There are only two natural human fears; that is, only two fears already in humans at birth. These two natural fears are the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other fears in human beings are learned.
Most fears are intentionally taught. All encouragement or teaching or training for abstract and non-natural fears is dis-empowerment. The family, the school system, religion – all are designed to teach their innocent charges the proper fears, ones that will make them – you! – properly-conditioned minions: willing soldiers in the Corporate Wars, nice and quiet Stepford Wives, obedient consumers of plastic trash, numbed voters for 'the lesser of two evils'.
Some fears, however, may be not so much taught as they are learned by the individual in reaction to circumstances: agoraphobia, claustrophobia, xenophobia, and other such vague yet powerful fears that lodge in the subconscious and dictate an individual's behavior. This is dis-empowerment of oneself, to decide that 'I will never...' or 'I can't...' or 'we dare not...', each based on some sudden, unforeseen event in the past and its aftermath, perpetuated by a long-forgotten decision embedded deep in the psyche. Dis-empowerment from others follows in the form of agreement that the fear is valid or real or permanent.
It is quite valid to fear 'The Tiger', my symbol for real danger. But such fear is valid and natural only when The Tiger is literally present, when the danger is real and imminent. Fear of a possible Tiger or fear based on a report of a Tiger or fear of a Tiger [event] that occurred years ago will take root in the psyche only to the extent that the person is already dis-empowered by him/herself and by others. The constant fear-inducing barrage delivered by the media is only part of the problem – You tune in, don't you? Your False Mind loves giving you more fear-mongering input.
The antidote to these unnatural fears is always Objective Reality. When faced with a real Tiger, the real emergency causes one to invoke responses based on Objective Reality, such as the standard responses of 'fight or flight': either battle the real-world Tiger or get the hell out! When the False Mind generates a fake Tiger – based on some memory or feeling, not on a real Tiger – one is dis-empowered because neither fight nor flight has any effect on a fake Tiger.
So the antidote to fear is Objective Reality, which can be located via the Working Mind: Am I really in danger? What is really going on here? What should I do about this [about this fake Tiger]?
The Culture-Structure uses simple scare tactics, by which you have been taught that many fake Tigers await your least misstep, ready to pounce and destroy you and your loved ones. The priests of religion and of academia, the priests of commerce and of war have you convinced that unless you obey every anti-Reason False Value [or deity-given Law] that they offer, that then you are destined to rot in Hell for all eternity, or watch your children burn in a nuclear holocaust, or never attain some form of tenure, like a pension, and thus sentence yourself to later-life years of grinding poverty.
The choice provided by the Culture-Structure is always between obeying False Values or ostracism: 'my way or the high-way'. The Culture-Structure will not offer the choice of Empowerment; the Culture-Structure wants you to live in fear.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was not kidding when he said "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." The other pertinent saying is "The coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero dies but one."
Learn to face the fake Tigers in Life, the ones that your False Mind and the Culture-Structure make up to keep you dis-empowered. The development of your Working Mind will produce this result.
FEAR!!
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Diebert van Rhijn
- Posts: 6469
- Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm
Re: FEAR!!
There's no difference between real and fake tigers in ones day-to-day life. Fear of losing ones job, income, house, independence, privacy, food supply... these are for most people scenarios they can only imagine. How much of it is "real" though? It's about attachment, even fear of an "objectively real" tiger is a deeply buried attachment to ones own life or health, a survival instinct. The fear is not related to the observed tiger but to the attachment, the realization that the tiger represents hurt, pain and death. It's still imagined though and we're wired to make the predictions and calculations based on what's being imagined. True or fake, if it's good for survival and prosperity nature awards it with success, that is: repetition.zarathustra wrote:The antidote to these unnatural fears is always Objective Reality. When faced with a real Tiger, the real emergency causes one to invoke responses based on Objective Reality, such as the standard responses of 'fight or flight': either battle the real-world Tiger or get the hell out!
Re: FEAR!!
is the fear of death learned? i find as soon as we become acquainted with death, we fear it. it's more of the fear of the unknown than anything. those who claim they do not fear death, do not fear losing their life, but they still fear what is to come.
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zarathustra
- Posts: 413
- Joined: Wed Oct 05, 2005 11:56 pm
- Location: Australia
Re: FEAR!!
The simple fact is that all life-forms end in death and the elements of which they are composed return to the air and the earth to be taken up and recycled in some new organism. This natural process is universal and is beyond dispute. What is challenged by freethinkers is the claim made by purveyors of religion that humans alone of all living forms have a 'soul' or 'spirit' which survives death and carries the essential characteristics of the person to a supernatural existence in a super natural realm. The method or pathway for making this crossing to a new life beyond the grave varies widely between religions and between the multitude of denominations.
Freethinkers maintain that the concept of humankind having a unique supernatural 'soul' is simply a primitive notion which has no basis in fact and that religious organizations are guilty of perpetrating a colossal fraud on ignorant and gullible people, chiefly through the indoctrination of infants. They are aided and abetted by the media who fear adverse reaction affecting profits if the facts are revealed.
On what grounds can freethinkers make the claim that no-one has a supernatural 'soul'?
There is no scientific evidence of anything super-natural.
There is no credible evidence that humankind is a unique creation by a deity.
There is no credible definition of a 'soul'.
Scientific evidence completely destroys all the concepts which are the basis for the existence of the 'soul'.
This last statement requires verification, first of all by showing that the basis of the religious concept is faulty and then by citing the scientific evidence which nullifies the 'soul' concept. When Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species the religious bodies realized that the theory completely undermined the belief that humans were a unique creation. They agreed that all organisms other than homo sapiens were devoid of 'souls'. If humans were only the next step on the ladder then they were obliged to designate the precise stage at which a human was given a 'soul'. They realized that such was impossible and fundamentalists realize this today and therefore reject the evolution of humankind.
The Church has always had trouble with the nature of conception and the specific function of the male and female. Aquinas determined that a male received a 'soul' 40 days, and females 90 days, after intercourse.When the actual conception process was revealed by scientific research the Church declared that in a human being a 'soul' resulted when sperm fused with ova. This introduced a new problem when the subsequent division of the original cell led, not to one person, but to two or more identical fetuses. In this case are more God-given 'souls' provided or is the original 'soul' divided, resulting in a number of identical 'souls'?
The problem has now become more complicated with the birth of Dolly the sheep which demonstrated that individual differentiated cells can be made to regress to a stage where they are capable of giving rise to a new individual. Geoffrey Robertson, on a recent TV Hypothetical, confronted a RC priest with this scenario. The cleric's answer was that every cell is infused with 'soul'. He probably did not realize that cells are constantly dying and being replaced.
Whether countries ban or allow such an experiment, the process which would lead to a human clone will take place sometime somewhere. This human clone would present an enormous dilemma to the believers in 'souls' and is probably why theologians and religious authorities are so outspoken against the idea.
A modern concept of 'soul' equates it with the conscious mind but this is equally flawed, for when the body dies the conscious mind, being dependent on the brain, also ceases to exist. This mind/soul concept has the problem of the mind development, for death can occur in every stage from initial fertilization to full physical and mental maturity; so 'souls' must be conceived as forever developing or forever remaining in an immature state.
Anyone weighing the evidence has no trouble in discarding the notion of the everlasting soul and accepting that death is the natural end to every human life. So what's there to be afraid of?
By accepting that life is only for a finite period, short or long, the freethinker is confronted by the matter of how best to spend the available time and therefore, if suitably informed, will most likely spend the time worthy of a human person.
It would be difficult to imagine a more useless waste of time than that spent in the worship of an imaginary god or preparing for a non-existent everlasting life in some mythical supernatural realm of eternal bliss.
In the words of William Shakespeare:
Cowards die many times before they are dead. The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders which I yet have heard it seems to me most strange that man should fear, seeing that death - a necessary end - will come when it will come.
Freethinkers maintain that the concept of humankind having a unique supernatural 'soul' is simply a primitive notion which has no basis in fact and that religious organizations are guilty of perpetrating a colossal fraud on ignorant and gullible people, chiefly through the indoctrination of infants. They are aided and abetted by the media who fear adverse reaction affecting profits if the facts are revealed.
On what grounds can freethinkers make the claim that no-one has a supernatural 'soul'?
There is no scientific evidence of anything super-natural.
There is no credible evidence that humankind is a unique creation by a deity.
There is no credible definition of a 'soul'.
Scientific evidence completely destroys all the concepts which are the basis for the existence of the 'soul'.
This last statement requires verification, first of all by showing that the basis of the religious concept is faulty and then by citing the scientific evidence which nullifies the 'soul' concept. When Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species the religious bodies realized that the theory completely undermined the belief that humans were a unique creation. They agreed that all organisms other than homo sapiens were devoid of 'souls'. If humans were only the next step on the ladder then they were obliged to designate the precise stage at which a human was given a 'soul'. They realized that such was impossible and fundamentalists realize this today and therefore reject the evolution of humankind.
The Church has always had trouble with the nature of conception and the specific function of the male and female. Aquinas determined that a male received a 'soul' 40 days, and females 90 days, after intercourse.When the actual conception process was revealed by scientific research the Church declared that in a human being a 'soul' resulted when sperm fused with ova. This introduced a new problem when the subsequent division of the original cell led, not to one person, but to two or more identical fetuses. In this case are more God-given 'souls' provided or is the original 'soul' divided, resulting in a number of identical 'souls'?
The problem has now become more complicated with the birth of Dolly the sheep which demonstrated that individual differentiated cells can be made to regress to a stage where they are capable of giving rise to a new individual. Geoffrey Robertson, on a recent TV Hypothetical, confronted a RC priest with this scenario. The cleric's answer was that every cell is infused with 'soul'. He probably did not realize that cells are constantly dying and being replaced.
Whether countries ban or allow such an experiment, the process which would lead to a human clone will take place sometime somewhere. This human clone would present an enormous dilemma to the believers in 'souls' and is probably why theologians and religious authorities are so outspoken against the idea.
A modern concept of 'soul' equates it with the conscious mind but this is equally flawed, for when the body dies the conscious mind, being dependent on the brain, also ceases to exist. This mind/soul concept has the problem of the mind development, for death can occur in every stage from initial fertilization to full physical and mental maturity; so 'souls' must be conceived as forever developing or forever remaining in an immature state.
Anyone weighing the evidence has no trouble in discarding the notion of the everlasting soul and accepting that death is the natural end to every human life. So what's there to be afraid of?
By accepting that life is only for a finite period, short or long, the freethinker is confronted by the matter of how best to spend the available time and therefore, if suitably informed, will most likely spend the time worthy of a human person.
It would be difficult to imagine a more useless waste of time than that spent in the worship of an imaginary god or preparing for a non-existent everlasting life in some mythical supernatural realm of eternal bliss.
In the words of William Shakespeare:
Cowards die many times before they are dead. The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders which I yet have heard it seems to me most strange that man should fear, seeing that death - a necessary end - will come when it will come.
Re: FEAR!!
Those fears can be simplified: Fright triggered by negative stimuli of any kind.
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pointexter
- Posts: 59
- Joined: Wed Dec 30, 2009 7:19 pm
Re: FEAR!!
Separation creates fear. Separation = self. Therefore self = fear. Its all that the self is. In this sense, you are your fears and your fears are your you. There's nothing else there, but fear. One may be without fear, but is one willing to be without self. One (totality) cannot be separate. There is no self in totality.