Philosophers have a particular professional risk that should not go ignored.
It is fear, particularly existential fear or fear brought on by shock. This
can be the shock of an idea, something radical, too vast or overly striking.
Not only this but fear of such reactions may be hold us back psychologically
and in our openness to new ideas.
In this paper I will look at what fear, and other emotions, are. Where they
come from and how some of their more dangerous aspects can be dealt with.
This will be from a very personal perspective so may seem a bit different
than an academic paper should be, but what is more personal than the life of
our feelings and our own personal philosophies?
Emotions can be a way the subconscious mind communicates with the
consciousness.
The subconscious is thought to be able to process in parallel, the conscious
is largely serial, i.e. one thought at a time. Because of this the
subconscious can compute certain types of information, it is estimated,
30,000 times faster than if we just sat and tried to work it out
consciously. The subconscious is really just like a highly advanced
mechanical computer, so it has certain limitations.
Also where the subconscious mind and the nervous system divide, if at all,
is hard to say. This means there are some very evolutionarily primitive
parts of the subconscious. One way to think of it is as a supercomputer
programmed by two-month-old chimp, in many of its aspects. However it is
still a supercomputer and in fact it is being programme by each one of us
every day, it gains new information and re-prioritises stored information.
Emotions, at least some of them, are the way this supercomputer delivers its
results sometimes. This may be because of processing by very primitive, but
powerful, parts of the system. However it can also be because the result of
the calculation is too complex for the conscious mind to understand, all at
once or even after many years of attempting to unravel it. Because the
subconscious in one hour may well, process the same information as the
conscious could in three and half years, of continuous effort, it is not
hard to see that even the explanations of some of its results, which may be
from calculations that have been going on at a background level for many
years or decades, can not always be immediately and explicitly provided to
consciousness.
What the subconscious then resorts to is an emotion. It is a bit like a kind
of traffic light of the mind. Take fear for example, we could see green as
the subconscious not worried too much about a particular situation. This
would be just a lack of fear. Orange would be where the calculations have
shown that there are many dangers in the situation and it is alerting us to
this, perhaps also sending more specific hints into consciousness about
potential problems. This would equate to a feeling of unease or worry,
though this latter can be a kind of default position for some people, a kind
of habit. Red of course would be strong fear or terror, the subconscious can
see imminent and terrifying consequences, or certain primitive parts of the
brain are kicking in.
It seems that there is nothing to be done about these feelings. In fact they
are wonderful, mostly. Obviously we must make a distinction from feelings
that are generated by the primitive mind, or habit, and those that come from
potentially more useful processing. However even the primitive reactions
have their place, giving us a boost of adrenalin, enhancing our reactions
just when we need it, speeding the metabolism to provide us with strength
etc. At other times some of these primitive reactions can be very
inappropriate, which I will consider soon, in situations where the
evolutionary human responses are no longer applicable.
Many people, because of the above, would like to free themselves from
emotions such as fear. They have recognised how often it is inappropriate
and inconvenient; 'the only thing to fear is fear itself' can sum up some
people's attitude. We will explore how this quote can be so right and so
wrong further down. The thing is you don't want to throw the baby out with
bath water, or more aptly, the supercomputer out with the chimp (no offence
meant to chimps). Also emotions are parts of a system, it may not be
possible to repress, or remove, one of them, or even aspects of one of them,
without damaging or destroying others, or them all. Most of us would like to
keep our feelings of joy, human warmth and love after all, and at least.
There is a process where by these emotions can get out of control, which is
worth knowing about. Knowing about this process is one of the best ways of
preventing this particular phenomenon. It is feedback, a vicious cycle. This
can happen, for instance with fear when we can start to be afraid of the
fear. When I was first seriously thinking about philosophical issues I
encountered this phenomenon and I believe it very nearly destroyed me,
however I also learnt some valuable things perhaps.
Some of the issues I was considering were quite frightening. Subjects such
as God, hell, evil, the size of the universe, death etc can cause us to
become fearful. They can be just overwhelmingly vast, full of the unknown.
We can feel powerless in the face of some of these issues with little hope
of making sense of them, or coming to reconciliation with some of the
implications. For about two years I was pretty well obsessed with such
questions and much of the time I was in a state of existential terror.
Looking back on it, and having studied philosophy academically, I can see
many similarities with Descartes project of hyperbolic doubt. I don't know
whether for him it was an intellectual exercise, as he portrays it, or
whether it was really like mine. I did genuinely doubt just about
everything. The particularly disturbing things I doubted were to do with
God. Whether He existed, which I still grapple with, whether He is to be
trusted if He does exist? Whether what we call God is really the Devil, and
does that exist? What, if anything, follows death? What is at the edge of
the universe, infinity? etc
Often because of the prolonged nature of the enquiry and its intensity I was
weakened emotionally and physically. Sometimes only sleeping for a couple of
hours a night for weeks; drinking was often the only way to quieten my mind
down. However I knew I had to be careful using alcohol in this way, it is
surely the high road to addiction not to mention ill health. However there
was nothing else, that I had available, which gave me a moments peace.
Sometimes I would reach some conclusion, or make at least some progress on a
question and two or three more would be immediately provoked by that
conclusion. It was exponential and I could literally hear the electrons
buzzing round my brain sometimes it seemed.
Occasionally I would ask a question that had truly terrifying implications
and I would start to feel so afraid that I thought I would not be able to
stand it. It was sometimes like a fire through my mind seeming to burn my
consciousness up. After a while this became an almost continuous battle of
will to keep this fire from burning completely out of control and, as I
thought and am still sure, consuming my mind. I noticed that often this fire
would start and kind of build up and accelerate even though there was no
extra 'fuel', in the form of frightening insights or questions, being poured
onto the fire.
At around this time a came across a breathing technique that is used to help
people who have panic attacks, which these seemed to be very similar to
(though caused by my questions). This was to breath in deeply through the
nose, and exhaling through the mouth, while imagining that you are exhaling
the fear, the fire. This really helped, and probably saved my sanity, though
I was still in an almost continuous battle with terror I had a new way to
firefight. This technique was said to work by breaking a viscous cycle in
the body.
What happens when we get afraid is that primitive parts of the mind react in
a, presumably evolutionarily programmed way. Basically this part of the
brain registers that we are experiencing fear, it assumes that there is a
physical threat of some kind. To help to meet that threat it steps up the
breathing rate, heart rate and pumps adrenalin into the system. This all
serves to prepare the organism for 'fight or flight'.
Unfortunately this is not really going to be of any aid if what you are
afraid of is the thoughts you are having. In fact it can be counter
productive. Rather than giving you the strength and energy to evade a
physical threat, it is pouring oxygen, blood and adrenalin into the very
source of the threat, the brain. This leads to a viscous feedback loop and a
run away effect where the brain is becoming more and more aroused. This fear
is causing the body to provide more and more oxygen, fuel and stimulant to
the brain, and the cycle accelerates. The fire analogy turns out to be
hardly an analogy at all. However by breathing in a relaxed and calm way
this can short circuit the cycle by calming the body down physically,
reducing at least the oxygen to the fire, it can offer a way to control the
feedback.
What I realised was that there was a similar kind of feedback loop going on
just in my mind. I had started to be very fearful of fear itself, for good
reason. What was happening was that even quite a small fear was setting off
the cycle. I would start to be concerned that it might escalate again. This
increased my fear level. Feeling that my fear level was increasing I now
would get very concerned that I was just about to enter another battle for
my sanity. Of course this new worry led to more fear, confirming my
suspicions and pretty soon it was all hands to the pumps.
So how was I to deal with this feedback loop? What was the equivalent to
calming the body down? It was simple. Just recognising where the increased
fear was coming from, recognising the mechanism, took away the increased
fear. It was partly my inability to identify the cause of the fear that so
frightened me and made me worry I could loose control. It was clear where it
was coming from and therefore not frightening anymore. At first I still
reacted habitually to fear, getting very fearful that a fire was going to
break out, but more and more as this realisation did its work I became less
fearful of fear. In fact it became a tolerable companion, it can very
motivating at least. More and more I started to recognise such processes in
other emotions and in many areas of life. Understanding how feedback can
lead to such problems has been an important insight at many times in my
life.
Sometimes I can still feel the fire licking at my consciousness but now I
can just allow myself to feel it. It doesn't accelerate much, normally, and
it soon burns itself out, quite naturally. Rarely I still do a bit of
breathing in such circumstances but generally it is fine. These days I feel
I have a quite a solid foundation to my worldview, though I know how solid
quick sand can look, and I fortunately don't get as much practice
fire-fighting as I did, but I still keep the feedback-manual close at hand.
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