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Ringing Fear's Bell
[cite] Allandnone:[/cite]Are you defining emotion as "on our instinctive desire for pleasure, comfort and security"? I am looking at emotion as feeling, relationships, communications, organization and creative imagination.
Emotion, as I observe it (and thus define it), is the primal electro chemical 'energy' which underpins and drives those manifestations of human behavior you cite. Our 'need' for pleasure and comfort, and our 'fear' of pain and loss are the motivating forces driving these emergent properties of humanity. Pull the plug on these primal drives, need and fear, and all which rest on them will crash down like a house of cards. Our need for, and fear of losing, pleasure (comfort) and security form the basis for all that we do. Humbling is it not?
How's that?
Note: This primal emotion - need and fear - not only drive our lives, but the lives of all mammals, reptiles and insects as well. I could even make a case for this 'energy' being the driving force behind ALL life, right down to plants and virus, but I won't. That might just be a little too humbling to swallow for now...
Suffice it to say, we are all [chref=39]One[/chref] big 'happy' family of [chref=1]myriad creatures[/chref] interacting here on earth. Our differences pale in light of our similarities. Indeed, differences are relative and illusionary, and only reflect our own needs and fears.
Comments
Just what, if anything, drives this concern emotion? Fear! Indeed, fear and concern are synonymous. Mind you, I'm not talking about our outward reactions. i.e., the effects of fear. The fear instinct I refer to is a potential. We have the emotional potential to worry. It is always there, but we only notice it when it is activated by some worrisome or 'fearful' stimulus. For example, you're walking down the street and someone behind you honks. You yell and jump. Why? You are instinctively concerned for your life. You might say that the stimulus (honking) rang fear's bell. The bells's vibration is your reaction (yelling and jumping). Just how much stimulus it takes to ring fear's bell depends on the person. Like everything else, concern sensitivity follows the 'bell curve'.
As I said above, I can't think of any positive choice that doesn't have some concern driving it. So, instead let's frame Dr. Phil's advice in another way... what do I really want out of life, long term? Desires drive the choices I make, i.e., I want this or that, or I don't want this or that. Short term desire is based in pleasure - NOW. The more short term pleasure drives my choices, the less happy I feel 'the day after'.
On the other hand, when my choices arise from a long term point of view, deferred pleasure shall we say, I end up feeling more content and balanced. This is why Buddha's advice about letting your "sole desire be the performance of your duty" works so well for those who can do it. Yes, of course, the problem lies in the difficulty of choosing the long term deferred over the short term immediate. Whatever grabs my attention NOW is going to have the strongest pull on me. So, 80% of the time immediate concerns (fear) drive choice, and I suspect, the other 20% of the time immediate pleasure drives choice. (Just where does free will lie in all this, one might ask?... :roll:)
Now, this is much more than most of us usually want to hear, let alone contemplate. And so we stumble on our 'merry' way through life seeking the pot at the end of the rainbow, and blaming any handy scapegoat for why we haven't got it yet.
Once we [chref=36]lay aside[/chref] the blame game we can actually begin to notice life as it is. For me, everything seems to come back to fear, even desire seems to derive its push from fear's pull. Emptiness is what gives fear its pull. Loss, falling, failure, dying, - entropy - all pull us down and inward. Desire is what pushes life forward to gain, rise up, succeed and live. The eternal quality of emptiness (the void) is always underneath life. You could say that emptiness - death - is the bowl in which life stirs. This enmeshed complimentary quality of life and death, of desire and fear, while [chref=21]shadowy and indistinct,[/chref] are real enough to notice - even without the Taoist view of life [chref=40]born from Something, and Something from Nothing[/chref] - Nothing, being just another word for emptiness, the void, and death.
A sense of loss, or emptiness, one way or the other, plays a role in all we do. Even so called greed - the extreme desire to gain - is rooted in an underlying sense of lacking on the part of the greedy individual. Simply put, hunger comes from feeling empty. The more empty, the hungrier. (Note: Hunger plays itself out in myriad ways other than eating.)
The path to wisdom is a journey down into the source - emptiness itself. Instead of running away from the void, you [chref=40]turn back[/chref] to [chref=5]hold fast to the void[/chref]. The nearer you touch emptiness itself, the simpler and wiser your choices are likely to be. Also, the more likely 'the day after' will feel better. By facing emptiness (failure, loss, death, the void), you can avoid many of the unintended consequences of choice. Thus, embrace nothing to [chref=7] accomplish your private ends[/chref]. It is ironic isn't it?
And this brings us back to Buddha's Second Noble Truth, which in part states "The illusion of self originates and manifests itself in a cleaving to things." Embracing nothing sure takes care of that, eh?
And yet, for an overweight guy like me, I can see how it sometimes does play itself out as eating, especially when other ways have been forbidden.
What is the difference between letting short-term (fear) considerations and long-term considerations be at the source of my actions? Isn't it the same thing? Reacting? Like, if I make a choice out of fear, then fear is causing my actions. Or, if I decide that I am I going to suffer the fear to get to the other side (or to have some other outcome) then that consideration is causing my actions.
For me, the ultimate is being responsible for the impact I have in my life and in the lives of others. To the extent that I can choose that and have that be at the source of my actions, then I have true choice. I know you and I have talked about this before and we seemed to disagree. But I think I explained it like I was saying that I was choosing the impact based on whether it was good or bad. Even though I say I know better, it might be that I really have it that there is such a thing.
In any case, I know that sometimes I never really get clear on how what I do impacts others and it allows me to escape responsibility. Like, if I really knew the eventual outcome, even across generations, I might make another choice.
1) Time makes an eternity of difference. Long term means disengaging from the most immediate instinctive reactions we have to the void - being patient with emptiness. 'Waiting' is being in the void. 'Jumping forward' is running away from the void.
2) One's perception of "responsible" and "impact" is relative to what one feels important. Importance, is an emotion powered by the void - 'fear'. So, all choice is driven by 'fear', by emptiness, by void.
3) I'm an incorrigible rascal in that regard.
4) Ah, do I detect the guilt instinct at play here? We imagine a perfect ideal, an illusionary world of 'shoulds', and then we judge ourselves and others by the fanciful standards we cook up (unwittingly) to keep civilization's 'pyramid scam' chugging along. I know... :roll:
Personally, the only 'escape' I've found from this vicious circle in which we find ourselves is diving into my moment and taking, with a grain or two of salt, everything my mind cooks up.
1) So if I think living in fear is important, I will maybe. And if you think not living in fear is important, you won't maybe. Could it be that you are afraid of fear and I am not? :twisted:
2) Perhpas guilt. Or perhaps I am making myself right by contributing to your life in a way you approve of.
This set some electricity jumping through my brain. Maybe you will find it interesting. In a book I read, Monkeyluv, the author cited a study on the production of dopamine in rats and its relationship to reward. It measured the level of dopamine when the rat was rewarded everytime it pressed a lever. Then it measured the level when the rat was never rewarded when it pressed the lever...the dopamine levels declined. But when the rat was rewarded 50% of the time, the dopamine levels were higher than when the rat was rewarded 100% of the time. Even more interesting is that the dopamine was measured before the reward was given so it was the anticipation of the reward that signalled the release of good-feeling dopamine.
I'm extrapolating and guessing that maybe delayed gratification has the same effect and that's why you feel content.
Surely, is not our perception of "responsible" and "impact" relative to what we feel important? Importance, is an emotion powered by the void - 'fear', or survival instinct is you like (which is powered by the 'fear' of death, essentially.)
Now, if you believe that thought is what drives your life, and not emotion, then you will not concur with this view, of course. Certainly, thought and emotion operate in concert and feedback on one another. But, the foundation, in my view, is emotion. Emotion drives thought. If you feel angry, you are most likely to 'think' angry thoughts, for example.
A sense of importance is based in emotion. Thoughts simply express the feelings.
I suppose it comes down to the "I am therefore I think" vs. "I think therefore I am". To me, the former says it best, i.e, 'thinking' arises up out of 'am'. Being supercedes thinking, although human consciousness is very thought oriented, which I suspect makes us feel disconnected from being and from Nature, i.e., Nature doesn't 'think'.
I suppose that those who believe fervently in free will probably would choose "I think, therefore I am". Am I right? :?: :?: :?:
Next...
Very interesting! Point (2) illustrates why we have such a hard time being in our moment. The promise of future pleasures always carry us away... or rather the good-feeling dopamine carries us away.
(1) So we're looking forward to our next gratification. But when that occasion comes, there is no biological instinct to delay gratification. So we gobble away and the good feeling subsides only to be replaced by tomorrow's expectation.
This kind of explains why wealth makes us neurotic. We look forward to gratification, but wealth enables instant gratification, which propels us instantly on our next imagined future reward. A crazy making vicious circle! The moral of this situation: wealth is 'unnatural'. Or rather, circumstances which allow for unmitigated wealth are innately unbalanced. In the wild, wealth never accumulates - it is seasonal. Ah shucks!