I was inspired to write this aricle by the following statement I found this very forum:
“Neither blindness nor ignorance corrupts people […]” - this is true: fear corrupts us.
To explain this let us take a look at what fear essentially is.
Fear is a special form of expectation. It always refers to future events which we anticipate, as well as future events which we do not anticipate. That is to say that we either have a more or less certain notion of what might happen in the future, data from the past and present forming the basis of logic deduction of possible events, or that we have no idea at all about future events. Now what forms the basis of fear is the presence of an unknown element which is always part of the deduction (in case there is data we can draw a conclusion from, otherwise the unknown element is the absence of anything to draw a conclusion from) and ultimately prevents us from gaining complete certainty about our future.
Now, what does that mean?
The feeling of uncertainty leaves us helpless. It depresses us and mars our souls with constant sorrow. We are in fear of the future and it is this fear which corrupts us.
Man has always been trying hard to order the chaos of nature and gain control over it - often reaching too far causing even more chaos. We are in desperate need of order because to us all disorder is connected with bad things: deseases, catastrophies, death are all caused by a malfunctioning nature or are the malfunction itself.
Thus we are ever-trying to maintain a balanced order of things.
The fear of things we cannot know, things that are hidden from us behind a wall of missing data, uncertainty of what is going to happen and in turn an uncertainty of how to react to future events to maintain order … it is this fear, any type of fear, since fear ultimately always refers to the future, which corrupts us.
This not ignorance (ignorance is the unawareness of the absence or falsity of knowledge) however, but rather the knowledge and certainty that there is something we cannot foresee or know … it is the awareness of human imperfection and mediocrity which causes in us this fear … and which corrupts us.
I think we have known something when we know we do not know.
Therefore to know that we cannot know the future completely no matter how complete we know of the past and present is knowledge in itself.
But if this knowledge create fear is it then no longer good nor desirable? Is such knowledge to be shunned for it creates in us the ‘corruption of fear’?
I rather think not. All truths are good, and knowledge of truths, even partially, is certainly good too. And what is good cannot be a corruption. Therefore fear is not a corruption. I think fear, like pain, is a useful and perhaps even necessary thing for humankind.
Fear can lead you to realise that humans are ultimately limited and frail, and that it is something incongruent with what humans “ought to be”, ie rather than a corruption, which mars that which is perfect or whole, fear instead reveals that which is imperfect and deficient in us. And again to know this is itself good knowledge. Fear dispels the notion that humans are masters of their own destiny.
For example fear can propel you to know yet even more to constrain and limit the unknowns and unknowable to yet a smaller range of variability, even to the extent that you can do something robust to cope with it. For example, in the context of the current Asian tragedy, to put in place a tsunami early warning system. And to achieve this needs a cooperative process, even as the current recovery and rehabilitation process necessarily will be, and that in turn may get people talking and working together where previously they rather not, eg the Acehness rebels and the Tamil Tigers.
Of course fear can also lead you to ask whether there is really a god out there too, even just to deny god is to recognise “it”.
I do not see what’s the direction “opposite” to mine? I am saying that fear leads us in directions that are mostly profitable. The only one “opposite” to these, ie unprofitable, is perhaps paralysis or denial.
“Fear dispels the notion that humans are masters of their own destiny.â€
I can make an argument of why these two assertions are opposites. But, I kinda lazy right now. But this is what I mean. You and Sebby are arguing about fear, coming up with ideas that are at odds, yet ideas that are very true in human condition.
if youre a girl, and paralyzed by any of your emotions, then fear corrupts you and makes you unimaginably insane. ill say 80% of girls are insane because they fear many different things.
the only way being afraid helps you is when you need to recognize the neccesity of formulating a plan. being afraid makes you realize that you need to think about what you are going to do in the future.
if you realize that there is nothing you can do to plan for what is coming, or you have completed your planning, you should stop being afraid. the thoughts should leave your mind. when they come back, stare at the nearest object and contemplate its details until the unsettling thoughts go away. there is no good to be had by sitting around being afraid of uncontrollable things, and it very very clearly makes girls crazy more than anything else.
I meant to say in my first post: [edit]I think both of you guys make a very good argument about fear, what it does to us and how it affects our decision.[/edit]
I think you’ve described something that causes fear in some cases, but not all. If I had “complete certainty about my future” my life would be horrible - it would be worse than boring. I draw the deepest and most powerful elation and inspiration from the fact that I do not know what will come, and neither does anyone else. What fear I feel is rather caused by certain possibilities, potentialities - some human beings whom I do not trust hold positions of power over me. In this case, the uncertainty is in fact the basis of fear - if I knew an outright police state were in the works, I could buy my guns and start educating myself and others in their use and in what is coming. Since it is not a given that this will occur, I must sit on my ass and make vague noises of caution that sound paranoid to most people.
But I would also fear the certainty that something is inevitable - if we are doomed to die by nuclear annihilation, global warming/overpopulation/etc. or some other means that it is for some reason impossible to prevent, that would be much more fearsome than uncertainty - with the uncertainty we can still summon the motive to fight against such things, and maybe even win.
The point I want to make is that uncertainty is not always a cause of fear, and fear is almost never that which corrupts. I’ve cited this quotation on this site before, and it holds water here also:
Corruption is not always a result of fear. Corruption is most often a result of greed or of the narcotic effect given to some people by the flexing of metaphorical muscles.
Death is a certainty. That is the ultimate source of fear. It is indeed a corruption of life.
Ironically we may fear, not because of unknown, but because we know. An innocent child probably knows no fear. Perhaps we say we do not know because we do not want to know.
Thus we fear death not so much that it is a corruption, but what happens after death, which we may have known but we deny it. However this knowledge bites back at us in the guise of fear.
i think fear is a good thing, as it leads us to invent solutions for problems we have, or at least more efficient solutions. now panic is bad. there’s never a good time for panicking (sp?) because that rids us of our ablility to think logically and reason those solutions.
I have concluded that fear is the ruling emotion of human beings. Living ‘without’ fear could be called love - living ‘with’ fear causes wars, hatred, racism etc.,
I don’t believe that we have to find love, but rather, rid ourselves of fear.
See, what I am saying is not that it is one of life’s aims to gain complete certainty about our future, - something like that is not possible. But the fact or rather the almost certain possibility that in our future things which we conceive as not good for ourselves are going to happen is what causes us to fear it. The future, of course is the one thing that makes life a worthy and exciting experience, because we are actually living in the future!
see “On Time”(philosophy forum)