we serve in a modernized society that a women couldn't do as well, other than provide sperm. But it boils women down to the same predicament: they provide the egg and womb, for offspring. Otherwise, men could do everythign they've had to do historically. Child rearing, cooking, being emotional (just look at all the wimps and wimp culture springing up . . . its already like having a bunch of extra women).

Hmm . . . almost seems, now that I think of it, that it could come down to just that . . . how we contribute to the offspring, that differentiates the purposes of the sexes. Then men and women would just play roles or certain types of historic women/men, when infact, what created those types, and the need for them, is no longer present.

Ohh, I like this turn you've taken fear on, Chronic.

About purpose, I agree again, whole-hearted this time. This especially applies to gen-x like me and many here who haven't had some "outside" struggle like a war, where everyone has that patriotic sense to unite and fight to protect what their ancestors won them through fighting. But when you think of these 18 year old 'lads, for instance, going off to war. Their purpose was clear. But the purpose slapped them in the face and all of their peers as well, and it was blind purpose, more or less. It was more out of duty than anything, and hence dind't require any of the aspects that go into providing our own purpose, like Chronic says:

quote

Quote:

It takes self discipline, enlightenment and courage to give ourselves purpose, and only with purpose can we prevent fear from ruling us.

What I dont' agree with, though, is that where we are evolving is unbalanced and unstable. My perspective is simple: unbalanced and unstable is relative. Relative to what came before. It is very stable given that the threatening situations in a less evolved historic society aren't even pondered the further we evolve from it. The only unbalance would be having some of our society stuck in the past, and some moving along with the new. The divide is dangerous.

-mt

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everything is relative

[Starseed]

cable,

"for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" - physics too

What you're describing, and what I think this topic is moving its way to, is a topic that I know little about but want to learn more: Existentialism. Anyone know something on the subject who could share in this discussion about fear?

I think an aspect of existentialism involves the choices of an intelligent organism. Cable, when you bring up right and wrong choices - again, right and wrong are relative. In a sense, as I'm sure you've heard, there is no right or wrong choice. There is simply the choice. And the fact that what it boils down to is simply a choice, and when no choice is wrong, there is what plagues an intelligent organism.

If we free ourselves from the bounds of our own perspectives, it becomes more and more obvious that the line between right and wrong choices is nonexistent, and that there is simply a choice. Thankfully, we live in a microcosmic society, where we have local morals and codes of ethics so that we are all making choices that benefit, (in general) everyone in our small little system.

But just think how insane[b] this universe is, where as life forms, we are given the [b]choice to do anything! We can choose not to take the path of least resistance.

And we can never predict the outcome of our choices accurately. Now, faust, do you see why fear is one of the most deeply engrained mechanisms in our intelligent minds?

I want to give you another real life example of where I know you feel fear. And if you say you dont, tell me why and elaborate, please? Okay, you're taking your bike to where you work in the morning. You're riding on, um, probably the left side of the road, and you have to cross over the road (because we all know faust lives dangerously) to get to the steps outside your graphics firm's building. What causes you to look back, or listen to see if there are cars coming behind you before you cross? A primal fear for the sake of self-preservation.

Why do you delete a sentence ever so often on this board after you've typed it when you think, "No, that would sound stupid, or I'm sure someone's already thought of that or said it, etc etc" . . . the fear that it would leave an impression that you don't want to leave on all of these people. The fear of a bad impression is deadened a bit when its a board like this and not face to face because often you can care less what people think of what you have to say.

I'm not talking about fear and phobias, and all of that blatantly obvious fear. I'm talking about the stuff a lot of you might not classify as fear because it comes and pases without even thinking of it.

-mt

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everything is relative

[cable]

way to go starseed i like your responce to the male/female remark from chronic beauty.
no offence chronic but male/female combat has always been a pet peeveof mine. each sex is equal and just as important as the other.

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everybody dies.
Not everybody really lives

WHY NOT LAUGH A LITTLE

[Chronic Beauty]

Starseed, i quite agree with your post.

The lines between the males and females of species become ever more blurred. In todays modernised society a man's advantages (on average greater strength, stamina and physical prowess) are becoming more and more irrelevant. You mentioned women being as uneeded as men, which is quite true, but i speculate we are much closer to cloning the sperm rather than the egg, or even building an artificial womb. It is intresting to contemplate what will happen to the human male after he becomes totaly void of purpose. If we think of male and females as one entity of one species, then just like any un-required organ, the human male will gradually disapear in the process of evoloution.

Secondly my point on the unbalancing of our more primal instincts, i may have failed to elaborate quite what i was trying to put across. 10-20 thousand years ago when the basic and tribal humans of the world roamed, we lived on instincts and experiances. This balance of instinct and experiance helped guide us through the life as a tribal human.
However in the path of our evoloution we sheltered our selves from the real reality of our enviroment, leaving us only with our irrelevant detached instincts ,still active but out of place. Living in the modernised western world today, not only doesn't test all of these instincts or mechanisms properly, but it we are also lacking the experiance to control them. So your average male today may be able to calculate the square of 23, but faced with the same dangerous situation as a male from 6k+ years ago, we would crumble beneath our emotions and instincts. It takes very strong and hurtful actions to trigger our courage and stand up for ourselves (for example someone or something threatening our child.)

So my point is this, without living the life our instincts were pre designed for, we cant expect to have control over our emotions and instincts like we should.

[Chronic Beauty]

i dont disagree with you cable. Importance is irrelevant. You yourself admitted it, there is nothing men can do that women cant.
Purpose is the question, importance goes out the window when their is no purpose to our importance.