States of Fear

One day, there was this guy going to work. He felt good because he was early. He was in no rush. He rode the elevator to the floor where his desk was. He prepared himself for the day ahead. Then, he heard a sudden boom and the building shake. Flames shot out everywhere, and he was facing the choice of burning alive in jet fuel or jumping out the window to smack into the concrete below.

This is the stuff of life. For most of us, life will not be as stark as it was for the victims of 9/11. We may buy it in a car accident or get taken out slowly by cancer. In the meantime, we may come home to see our S.O. having sex with a stranger. We can go to work and get fired. Shit happens, and the randomness of that shit is what will drive you nuts.

I think this is the basis of post-traumatic stress disorder. When you spend that much time expecting to be attacked at any moment from any position, it is hard to return to normal. That is too much stark reality to process which is why it takes time for these guys to adjust. Some never make the adjustment at all.

Life can be a chronic state of fear if you let it (or listen to people like Al Gore.) I often wonder why faith in both religion and government is so ubiquitous, but it doesn't take much to figure it out. Both religion and government reinforce a fantasy that God and our elected officials will take care of everything. And when both fail, people will bury their heads still further up their own asses rather than face the reality. If you don't believe this, look at how the disappointed victims of Hurricane Katrina still line up for their government assistance. Things will not change.

People are scared, and religionists and politicians are all too eager to exploit that fear. They offer comfort and security though both are purely psychological constructs against terrors that are phantom in nature. There is no Hell except the one in the line at the DMV or the Post Office.

Politics and religion aside, life is still fraught with risk and peril. You can make all the plans you want, but they are subject to the whims of fate. This fact alone makes the human enterprise uncertain. It can be frustrating. How can you be happy when it can end at any moment? Even if you do achieve your goals, they can be swept away at any time. Why bother?

It is very easy to allow yourself to be brought down by chronic fear and worry. It can get so bad that you can't even enjoy life, and that's where things really suck. The whole point and purpose of life is to be happy, and paranoia is the opposite of happiness.

You can't change anything by worrying. I wish it were possible, but you can't. All you can do is prepare. You save your money. You wear your seatbelt. You eat right and exercise. And in the end, you will still die. It is a black hole on the horizon for each of us that will suck us into its vortex, and we will be no more.

I rely on philosophy to make it through my life. That is because my life sucks more than what you will find on average. My bad luck runs a pretty wide streak. This leads to reflection which leads to reading a lot of the ancient Greeks who spend a lot of time thinking about the same shit.

I am an atheist, but I still enjoy the Bible as literature. The Book of Job is the finest thing in there because that book really deals with doubt. Job was a guy who had his whole world turned upside down through no fault of his own. Yet, Job's comforters ended up telling him it was his fault anyway. As someone who has been through some shit, I can attest that this happens almost all the time after something happens:

-"He got cancer? Was he a smoker? Did he eat right?"

-"He got in a car accident? Was he drunk?"

-"He's getting a divorce? Was he cheating on her?"

We want to blame the victim. We want to say that it was their own fault because it still implies control over an uncertain world. This is where superstition comes into play which merely evolves into religion. When people ask me why stuff happened to me, I tell them I forgot to rub my lucky rabbit's foot. They give me a puzzled look, but that is because they are stupid.

I don't know how many times I am told not to talk about certain things because I might "jinx" something or "hex" something. What utter stupidity. None of this is scientific in any way. But it does highlight how people give over to such foolishness. Even science can be twisted in this way as people have irrational fears about genetically modified foods, using radiation as a sanitizer, or what have you. People think that anything "natural" is good while anything "artificial" is bad. Yet, sugar is natural which contributes to weight gain and tooth decay while aspartame is artificial and passes harmlessly through your gut. But I digress. . .

As I said, I like to read the Greeks especially the Stoics during times like these. I disagree with the Stoic worldview especially their fatalism, but they prove that you can achieve a certain measure of psychological comfort in this world. Buddhism reached much of the same conclusions which helped to inform the later work of a guy like Albert Ellis who started the rational/emotive therapy school of psychology. Basically, your emotions are a product of your thoughts. If you change the way you think, you will change the way you feel about life.

Faith is a powerful thing. Religion is not true, but this does not change the fact that religious people report higher levels of satisfaction and happiness as opposed to those who are not religious. Like it or not, believing in such nonsense will help you make it through life. The downside is that you end up taking risks or ignoring information because it does not fit into this religious worldview. This is how you get snakehandlers or Christian Scientists who refuse medical care for themselves and their children.

It takes fortitude to face reality as it honestly is. Even then, a tragedy like 9/11 still shocks us, and we describe it as "unreal." It doesn't fit our view of reality which indicates that we all fool ourselves for the moment. Then, the rug gets pulled out from under us.

The reality is that the rug can be pulled out from under us at any time. The key is to remain moving forward in spite of what happens to us. That is the only positive advantage of religion. It keeps people moving in a forward direction. They go on believing and planning for the future. Victory and defeat are probabilities, but defeat is a certainty once you choose to surrender.

For the atheist, he must choose not to surrender. There may come a time when surrender is the only logical option. If I were going to be captured by al-Qaeda, I would eat my cyanide capsule. If I were diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, I would put my affairs in order, engage in some risky behaviors that I had been too chickenshit to do like skydiving, then I would eat a bullet. Dementia is not a fate I care to endure.

To make it through life, you have to keep moving. Relentless Forward Motion or RFM is what I call it. It doesn't guarantee anything, but it puts the odds more in your favor. It also has the added benefit of keeping you busy which is where happiness springs from. This is why religion emphasizes ritual so damn much. If you can't make them happy, at least keep them busy.

This is another one of those rambling posts, but the main purpose of this blog is as a psychological outlet for me. I deal with things by writing about them. It makes me feel better to put it all in words even it doesn't necessarily feel great to read those words. In the way of a conclusion, things are bad but not nearly as bad as some will tell you. You have some control over your life but not total control. And you shouldn't feel bad when shit happens because shit happens to us all. As they say, no one here gets out alive.

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