fears

Self-sustaining Thought

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What does it mean to be self-sustaining?

A system can be considered self-sustaining to the degree it can continue in a healthy state without external support.

And yet…

A need to survive sustains every form of life on earth. Fear tends to drive survival, portraying perhaps a more sinister side to self-sustaining behavior – the need to do whatever it takes to continue. This need to continue is the essential core ingredient and motivation in evolution.

Evolution is a process in which resistance to change brings about more change.

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Fear and Anxiety Response

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William T. Gibson, a Caltech postdoctoral fellow and first author on a study investigating the possibility that fruit flies may experience fear analogous to humans affirms, “…flies have four fundamental drives just as humans do: feeding, fighting, fleeing, and mating.”

He examined fear in flies by looking at the fundamental building blocks of fear, which he calls “emotion primitives” –

  1. First, fear is persistent. If you hear the sound of a gun, the feeling of fear it provokes will continue for a period of time.
  2. Fear is also scalable; the more gunshots you hear, the more afraid you’ll become.
  3. Fear is generalizable across different contexts, but it is also trans-situational. Once you’re afraid, you’re more likely to respond in fear to other triggers: the clang of a pan, for instance, or a loud knock at the door.

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Fear and Projection

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I’m a walking projector. As far as I am concerned there is only darkness until I turn on the lights. From MY PERSPECTIVE, the entire world is void and dark until I make it otherwise.

In other words, the world may exist only as a phantom of my imagination of it. Even when considering just the physical level, the universe exists as electrochemical signals flying around within my brain.

Maybe there are people “out there” – outside my head – and maybe not… It certainly SEEMS like there is a world “out there” with which I interact. And yet, what if…

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Fear and Justify

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Fear, as I see it, has been a major component in my ability to survive. Yet I have always felt a need to justify that fear by proving myself rightness in having adhered to it.

My fears are never too irrational when I’m in defense mode. Defense, after all, must be shown to have just cause for my attention to fear and to my success in survival.

I’d rather justify my fears than believe I have no need of them. By admitting that I could’ve misunderstood a situation, is cause in itself  to have to venture into a less familiar way of thinking – one than requires deeper thought for understanding. Besides, it just seems like less effort – easier and more convenient to believe I am a victim of change. 

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