May 23, 2024

Horse 3341 - Kakosynaisthima - Element VII - Fear

 Fear is the easiest thing in this list of elements of Kakosynaisthima to define, by virtue of it being the easiest to excite. Put simply, Fear is the emotional response to the fact that another entity has the power to cause harm, damage, or to kill you. In principle that is a perfectly rational thing to have because of course it is reasonable and rational to have a fear of the things that can kill you. Any examination what what people have a fear of will bear this out. A fear of heights, a fear of the water, a fear of certain beasts, a fear of god, a fear of other people, a fear of things in the environment, a fear of diseases - all of these things due to their power to do work, can and will kill you if the circumstances are right.

Herein lies the dual nature of fear and why it is both useful and can be utterly useless. Fear as the thing that heightens the senses, triggers the flee or fight response. That famous Shakespearean instruction "Exit, pursued by a bear" from The Winter's Tale sounds like a jolly good idea because the bear can and will kill you. However, Fear as the mind killer, fear the anesthetic of bravery, fear the turgid morass which is able to keep the beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos stuck and still, is both a self-preservation device and a self-defeat device. While on one hand it is fit and proper to be afraid of the things which can cause harm to you or kill you, on the other to be stuck in a place of crippling inaction is awful. 

Personally, I can not swim and this has led to the fact that I have a probably unreasonably overactive fear of the water. This is arguably a good thing as it means that I do not really have much of a desire to go to the beach and swim in the ocean, nor to swimming pools and swim in them either. Fear in this case has acted as a self-preservation device and so far, I have not drowned. It could be argued that because I also miss out on the fun of going swimming that this is a but thing but in all honesty, I don't really care. Of course also speaking as someone who has been permanently injured as a result of being hit by a car, you would think that this would result in a fear of the road and yet it has not. Perhaps I am more careful than I was but given the fact that I was crossing the street at a pedestrian crossing and still got hit anyway, perhaps my fear of the street should be magnified more than it is; maybe it has not been magnified more than it is because my underlying set of assumptions are that the street is a rules based system which is reasonably predictable. 

As a self-preservation device, fear also has a strange way of making people do irrational and/or unethical things. As deeply selfish beings, humans often act in ways that are consequentially harmful to other people. If by way of seeking out the "yummy, yummy, yummy" they have found advantage by resorting to needing to lie, or cheat, or steal, and there is the possibility of someone else exposing the lying, cheating, or stealing, then fear often drives people to cover their tracks; which in turn may warrant more lying, cheating, or stealing.

Also as a self-preservation device, fear also has a strange way of making people do irrational things in order to escape the horridness perpetrated by other people. The elements of Kakosynaisthima can cause other to spring forward, but the fear of what others may do is a very strong cause of loneliness. Fear as self-preservation device demands that someone withdraw from the thing causing "not yummy" and when that withdrawal is to pull away from other people, then the population in the immediate is one. This is fear causing someone to withdraw and be alone, with the product of loneliness. Left unchecked, fear blossoms into anxiety; which is not only real but awful.

As with Pain, Fear is kind of like being equipped with a warning system but with all of the generality of an engine check light. In people are fearful, then they generally have the faculties to know what the cause of their fear is but not necessarily the ability to know what to do about it. In dealing with matters in the environment, people evacuating or getting out of the situation is usually the most sensible course of action. It stands to reason that if you are standing in a field with an angry bull, that you should probably run away and get out of the field. If on the other hand, the thing cause someone to be fearful is another person, then fear as a warning system might very well be utterly useless in informing someone what to do. 

When people find themselves being fearful of other people, the situation is one in which they are generally unable to escape from very easily. Someone who has to deal with a bully in school or a workplace, can not very well leave their school or workplace very easily. Of course in the most intimate of situations where you have someone who is fearful of someone else inside a family unit, either a parent or a spouse, then the suggestion by well-meaning people who can only observe from the outside to tell people to get out, while made with the best of intentions, could very well be utterly useless. When one is tied that closely to the cause of fear (where someone not only has the power to cause harm, damage, or to kill you, but actively threatens to do so), then leaving may in fact crystallise that fear and the cause becomes manifest. When a spouse fears that their partner might kill them, believe them. The fear is real and the possibility is close. It is not that simple to just leave. Fear which is the result of being treated badly to the point of harm and injury, especially at the hands of someone whom they should not have to fear at all, is awful and a terrible thing to have to go through.

If fear drives someone to make decisions which are unthinking and unfeeling, then the result is often damage to themselves and other people. Fear as the mind killer in control of the beast which shouts "I" at the heart of the kosmos, makes people act irrationally and yet because they think that they are the heroes of their own universe, a mind driven by fear is even less convinced that it can do wrong. Fear as the mind killer in control of a now unthinking beast, wants people to build more walls to keep their personal fortress intact. Fear as the mind killer in control of a now unthinking beast, wants people to fire as many weapons in as many directions as they possibly can in all directions because in keeping everyone off at a distance, fear wants make sure that the person is not hurt.

Fear which drives a now irrational mind to blame other people for their misfortune unduly, while at the same time writing a safety myth that the person is the hero of their own universe, invariably leads to layers of support being made hotter and hotter before being blown off like a supernova. Yes, the person at the centre might very well gain a sense that they are right and just and good in their own eyes, but it means that support networks which have been blown away no longer operate; leaving the person in possible a worse state than they were before. Fear successfully builds more walls in the fortress of people's minds but at what cost? This would suggest that fear as a manufactured response to the things which you think might harm or damage you, might very well be a response without due cause. In this case fear acts as a warning system where the information is asymmetric to the correct response.

If you have a system with a general warning lamp letting you know that something, as yet unknown, is wrong, then it is common sense to take inventory and find out what has gone wrong. I of course use the term "common sense" advisedly as common sense turns out to be not so common when fear drives people to do things. As the telos of fear is to serve the purpose of acting as a warning, then defence against the things which cause fear, is either to face those things or to get out.

There is a reasonably large dearth of information to suggest that exposure to the things that cause fear, can help to quash or ameliorate those fears. There is also a degree to which the consequence of facing those fears, changes the perspective of one who is fearful, to the point where they very quickly develop the confidence to do the thing or to face the thing immediately. I have heard it said that courage is standing in the face of fear, and then doing it anyway. Of course there is also the distinct possibility that facing the cause of one's fears might only serve to perpetuate the problem. 

A fear of public speaking for instance, is mostly an imagined response to the prospect of looking silly in front of a lot of people. However, most people find that with a bit a of practice in front of the people. the actual experience does not match up with the supposed cause of their imagined fears. Similar experiences exist for other minor fears such as a fear of flying, or dogs, or the dark, or spiders, et cetera, where the actual harm is small. Exposure therapy for fears caused by bigger and more important fears, may not be so simple. Put bluntly, if a thing causes you to be fearful, then you can eliminate the fear by proving that the thing is not actually a just cause for the response, or by gradually desensitising yourself to the thing. Or you can get out.

Fear as the easiest thing in this list of elements of Kakosynaisthima to define, is also ridiculously obvious in its telos and can and does serve a useful purpose. If the general warning lamp of fear is blinking, then common sense also suggest that it might be an idea to get out. It stands to reason that if something or someone is causing distress or harm, then it makes sense to get as far away from them as possible. Life however is far more complex than so-called "common sense" might concede that it is. Sometimes people are in a situation where getting out is not as easy as other people telling them to do so make out that it is, because in such cases the the general warning lamp of fear is blinking for a very good reason. Remember, fear is the emotional response that an entity has the power to cause harm, damage, or to kill you. Particularly in situations which involve domestic violence, simply telling someone to get out when the other person is presumed to have the power to cause harm and damage, and might actually become sufficiently angry enough to act, then fear is working perfectly because it is rational to have a fear of the things that can kill you.

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