Are you afraid of being afraid?

The property which causes that sudden feeling of dread when confronted with a painful or stressful situation is anticipation. We are very symbolic beings. Our neocortex alone dedicates millions upon millions of neurons to the task of recognizing patterns; and almost double that number are redundancy neurons which are tasked with recognizing patterns of patterns. When we experience a stressful or painful event, our minds work to symbolize that event, and encode context specific patterns. Any stimulus involved in that event is further associated into that symbolism. As a result, we don’t just experience one stressful and fearful event. We experience thousands of different versions of that very same event. Over time, we begin to consciously recognize this confluence: dread sets in.

We match up this event consciously with representative standards in order to solve the pressing problem stress is meant to create: can we overcome, or do we have to adapt? As a result, if the event (which is now more of a state) in question becomes a stable state of existence, and that state is grossly disproportionate to societal standards, we begin to mourn.

The initial assessment and span of time required to encode and regulate redundancies and consciously digest all the necessary information just simply must be endured. Yes it’s going to suck and it most definately will have a negative impact on your quality of life. All things being equal, I would hope that this wouldn’t happen to anyone. But all things aren’t equal, and so this stuff does happen, and it happens at an alarming rate – for some, at such an alarming rate they cannot find the ability to cope and instead take their lives. You cannot change the fact that it does happen, and you should not change the fact that you become familiar with it. Most people will catastrophize and admit defeat; they believe they are destined for a life of misery and pain. But the only way they can really ‘know’ what misery and pain entail is by matching what they’re experiencing with generic standards. They mourn based upon the difference between the two.

Let’s say it was the norm for a people of a certain society to be blind. In our world, we view blindness as a disability, but in this particular society, it is the norm. If a sighted person became blind in our society, but was informed of another society where it was the norm, is it possible his coping skills would improve? You can obviously make the claim that objectively having sight is better than not having sight, always. Healthy people living in our world with no visual disabilities are absolutely happy and content. Why? Well, because as far as they know, they are at the apex of what we call the ‘generic standards’. Lets imagine some time in the distant future we gain the ability to communicate telepathically, to see and think on a quantum level, and never die. A person living now at the height of his health is relatively satisfied. Lets further suggest even that this person knows he will probably live forever (life extension therapies are available which will ensure his foreseeable lifespan). We can all probably agree this is an ideal scenario and probably accurately guess at this persons sense of well-being. Lets take this person and place them in the future. In the future, remember, people can think telepathically, have incredibly advanced IQ’s, never die, have none of the pratfalls of human biology, and can think at a quantum level. Would that man be happy living there, and then? I doubt it. I think he would be as miserable as the man living in our world without eyesight, or the woman who cannot move anything below the waist.

What I’m playing at is an existential interpretation of illness and disability, rather than a cultural and societal one based upon norms and averages. When we are ill and afraid our minds conjure horribly unbearable emotions and force us into the darkest corners of the most depressing scenarios. The causes of these phenomena are varied and impossibly complex. But for once that complexity does not hint at a mindless fatalism. We think in averages and problem solve with patterns. We are symbolic and allegorical creatures with a knack for intuition and emotional reasoning, but we kind of stink at calculating the cold hard facts. We label realists as unemotional robots (a title I have been affably given, many times…) and praise idealists with their deep insight. The answer isn’t a ‘balance of the two’ – which seems to have become the catch-all category for people who don’t really want to think too hard about the problem. Offering a banal ying-yang response to a complex question fundamentally presupposes that the two poles in question are the only two poles… and further that they are also the correct poles. That’s not always the case, and particularly in this situation it is definitely not the case. In this situation, dealing with fear and with expectations and mourning, the answer comes in the form of a question: why is standard upon which your fears are based the only possibly and necessary situation? Is it really the only possible state of existence? Is it possible things could have evolved differently? Is it possible we could experience pain way differently than we currently do? And death? And why does the thought of death ‘objectively qualify’ feelings of absolute terror – possibly the most aversive feeling in the world. The answer is that it one hundred percent does not. Death is the zenith of symbolic thought. We have absolutely no clue, subjectively, what death entails. And so since we don’t have even a marginally accurate redundancy for death, our patterns will be based solely upon weak metaphor and general symbolism. When we think of death thoughts like darkness and night-time and space, and cold come to mind, accompanied by feelings like ‘where’s mommy’ and ‘someone save me’.

Death is further qualified by the notion that it is inherently bad. But how is it? If it weren’t for death, there would literally be no new life, or any life at all. You are hear reading this only because trillions of ‘things’ died so that you could be here, at this particular moment of terrestrial time. There’s a certain feeling of endowed responsibility and pride in that thought, isn’t there? Further, what is greater in our universe, life or non-life? Non-living things, to be sure. There are more atoms and molecules and mass collections of ‘stuff’ out there than there are complex life forms. There is also more ‘darkness’ than there is ‘light’ – which is another great example of our weak symbolism and metaphor. Darkness is not inherently scary. That being said, place the bravest man in a dark room with loud haunting, staccatto noises and he will surely experience fear.

The point is simple: you qualify your feelings of fear by searching for standards with which to compare your situation to. The problem is in the limited number of standards we can come up with and find, and the definition of standards itself. Human emotion plays us and convinces us that the proof is in the feeling. Next time you’re feeling afraid, think of how that situation may be not a bad situation, or may be a different situation. If you can think of a way in which the painful or stresful situation, in some possible thought experiment, could be good, or at least not as bad, than I assure you your fear will lose a tremendous amount of its potency.

At the end of the day, death is still bad and pain still sucks. We will all face those two things at one point in our lives or another. You do not have to give in to them and they are not the only states of existence out there. You have a choice to change the way you experience them, existentially and phenomenologically  by altering the way you go about thinking about them. Unfortunately society and religion have come together to define what good states of existence are and what negative states of existence are. To Christians, having a healthy body is good, and having an unhealthy one is bad – and usually implies some evil or past transgression. Let me tell you right now that that is fucking bull-shit. It’s a consequence of poor thought and an irrational attachment to cultural tradition. The standards society forces on us can have an unconscious  and profound effect on how you cope with just shitty situations. If you are courageous and strong, and you can bear out the initial stages, you will find a way to adapt. If you think about what I have written for a little bit each time you are faced with a shitty situation, you’ll find yourself adapting to different patterns and experiencing a higher level of peace and satisfaction.

The Truths: people don’t actually matter that much.

The importance of a proper education:

I grew up with this burning feeling of entitlement that followed me everywhere, like a friend you don’t really want most of the time, but who is always there no matter what. It was an unhealthy relationship; Entitlement made me king, and I did whatever he asked. As a child I was constantly fishing for compliments, and was quick to anger if I wasn’t in the spotlight during every conversation. I couldn’t take critique, nor could I stand rejection. I was endlessly ignorant and hopelessly insecure. This pattern of behavior resulted in my friends and family pushing me away, and ensured that I certainly would not be the center of anyone’s attention. This realization made me feel even more angry and entitled. It was a really crummy cycle that lasted almost twenty one years.

I never worked hard at anything. I have a natural gift for music, and fell in love with the guitar at an early age. I never really practiced on my own (although I loved to tell people I practiced ‘two hours a day’), but I was naturally good enough that most people never caught on. I even managed to secure a position teaching part-time at this musical academy when I was sixteen years old. I played in a few bands and wrote half a dozen songs or so. I never played for the sake of playing. I played solely for the title and the recognition.

I often project myself onto others. As a child, I always gauged how others felt based upon how I would react in that very same situation. My family seems to have quite a knack for that – a huge part in why we all hate each other (as ironic as that is). I think at the heart of that projection is a selfish mass of cells, quickly infecting everything and everyone it meets.

I was always the ‘class clown’; a born vaudevillian. I would do anything for a laugh; anything. As a result of my efforts, I lost a lot of friends, and quickly gained a pretty shitty reputation. By high-school none of my friend’s parents wanted their kids to hang out with me. All of my teachers in high-school hated me, and I spent more time trying to convince other’s of my worth, than I did working to prove it. When someone had a bad opinion of me, I hated them for it; I knew exactly why they were wrong, and just how stupid they were for it.

I hate when people say ‘we live in a time where’… I haven’t done a meta analysis of the macro-level ebb and flow of society, so I am in no way authorized to make any such claims. All I can say is that right now I live in a time where I can interact with hundreds of people on the other side of the earth in the time it takes to pour a cup of juice. If I want, I can sit back and watch hours upon hours of video footage uploaded to an online community by members of almost every race, religion, society and country. I don’t know what anyone else is thinking, or what motivates them internally to choose the paths they chose, or what external factors have forced them down the road less traveled. I don’t even really know my own life, or who I am.

The way we feel things is not a good way to define what those things are.

I do not accept the premise that we are born with an essence, and that life is just this bland journey to figure out precisely who we are. That’s like a really bad Disney movie (probably involving a golden retriever with a predilection for playing ‘sport’). I think that I am constantly changing, and constantly refining myself. A great deal of who I am is both largely unknown to me, and lost in the memories I will never remember. If I had the answers to all those questions (like who I ‘really’ am, and ‘how I became that way’), I don’t think my life would be any easier.

There are only a few things that I know for certain are true. I know that I’m not important – at all. I know that when I die, I will most likely be forgotten. I know that I am infinitely stupid, and I know that I am constrained by my own biology just as much as I am by my culture and my society. I think there is nothing profound which separates myself from the animals, although I understand that people are ‘programmed’ to think in terms almost exclusively of themselves. I think that our need to see ourselves taken after, and wanted, and loved, comes from a place of ego and delusion. I don’t deserve love, or money, or shelter, or any of the things I get. I don’t deserve to be beaten down like an animal, either… but I do not deserve this excess that I have. Even though I have hardships in my life few will ever experience, I know how fortunate and how lucky I am.

I live next-door to a family of self-centered, ignorant character, deluded by the prospect that if their completely bull-shit, arbitrary requirements for ‘living’ were met, they’d strike gold again, and again, and again. What I’m  doing is not the sine qua non of meaning. The moment in which we shed this illusion is the precise moment that our lives actually begin.

Imagine a world without (for the most part) an entitled generation of lazy narcissists who think every step they take is this great terrestrial moon-landing. Imagine making a great cup of coffee only meant that you were left with a great cup of coffee to drink. Imagine a world where reporting what shop a celebrity left was considered creepy, rather than entertainment. Imagine all the shit we could get done if it didn’t take twenty years to realize how insignificant we are? Imagine a world where we have finally accepted that every feeling actually doesn’t need to be shared, and every impulse entertained. We are betrayed by our motivations and emotions all the time.

In conclusion, through much pain and suffering I have learned to question what it means to be happy and content. I have learned that the often black and white ideals I hold as standards for behavior are as much the product of understanding as the big-bang theory is  the result of comedic genius. (Which is a very pretentious way of saying ‘I haven’t got a fucking clue’.) I don’t know every answer, and I only really know a tiny fraction of the questions. But I know that I’m not all that important, and that no one will remember me for ‘who I really am’. That small fact was powerful enough to change my entire view of my life, and of life itself. If you live life with that thought constantly consuming your mind, you will treat people more nicely, have much more realistic expectations, and be much more open to change and hard work. Once you accept that no one is inherently important, you will begin to understand the true meaning of equality.

p.s.: if the world exploded tomorrow and every person was destroyed – along with all the evidence of people altogether – do you really think the people who believe they are so important and powerful will somehow emerge unscathed? As if existence alone etches their very essence into the fabric of our universe? No, the answer is no. They die and are forgotten, just like everyone else. You’re not born more important than anyone else, so grow the fuck up and do something with your life.   

My Life of Fear:

Fear is a big part of my life – more in the vein of competition rather than oppression. I have a lot of fears in my life, and a great portion of my day is spent being afraid of different things. Those moments, however few or fleeting, can be extremely useful if you have the courage to try and really roll up your sleeves and get to the root of the problem.

I have written quite a lot on the topic of fear, and while I feel comfortable with all that I have learned so far, I still yearn for more answers. I don’t think there is one absolute truth out there for anything; I  don’t believe in an absolute ‘hockey standard’, or  a ‘fashion truth’. I don’t believe in any type of ‘abstract’, objective standard of perfection. But I do think that we can find answers to many of the questions which we have. I think that each individual person is walking a completely different path from their fellow man, and as such, they will see ‘truth’ in a different context than everyone else. Our world is proof of this: there are Christians who are absolutely convinced of Christ, and atheists who deny his existence completely (as a spiritual being). I’m not saying I think everything is relative, and I don’t think supporting the idea that individuality extends well beyond our vain, egotistical values commits me to any form of post-modernism. I just sincerely believe that the amount of ‘stuff’ out there (facts, truths, things, events, future events, possible events) is infinitely larger than our minds can grasp. And I find an extreme sense of comfort in knowing that.

The particular question I have been obsessed with lately is this: how can I overcome fear. Overcoming fear doesn’t mean feeling absolutely no fear, but, for me, it means having an overarching understanding of fear, and all of the different ways of understanding fear. I think we can look for truth in many directions, and find incredibly satisfactory answers. But I don’t think those branches all converge onto one fact, or principle, or set of truths. I also think that our species is stupid and limited. We are beautiful and amazing, don’t get me wrong. But now that we don’t fear for our lives on a daily basis, we have food and shelter and disposable income, we have begun to fully grasp just how limited we are, intellectually.

It’s weird how our brains work. We see patterns and we see redundancies for patterns, and our brains work tirelessly behind the scenes interpreting and sifting through these patterns. As a result, answers often come from places we would never even think to look. This is called the Butterfly Effect.  I bring this up because this very phenomenon happened to me recently, and it dramatically changed (and improved) my understanding of fear.

I was reading the famed ‘Ender’s Game’ series (I’m currently reading ‘speaker for the dead’), and although almost everything in those books has had a tremendous impact on my perspective, there was one part in particular that really connected with me. Ender was talking to an artificial intelligence and they got on the topic of emotions. The AI said that emotions were something she did not understand, as they are a direct product of our evolution – that’s why we share these emotions with animals. She said that she had been created, and so as a result she finds it very difficult to ‘feel’ the way that humans do. And that’s what got me.

When I stripped everything down, ultimately my fear was rooted in this feeling of mourning that things just hadn’t turned out ‘right’. I thought that there was some ultimate objective standard, and that fear itself derives objective existence from the concept of ‘well-being’. That insofar as life is better than death, death is a bad thing, and should, ought, to be feared. But why is that true? Why are the metaphorical, dark images which come to my mind when I’m afraid ‘bad’? Why is darkness ‘bad’? Why is ’empty space’, scary? The fact of the matter is, they aren’t. I find a crisp, clear summer day on a tropical island beautiful. But, perhaps to another creature, or even to another person, darkness is beautiful, and emptiness is beautiful.

Sure death sucks, and I can accept the fact that I will probably never rationally welcome death with open arms, but that fact does not commit me to the position that says fear has inherent existence and should rightly be feared.  Fear does not exist, it just exists in us. It is incredibly complex, and if I try to surmise exactly what fear is in one, succinct sentence, I will fail. But fear is not real. It is a product of our evoultionary history, consciousness, our minds. Fear is as much a part of us as our arm, or leg. Evolution created fear, not the other way around.

I was thinking about this the other day: what would really happen if I gave up fear altogether. What if I were a soldier in battle, and as the enemy charged I threw caution to the wind and met them in pace and in spirit. And do you know what my very next thought was? I shit you not, “what if I just died directly after that. What if after throwing caution to the wind and meeting my enemy in battle I am instantly killed? What if my death is that unceremonious?”. What the fuck kind of disillusioned thinking is that? I decide to give up fear, but then the very next scene, the scene enshrined by both logic and reason, is a scene born of fear. What are the chances that I would just instantly die, unceremoniously directly after I give up my fear? Is that really an even balance of all the options?

See, that’s what fear does. Fear makes you think like there’s no other way out. It makes you see one single story, and then live by that story. Maybe in our evolutionary past this was adaptive (maybe that’s not even relevant), but now it’s not. Fear goes by another name: Barabbas. Fear can go fuck itself. We don’t need to let fear control us. You will not find that control in any religion, you will only shift the control from fear to God. The whole point of this rambling essay is to communicate that you can in fact let go of fear. You have to make that decision. It’s not going to be easy. You may feel slightly informed and maybe partially inspired after reading this, but your journey is far from over.

A few parting tips:

• Turn everything into a challenge. Life will be much less threatening if you realize you’re a competitor. 
• Accept your inevitable death. You’ll never truly get a grip on fear if you constantly entertain the delusion that you’re immortal.
• Shed your fucking ego: chances are, you will not be remembered long after your death. Find how empowering that is. Empowering in the sense that at the moment you realize how insignificant you truly are, you will finally see how much work you have to do to get where you thought you were going.
• Stop being so entitled: like I said, you’re going to be forgotten when you die. That means that no one will remember except for your family. This is why Eric Harris did what he did; he wanted a shot at immortality. Don’t do that. Instead, do everything you can to be remembered once you die – for positive reasons. At the very least, after your gone people will have a whole lot of respect for you. And there are few more comforting thoughts than that.
• Work hard: work when no ones looking. If you work for recognition only, than you really didn’t grasp the last four points at all.
• Be nice and kind to others. Fear leads people to do horrible things, and transforms people into horrible little mirages. If your afraid, run in the opposite direction. Be as nice and kind as you can, and I guarantee you, your fear lose that intensity.

Atheism: The Holy Grail of the 21’st Century

While I have touted Atheism now and again, I’ve tended to stick to the sidelines and identify myself as an agnostic. I make that choice for two reasons (in ascending order of importance).

1. Because I cannot say with absolute epistemological certainty that a god doesn’t exist.
2. Because Atheism has been branded militant.

Not being able to absolutely refute the possible existence of a god does influence my choice to distance myself from an ‘ism’ that theorizes no God exists, and bases everything else off that one fact. But it’s not the deciding factor. In one of his books (I cannot remember which one right now), Dawkins gives us this rubric for identifying how much of an atheist you are. I think it’s a seven point scale; 1 being not an atheist and 7 completely and absolutely stating no God exists. Dawkins himself says he’s ‘technically’ an agnostic for those reasons, but associates himself as an Atheist instead.

It seems to me that Atheism has become this cultural Holy Grail…and the internet the Knights Templar. At the same time, people seem to have no idea what it is exactly, and yet revere it for its mystical powers. Where association by name grants the user an immediate ‘level-up’.

I was looking through my inbox folder on YouTube when I saw someone had replied to a comment I made on a Ricky Gervais video earlier that day. I had replied to a user who I thought was just a perfect personification of this problem that everyone seems to miss and skip over. In the same breath he accosted religions for forcing their beliefs on the masses, and then said that anyone who disagrees with Atheism is severely intellectually challenged.

The problem I find with Atheism directly is that it has aligned itself with this image of the strong bully that won’t take no for an answer. And this has been picked up on. It’s become so popular now that people ‘choose’ to believe it because it’s cool to do so, because it’s in style; they rarely accept it for its intellectual and scientific merit. How many people understand, or even care to understand, the intricacies of genetics and evolutionary theory, or metaphysics and ontology? I would engender to guess only a few.

The real problem (and the real reason I don’t align myself with Atheism) is that by serving up Atheism right now, were just covering up a bruise. It’s like buying a blue ray player for a piece of crap 25 year old T.V. Sure Blue Ray is new. And yeah it is great technology. And sure it’s better than DVD, and certainly better than VHS. But at the end of the day, you’re still stuck with the same piece of crap 25 year old T.V. You’ll be able to play all the latest movies, have all the right, new information and technology, but you’re still going to get a shitty picture out of it. The problem isn’t the way you play the media, it’s what you choose to plug the player into; what you choose to play it through.

Without changing the way people think, their code of ethics and understanding of the true value to morality, eventually were just going to run into the same problems.

Say you teach a child that the earth is only 2 days old, the universe was created by a Giant space lobster and to ingratiate ourselves we must wear only hot-pink, one-piece snow-suits. Word gets around and this picks up. You’ve got some wind in your sails now because your next door neighbor Klavin, a new convert, decides to raise his child in the ‘way of the Crustacean’.

Klavin is kind of an alcoholic dick, so he doesn’t do too great of a job raising his son, Johny Walker. Johny was never hugged, never cradled, and he never felt a mother’s love (Klavin was a single-father). He was never taught any moral lessons or principles, and when he got sick he was all alone to fend for himself; his father was apathetic, showing him virtually no love. Johnny-boy had to walk on egg-shells around his dad. The best he could hope for was that he wouldn’t be yelled at – he never dreamt of actual happiness. The lessons he did learn, he learned watching his father. His father was an angry Drunk; quick to anger, slow to forgive (slow is an under-statement, Klavin was famous for never saying the five-lettered-word). He was constantly the butt of his dad’s jokes. Johnny grew up and went out into the world.

At the same time the founder of the ‘way-of-the-crustacean’, Steven, was raising his own son. Only Dr. Pinker had come from a long-line of good-parents. It was in their pedigree to be nice, genuine and loving people; they raised young William right. He was loved. Every turn Klavin took, William took the opposite. He had everything Klavin wanted, and nothing of what he had. Ol’ Bill was taught moral lessons every day. Inspite of being billionaires, his parents volunteered at the soup kitchen where they taught him never to judge a book by its cover, and the importance of getting to know people… think before you speak. He was constantly on the receiving end of love and affection. William grew up and went out into the world.

They were both raised believing the same wacky things (which they held onto just as strongly today as they did when they had their great boiling baptism at the age of 10). Johnny went out and caused mayhem; anyone who didn’t agree with him, he beat. His father, although an asshole, was a strong man. Somewhere that must have rubbed off on Johnny because he led the great Lobster-claw revival of 2044. He fertilized the church, and it grew. He made life hell for everyone. It was his life’s mission to ensure that everyone abide by the doctrine he set out, based upon his beliefs.

Will led a quiet life, slowly widdling down that trillion dollar family fortune. He took a wife and had kids of his own. He still volunteers at the same soup kitchen; he is a man of works.

Condescending stupid story aside, the point I’m trying to make is clear. The problems facing our world today are far more varied and far more insidious than we pretend. We can’t label one people or one religion as the prime cause of suffering; or even the impetus. America is having a similar discussion about gun laws right now. The point here is that it’s the character of the person that determines the outcome, not what that person believes. Only a few of us will know the two extremes pictured in the story above. But most of us will fall in-between; a mixture of good and bad experiences.

We all know in the history of religion you’ll find an abundance of death and war. But I’d wager Atheists are responsible for just as many crimes against humanity.  Atheists can’t possibly solve bigotry by simply replacing a system of beliefs. If it’s the system of beliefs that cause the man to act the way he does and to do the things he does, than we should all run and hide from Atheism too. But well, we all know it’s not. It’s the actions of the man that cause this suffering.

“How needing of compassion are those who engage in actions conducive to suffering”

We have to teach our children virtue and ethic. All of the great people of this world, almost without exception, have come from great families. They’ve had strong parents or guardians who taught them love, empathy, compassion, honesty and humility. It’s the angry, apathetic, cowardly, dishonest and egoistical that cause suffering, not the ‘Christian’, or the ‘Muslim’; it’s the man. The subject, not the object. A gun doesn’t shoot a person and all that.

The self-proclaimed Atheist that replied to my comment on YouTube told me that “the negative impact on… the others sense of well being” has zero impact on the matter at hand. He was telling me that being right was not only more important than being decent, but the only thing that really is important.

Daniel Dennet said that anyone who disagrees with evolution is a little slow, or at least emotionally disturbed. An introductory Philosophy student is able to point out, on average, at least three logical fallacies every-time Dawkins addresses the topic of ‘religion’ (I know, we tested it in an intro class). The great figureheads of Atheism tell us that thinking things through isn’t really all that important, as long as we think we’re right. And that we should put our energy towards science and atheism, not morality, ethics and compassion. That it’s the archaic traditions of religion that cause suffering in this world, not the small every day actions (and in-actions) of men.

What happens if we reach the singularity, creating the worlds first self-sustaining A.I.; a gun really can shoot a person. There are a few videos online where the guys working on these projects openly talk about the potential dangers involved in this type of discovery. They say we’re competing in a world-wide arms-race; every major developed country is racing towards the same goal. One possibility is that a matrix like scenario could unfold; the machines we create see that our race does more harm than good and wipe us clean off the face the earth. So long as things go as planned, there’s no guarantee this type of thing won’t happen. All we can really do is hope that by instilling human morals (Asimov’s ‘Three Laws of Robotics’ ) we can filter those genocidal impulses.

It happens to be that it’s not the large actions committed at longer intervals and on larger scales that are the real threat. And it’s not the threat far off in the distant future that we should be worried about. It’s the small, seemingly insignificant, things; the causes behind the causes. The little suffering that happen thousands of times every day; a rude look, a cold shoulder, a rejection . Why we do the things we do. Christians literally have a code of ethics spelled out for them, and still for the most part are no better than their counterparts; they have only their vices left. I mean, the ten commandments are pretty basic, pretty easy to remember and genuinely easy to follow. If millions of otherwise normal people find it too taxing to follow ten rules, we know that the problem is bigger and far more complicated than we think.

This is why I am so attracted to Buddhism. While I remain a skeptic/naturalist at heart, the teachings of the Buddha have had a tremendous impact on my life. Cause and effect don’t match up in a clean-cut 1:1 kind of way. The universe is messy; nothingness and chaos. The objects of suffering, the negative actions done by the Christian, or the Muslim, have more than one cause. And we know that a negative cause always has more than one effect. Physical Abuse doesn’t just cause a bruise. Why should we think any different about the rest of the phenomena in the rest of our world?

We need to address the underlying pathology which has infected our societies; we can’t keep bandaging our wounds then complaining of an infection. If there’s one over-arching generalization I feel tempted to define the west with (specifically my generation, and my generation as seen in Canada and the U.S.), it’s laziness.

What’s The Point of Buddhism?

My first year Philosophy professor was an adamant Christian. He operates under the guise of one who cares more about truth than orthodoxy. The more I came to know him, though, the more scripted and forced this persona seemed. His main point of interest was his insistence that, ontologically speaking, Christianity offered the most accurate, fulfilling and sound alternative through which we can explain all aspects and all areas of existence – a fact worth noting if only to guffaw at the irony of it all. After two years and five classes together, I have realized just how insecure his beliefs really were.

“Therefore I lie with her and she with me.”

He was always reminding us that he was a Christian because he thought it was the best fit, the truest… not out of tradition, of course. To bolster his position (I think more for himself, than anyone else) he would say that Buddhism is ridiculous because ‘they literally believe that nothing exists”… again, catching the verbal irony? This semester past I took metaphysics with him, and at least a dozen times or more during the year he made a quip about how Buddhism is ridiculous because they ‘literally believe in nothing.’

I’ve found that the over simplified explanation of the Buddhist teachings he offered is extremely far from the truth – almost shamefully so. I always sensed he was straw-manning Buddhism, but since I myself wasn’t too educated on the teachings of Buddhism, I had nothing to counter him with.

Buddhism is not based on the simple, infantile belief that nothing exists – like a ‘brain-in-a-vat’ thought experiment. Buddhism teaches that for every effect there are many causes; much like for many causes there are many effects. Central to understanding this is the idea of ‘Dependent Arising’, or ‘Dependent origination’ (Pratityasamutpada). It’s the idea that everything arises in dependence of multiple causes and multiple conditions.

Buddhists also believe that there is no ‘I’ or ‘mine’; no owner, or subject-of-an-object. They don’t believe that there is any unified intrinsic self. But rather they believe we are a collection of dependent aggregates, impermanent and constantly subject to change. This is also true of Dukkha or ‘objects’ that cause suffering. Using the word ‘nothingness’ as a noun is an incorrect way of expressing the Buddhist ideas, and of interpreting what the true meaning of nothingness is. I think this way of manipulating the information is at largely responsible for a nihilistic misunderstanding of nothingness ; it can’t be a noun because by definition there is no object to be had.

I digress…

An easier way to traverse these ultra murky waters is to apply our vague and limited understanding of quantum mechanics to things like nothingness and dependent origination (meditating on one point acts as a cause to help us meditate on another point, it’s effect). Think of a table, for example. Most of us conveniently label that thing we eat at with four legs and a large flat open surface (sometimes round, other times square or rectangular) a table. Only most people probably know that tables don’t just pop into existence – ex nihilo nihil fit. Christians believe that’s exactly what happens (or rather, happened); God spoke and *poof*, things were created out of nothing. Which is also possibly another reason my professor did not express a deeper understanding of nothingness – he is a realist he despises nominalists. No self (anatta) is extended to all objects, so that all things are emptiness (sunyata), without inherent existence (svabhava).

Sure there are things in each person that seem to have an inherent self, but an inherent self presupposes a single cause, and a single effect. Buddhism is founded on the belief that things are very complicated. Whereas Christians like my professor believe in single causes, a prime mover and abstract entities. Buddha taught that when you die, your aggregates come together to form a new being. A person is not born the same way twice, no matter how ‘good’ their Karma. Christians believe essence precedes existence; they teach that each one of us has a unique immaterial soul and upon death (although the ‘time’ elapsed during this period is still a tad unclear) we are given a new body and a new earth. Christianity teaches that what sets humans apart (and above) angelic beings is that one of our inherent qualities that cannot be subtracted is the fact that we have a body. Buddhism teaches that the aggregates that compromise ‘us’ can come together in many forms.

Nothingness is much more complex than I was taught, and then many believe. I’m just beginning my journey, so bear with me if I paint a very rough picture of things.

Buddhists, for the most part, believe in a cycle of re-birth, in Karma. If you read a Buddhist book or text you’ll encounter words like ‘nothingness’ and ‘karma’ and (especially) ‘liberation and ignorance’. Liberation, as you might have expected, is freedom from the cycle of re-birth; freedom in the form of enlightenment and nirvana. Ignorance in Buddhist terms represents a way of looking at the world and interacting with ‘objects’ in the world. An ignorant man does not understand dependent origination. They look at Dukkha as real independent entities. The Buddha says that if we meditate on nothingness we can be freed from our ignorance and liberated form samsara. The first step is to understand that things aren’t so cut-and-dry as most westerners like to think they are. A table isn’t just a table. A table is many effects with many causes; wood, rain, trees growing, the sun, carpenters, engineers, a place to eat, a place for work, to store things etc…

Buddhism at the very least is incredibly intellectually stimulating. It doesn’t bait you with needlesly overcomplicated jargon and concepts. It’s inherently complex; I can’t open up a

‘psalty’ version of the ‘book of the dead’ and expect my child to understand the overarching narrative. Another nail in the coffin for Christianity, unfortunately.

Buddhism isn’t weighed down by the senseless doctrine of most western religions, nor is it confined to determinism like Laplace’s demon. It is at the same time both reverent and romantic, impermanent and deterministic.

Insight Into Emptiness:

“For example, a medical student may make the strong determination, ‘I am going to cure all the illness in the world when I become a doctor.” Even if she is not able to do this, all her activities of caring for the sick will be more powerful because she has this intention. In the same way a warrior who vows to wipe out all enemies no matter what it takes will put everything he has into the fight due to his powerful intention. Similarly, with strong compassion and bodhichitta for all sentient beings, our ability ot progress along the path and work for the benefit of others will increase dramatically.”

– KHENSUR JAMPA TEGCHOK

Fight or Flight

It seems to me that we suffer under the illusion that panic and anxiety enhance our problem solving in times of crisis and duress. Like that gripping, tight feeling of panic when your confronted by a potvaliant bare-knuckle brawler you accidentally eyed at the bar, who now wants to knock the living shit out of you, or when you’ve fallen ill. Or the moment you realize accidentally did send that text to that person you didn’t want to send that text to. We are deluded in believing that giving in to that feeling of fear helps us; but it’s easy. And fuck me if in that moment our bodies sure don’t make a good case for it. But it’s not.

Lets take a pragmatic approach: fear is important. Fight or flight is important. Not giving in to the psychological manifestations of panic, the prolonged shadow of fear, is something everyone has to learn how to do; that is, everyone who wants a happy life. If you die tomorrow, and you spent the last year worried straight, especially when you didn’t have cause to always worry, you’ll feel like you never had the chance to live. Listen to fear. Flee when necessary and fight when possible. But never give in to panic. Don’t spend all of your days worrying and afraid. listen to what your body is telling you, respond, but don’t for a second believe that your body knows exactly what its doing. Life is nothing if not imperfect.

All worldviews agree: fear is a manifestation of weakness and a vestige of our past. I’m not religious. I believe in the order of science; I believe in cartesian doubt. I believe in classical theory and romantic theory. I believe what I think is believable.

Evolution paints a grim picture of existence, depending how you look on it; in this instance, it sheds light exactly where we can’t see.

We also live under the delusion that right now, this point of history, is super important. I’d wager everyone ever believed the exact same thing. Conscious beings place themselves, their time, at the center of the universe. Why? Because we are the center of our universe. Sure we can consider a priori knowledge, but its a posteriori that has the greatest influence over how we act an behave, what we choose to believe, and what we choose not to.

We think that we are the culmination of billions of years of natural selection and evolution. And in a way we are. But fuck me if it ends here. Were just one small dot on a giant non-linear graph. We will evolve further. Millions of years from now, who knows what we’ll be. Or even if we will be.

You may be wondering how that at all helps us with fear; I just told you that your not that important, and that most of what you believe is horse-shit – encouraging stuff… really. This information carries with it the weight of a promise. A promise that so long as things do stay alive, they will tend towards positive progression; they will get better.

Our response to fear is a conditioned response and a programmed response. We have been given the gift of consciousness. That’s the meaning of life, the beauty of it all. That’s why we think that our lives, right now, as your reading this, are of some grand plot – things are going to end with me…. We an change our lot in life. We can be the force of natural selection. Sure there are limitations to what we can do, but so long as we are conscious and capable of rational inquiry, we can surely change our selves – who we are.

the only thing lately that imbues me with a deep sense of confidence is this very fact: that our ‘calling’ is to self-evolve. To take humanity from the weak fucking subordinate position it currently resides in, and elevate that to the tip of the fucking world. That’s what Nietzsche was all about too. Everyone thought he was a weak crazy man, and Christian crackpots love saying he was a deluded schizoid, but he knew exactly who he was, and what he had to do.

Our natural response to fear is to panic. To curl up. Why? Because we associate whatever is causing the fear with its potential negative consequence; the harm it will cause us. Fear is like a phone call or a fax; fear is only a mediator. It is not real. Fear tells us that harm is coming. It’s aversive because it must warn us not to engage. Panic is the opposite; it is non-engagement. So when we panic, we think that we have separated ourselves from the conflict. Panic is also just a mediator. It’s also potent because it has to get our attention. Fight or flight. And this is the psychology of it; the romantic interpretation. Lets look at the classical interpretation.

Take a grazing zebra, for example. Say the Zebra catches a stalking predator in its periphery; the stress response is activated. In order to escape from the predator, the zebras body has to expend intense muscular effort and energy. The sympathetic nervous system activates to provide for these needs (panic). In response to a novel stimuli perceived to be dangerous, the locus coeruleus releases  catocholamine hormones (epinephrine norepinephrine) to fuel the immediate physical reactions, the often violent muscular action.

Fear is complicated and dense; our understanding of all its underpinnings and extensions and interactions will come only with time. In the meantime we have to deal with the problem at hand. If we want to have an enjoyable life, we have to be courageous. It will be hard, and it will take extreme effort; it will be the very hardest thing you ever have to do. But with a little wisdom, a little time and a lot of balls, we can look death in the face and say fuck you; we can turn stress, into eustress. And take any negative situation and turn it into a challenge.

It’s trite and slightly banal, but why wouldn’t you want to try? Why would anyone want to live their lives curled up in a ball, fearful of whatever comes their way? No one does. They just think there’s no way out; their lot is cast and that’s it – there’s nothing left to do. Wrong, as long as you’re still conscious, you can still fight. And I’d rather die fighting to live, than die in a confused panicky stupor… which is where we are all headed if we don’t man-up. This is the key. Listen to the panic; let it say its peace, and tell you what’s the matter, but don’t let it set up camp. Kick it out. Take all that stress and transform it into eustress. Your body is still telling you something is wrong, you’re not going around delusionally believing everythings perfectly fine and kicking all bad thoughts out, you’re just subtracting panic; you’re taking away the aversive feelings. Those are great for the savannah – but were not living on the savannah. Lets replace panic and the subjective feeling we call ‘fear’ with eustress. Lets face fear and stress with a smile and a shit-ton of determination. Everyone is going to die. Lets do it fucking epically!

Out Of The Frying Pan Into The Fire: the importance of a good fix.

I recently added like 400 ebooks to my Kobo touch ereader. I have over two thousand ebooks downloaded, but I decided to choose the best of the bunch and add em on. So today on the train to Toronto for my monthly doctors appointment, I started reading ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance’. It’s a great book, and although I’m only 50 pages in, I think its going to be a favourite.

There a section early on where the author talks about his friends disdain for technology. Although I thought he was going to go a broader, more profound route, he tended towards a specific goal; and that’s great, but I had hoped for a different conclusion. Anyway, at that point he gives an example of how when he was at this friends house recently he noticed that their tap was dripping. He thought back and remembered that it was dripping the last time, and the time before that, and the time before. So he approached this friend (we’ll call them Sue and Tom – because I forget their names). He asks Tom why he hasn’t had the faucet fixed. Tom replies that he had tried to fix it but couldn’t so he just gave up. He thinks on this; so after failing to repair the dripping faucet, Tom accepts that it is now his station in life to live with a  broken faucet.

A little while later while sitting with Sue in the living room, the faucet dripping noisily in the background, Tom and Sue’s daughter comes in the room and proceeds to ask her a question. Sue can’t hear the question properly because of the faucet dripping in the background, and after having asked her daughter to repeat the question a few times, becomes angry and hostile and briefly but potently erupts in a verbose explosion of words.  The faucet dripping in the background was the fire-starter, but she’d never admit it.

If Tom had  fixed the Faucet instead of giving up, Sue would not have been angry and upset; she wouldn’t have yelled at her daughter. The daughter wouldn’t have become angry and upset, and wouldn’t have taken that out on someone else. And that person who received the daughters anger… you get the picture.

I have always felt that there is a tremendous value in doing things the right way (even though I so often failed to do so) . I remember growing up my father quite often used to half-ass jobs around the house; total Tim Taylor style of repair. He would put a new shower door on, but it wouldn’t be totally right. He would say it’s not so big of a deal – he was probably upset because his wrench set wasn’t in the right order… which at the time probably wasn’t a big deal either. The door of the shower eventually broke right off.

My point is this: when we ignore things because its easier to do so, especially when those things we are ignoring are broken or otherwise dysfunctional, we are in a way setting up little snares in our lives; when we don’t mow the lawn properly, or fix a faucet, or properly assemble a door. We are the direct cause of a great deal of our own suffering and sorrow.

There’s a quote from the Tibetan Book of the Dead that I keep written on a folded piece of paper in my wallet; ‘how needing of compassion are those who engage in actions conducive to suffering’.

When we half ass a fix around the house, or fail to get to the root of an interpersonal conflict with a loved one, because ignoring them is easier than fixing them, we are setting ourselves up for more suffering and more conflict. This becomes an even larger problem when our inaction produces suffering in the lives of others; we have a responsibility to do no direct harm to others.

Everyone complains when they’re sad or when something bad happens in their lives. I ask you this: how much of that suffering do you think is preventable? How much of it is caused by a failure on your part, or someone you love, to complete something properly.

I find that we are often just getting unstuck from one trap, when the next moment we’ve fallen into another. And quite ironically, what we often think to be a small frustration in a moment of weakness, down the road snowballs into a massive future conflict.

Don’t be irresponsible and lazy; be farsighted. If there’s a problem with a loved one, dig deep and find the root cause; don’t just slap on a band-aid. If your faucet drips loudly, or there’s any other impeding force in your environment that threatens your tranquility, fix it. Small things quickly become big problems.