Tag: fear

What then is an emotion?

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It turns out that emotions are not straight forward things. Perhaps instinctively we imagine them to be such things as anger, sadness, happiness, fear, joy et al. And it turns out likely that would be an acceptable initial if somewhat abstract understanding. Acceptable that is until you discover there is always a beyond the obvious.

For the eighteenth and early nineteenth century empiricists like Hume and Locke, the mind was a single field of thought and feeling, fully conscious and transparent to itself. This mind was made up of visual, auditory, and tactile impressions, and distinct ideas which were the product of these impressions. Or as Hume put it, “like players in a theatre who successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations”. These early ideas were later dismissed. The suggestion emotions were just these pure and simple things floating around waiting to come together before dissipating again was deemed flawed. It missed the point that emotions are not stand alone boxable feelings but unique and unrepeatable; the mind, the body, the moment are never twice the same. A unique amalgamation of everything if you wish.

From the late nineteenth century a philosophising psychologist called William James decided, and incidentally this is apparently still a respected idea in the psychology world, a statement that needs checking and confirming beyond one verbal source, that emotions were the result of bodily physiological sensations. What this means is that were we to see a bear in a forest, our body would react, for example our legs might go weak and our hearts beat wildly, and this would trigger the emotion of fear within us. While undoubtedly reactions on a physical level play a role in emotions, to claim those bodily feelings create the emotions doesn’t hold up when challenged with the fact our legs feel weak and our heart beat increases when we go for a run. In that circumstance the feeling of fear is generally not the emotion people feel. The fact physically you feel the same feelings when you experience love, fear and exercise explains why this stance in itself is not widely held in contemporary thought.

From here we move into more accepted ideas of emotions, the main two being judgements and perceptions. They state that we see the bear, make an evaluative judgement of the situation, feel the emotion and have a suitable physical response, or that after seeing the bear we have an emotional and physical response based upon how we perceive the situation to be. This being philosophy neither are fool proof. If we were to be standing behind guard rails looking over the edge of a cliff we may still feel fear despite the fact we have made the rational judgement that we are not in danger of falling over. We have a contradictory emotional response to how we have assessed the situation. This argument could be used for fear of household British spiders too. It is important to mention though that evaluative judgements are ever forming and not just made in the moment. Proponents in the perceptual model would suggest we feel fear as we look over the precipice because we can perceive the inherent danger, an argument which frankly holds up a lot better. Unlike the judgemental model which deals with the rational and irrational, the perceptual approach is arational. When they have to explain non-human animal and infant human emotions both struggle to justify their positions as neither beasts nor babies have the required language to make evaluative judgements nor, and this is very debatable, the cognitive abilities to have an instinctive perceptual reaction. This point definitely needs further investigation though.

Two thoughts that came up after todays seminar were whether we can have an unconscious emotion, for example feelings of pain in the neck or ache in the head are symptoms of the emotion of stress, yet we may be completely unaware we’re stressed or anxious about anything. Are we unconscious in that moment of the emotion or just unaware of it from a cognitive perspective. Is this emotion a physical feeling only. If we’re unaware of this emotion then it stands to say we’re not consciously aware of it and so unconscious of it, yet unconscious seems like too strong a word.

The second thought was whether perception is just an evaluation or judgement made at an earlier time. Do we perceive danger in the bear because long ago we made the judgement that bears are dangerous. We may make the judgement in the moment that the bear on the other side of the valley could do us harm but likely won’t and so we’re in little to no danger, yet we still feel the emotion of fear. We arguably perceive the possibility of danger, the danger we judged bears can inflict when we learnt bears as dangerous. My dog would likely also feel this danger but it’s doubtable a baby would, and arguably neither would a puppy.

This is as far as week one has really got. There was also mention of something called the Common Sense Theory which is that you see the bear, something cognitive happens, you feel the suitable emotion and have a bodily physiological reaction. Unfortunately in philosophy common sense seems to infer not suitably complicated and therefore deeply flawed so this theory only ever seems to be granted a couple of sentences at most. There has been a bit regarding recalcitrant emotions, which are emotions that conflict with judgements and likely perceptions but these will be the focus of the material in weeks two and three. Their existence was touched upon but just to bring an awareness to something that appears to sow difficulties in all the theories. This will become clear. As will hopefully a further and clearer understanding of what is very much a base and slightly confused understanding of the few concepts so far. Seemingly the philosophy of emotions is yet to find a generally held coherent argument. Arguably there’s something in all the perspectives and undoubtedly emotions consist of a combination of sensations, experiences, perceptions and judgements. Perhaps the truth simply lies in some as yet undiscovered or unmeasurable perspective and understanding. As yet of course.

An Inexperienced Advanced Scuba Diver

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Advanced diver reporting for duty. It’s amazing what the title of a certificate can imply. Having now dived a total of eleven times I am not advanced in experience or knowledge yet the title suggests otherwise. It does mean I can now dive to depths of thirty metres which is a vast improvement on the eighteen I’ve been able to for the last thirteen years. There are no guarantees but the plan is to dive more than once in the next thirteen. I’m a total sucker for courses and learning so at the very least I’ll be working my way through these as time goes on. I quite fancy doing some wreck diving, night diving, dry suit diving and the enriched air nitrox diving. Because I value life, and not just mine, and also because these are skills we should all have, I’ll do the rescue diver course eventually too. First before all of that I’ll just see what comes up and do some diving as the opportunity arises. If next years plans come together, judging by this year though I won’t hold my breath, which you should never do when diving by the way, anything is possible. The whole point of this was to allow for future diving and not just future courses after all.

There is a phobia called submechanophobia, which is a fear of submerged man-made objects like shipwrecks, submarines, buoys and other such things. I discovered this when discussing the sea with someone who suffers from extreme anxiety. I can appreciate the fear because when I’ve looked at images of sunken shipwrecks or submarines there is something eerily terrifying about them. Perhaps it’s the implication of death. The same exists for images of sudden drops that disappear into darkness or images of divers from a distance in the ocean with nothing around them for miles. There is something about these types of images that creates a fearful reaction, perhaps it’s some instinctive survival mechanism. When diving though it feels different. I can look over the edge of a drop that becomes nothingness but it isn’t necessarily scary. The mind is aware of possible dangers both rational and irrational but nothing like images manage to portray. When you are in and around it you understand how much is in the mind.

And that is one of the things that we can get from diving especially. Diving is not simply an adventure for the body but for the mind too, arguably more so. With all the water around and despite there being another person there, you feel fully in your own little bubble. Nothing else is going on. Nothing on the surface in our distracted little minds. You’re just under the water with the fish and the coral keeping yourself buoyant and focused. Even if you’re not keeping yourself focused you drift off into your surroundings, no opportunity to be anything but present. And for the last two evenings I’ve been so chilled out and not just from being tired or because I’ve had decompression sickness which I haven’t. Sailing and diving, I could think of worse hobbies and lifestyles.

Artificially Intelligised

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We’ve all watched or at least know the premise of the Terminator movie franchise. It feeds on a fear we have over the creation of free thinking killer robots. I’m currently watching the series Battlestar Galactica which deals with a similar theme. There are a seemingly infinite number of films or series dealing with this topic to varying degrees of success and infamy. I’ve just watched this video produced by the independent media organisation Double Down News. To suggest it’s intention is to scare you would be unfair but be prepared to be scared.

Worried yet?

What it does do though beyond that is raise an important point on the programming of artificially intelligent robots. It is important to start from the premise that we will not be able to create fully self-aware and conscious robots. We do not understand the brain enough to fully understand consciousness, so being able to create it within a computer programme in actuality is not possible. How the programme is written then is what we need to understand. As the video suggests the computer would be programmed to kill all humans or to convince all humans not to reproduce and ultimately see them die out as a species. Even I could probably write the code for the kill all humans although teaching them to recognise what a human is would be the tough part. Could a computer write that programme, not unless it had been taught the basics in the first place.

It’s the human input we need to be concerned with. The computer may be able to learn but in and of itself it will only learn what and how as it has been programmed. If we want to detach ourselves, it is easy to suggest a little like people. The video raises an interesting point too that I had never considered before. If people can easily create malware to infect your computer, what about the artificially intelligent version of that, or a robot with a virus. We shouldn’t be naïve enough to believe our governments only have our best interests when they produce anything but we should also fear the malware version of an AI robot. What if it simply malfunctions?

And of course there are the nanobots that will land on your head and kill you. Suppressing an unruly populace will be pretty straightforward if you have that kind of technology. As someone who has always romantically believed in the possibility of a good revolution one day that is rather concerning. What then too if someone hacks these miniature killing machines and the virus infecting them leads them to kill everyone. Or more positively the current people in power trying to kill the partisans. Maybe there is hope after all. No matter what one side does it simply forces the other to step up and be creative. Food for thought.

One Day At A Time

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As some may be aware I am currently in Greece and for the last few days the idea of where I will go next has been on my mind. The exact details of where are not important, that isn’t going to be the point but more everything that goes into making these decisions. In the past I have stressed about where I will go next and over the last ten years there have been a lot of ‘nexts’. As I’ve got older these have evolved from thinking it would be pretty cool and exciting going somewhere to viewing a place with eyes aware that I may settle there. This idea of settling somewhere stresses me out. It influences my decisions massively and it shouldn’t because so far I haven’t stayed in any of these places but also because it’s completely pointless overly concerning yourself with such an unknown.

The problem with this particular unknown though is that it is enormous. When something is enormous we are bound to become overwhelmed by it and allow it to take over our minds completely. Of course you can’t pick somewhere based upon your entire future, it’s an impossible decision to make, too many unknowns and you’re not only choosing an idea but arguably a fantasy. Everything has to be a one day at a time thing. Right now spending too much time thinking about something like this is a waste of energy because you’re currently doing something else and if your mind is absorbed with a future fantasy then you’re not being present. You’re not doing what you need to be doing and you’re not giving what you should be focusing on the time and energy it deserves. Life inevitably starts passing you by as you’re never there to see or experience it.

There is one other slightly unrelated part but I have in the past thought I should return to cold northern places, like Scotland, because we need a little misery and suffering to appreciate real life. Appreciate in the sense of understanding and thinking but I suspect that misses the point. If you’re Nietzsche perhaps this makes some sense but his reality was only one version. The great thinkers so engrossed in the inevitable suffering of existence weren’t all Scottish, Scandinavian or German. The idea then is can you have fun in the sun while at the same time comprehend the pointlessness and absurdity of life. It does conjure up a strange and amusing image. Perhaps you would start comprehending life through a different lens. Maybe all Nietzsche ever needed was to take up windsurfing.

The Law Breaker Part Two

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If only I was in a position to go out and party this weekend I know I would be tempted. With new laws coming into force on Monday on there being no more than six people in one group at the same time, the media are reporting a police union’s fear that those reckless and irresponsible young people previously deemed wholly responsible for the spread of the virus, might take advantage of one last weekend of relative freedom. With the threat of all fun being put on hold until the spring can people really be forgiven. I know I would. And if there is such a fear of this happening then why have this new law start on Monday, why not Friday. Let’s all blame bureaucracy of course, but who’s willing to put a little cash on the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Daily Telegraph writing a piece on these devilish party folk and referencing this weekend if the government continue to fuck up at every opportunity and numbers increase. Scapegoat anyone? Ready made excuse. They’ll probably find a way to blame these revellers on the fact people had to drive hundreds of miles for a test. Or that Matt Hancock is still bizarrely in a position of power despite, well, everything he has done for the last six months. Saying that Boris, Dom and Mikey Gove are still the bouncing around full of beans. What’s that phrase about bad smells?

On a law breaking note, apparently Boris’s plans to avoid anymore of the “miserable squabbling” over Brexit, in other words do as he says or he’ll continue to squabble. He only plans on breaking international law in a “specific and limited way” as opposed to randomly and completely which presumably would be the bad way. The rumour is that the rebels in his party seem to be inconveniently perturbed by their own party damaging the integrity of the UK by “protecting the integrity of the UK” as Gove called it. It appears not even a stonking majority will allow this lot to completely do as they feel and in total disregard for the recognised ways of law abiding. The miserable squabbling appears to be returning as the rest of the country rejoices that not everything is going as planned. Is this the first step in a slight rebellion against a still perplexing government. The government has already had to make numerous u-turns since coming to power. If they are seen to be defeated by their own MPs then it quite significantly makes it clear to those in the party who don’t enjoy seeing their leader behaving in a less than legal and democratic way as being capable of crumbling. It may take time but once something can be seen as possible it inevitably becomes real. Time to get that deck chair out and prepare for the show.

The AWOL Mind

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If we were using weather to describe mood, this last week would have just about summed it up perfectly. As the storms arrived I went down a rabbit hole. I’m not one for describing how I feel online. Generally exposing myself like that is not always something that comes easily to me and in truth there are times I pour scorn on people who share their mood in social media posts. I should probably stop being so unfair on people crying out for help in such moments of desperation, it likely does nothing more than expose my own ignorance of mental health issues.

This has been an intense year. That is probably an understatement. In a way I am happy about how it has turned out, I took advantage of the new version of existence that came along. There are some things I would have liked to have done more of such as learning how to code but with all the work and the need to rest and procrastinate, I just ran out of time. Maybe less procrastination, or more efficiency with it. Can you efficiently procrastinate?

I always knew I would move on from here and I am fine with that because I have moved on from many places, I never saw this stop as a final one and it has already been about six months longer than had been planned. With lockdown any need to achieve or succeed, or create something or make money or do something or whatever self-induced pressures I put on myself evaporated. I had no choice but to stay in one spot and work with what I had. with options come pressures. I loved it and in a way I carried this on. However as it came time to wrap up this chapter I realised I had to step back out into this world and all the old fears and irrationalities, and ultimately all the stupid bullshit returned. For nearly two months now I have been working everyday on the pizzas and delivering bread three sometimes four mornings a week. You don’t sleep much in these circumstances and this simply exacerbates things. Throw in the fact me and my friend have a rather tempestuous relationship, it all seemed to come to a head this week.

If I were to say I lost my mind I would not be exagerating. I started to believe everyone was working against me, that they were trying to sabotage me. At one point one of the guys came down from the bakery to pick up some oven gloves from the cafe as they had run out up there. I wasn’t about and he took the best two pairs. In my mind he did this because it was all part of pushing me out. Looking back now it is almost comical but in that moment it was entirely serious. My body was tensing up, my neck still hurts and I was getting headaches. I have worked many seasonal jobs in the past which have been everyday for extended periods but they’ve rarely involved the mental stress of running things or maintaining personal relationships within the whole daily operation. It’s safe to say I now know my limits.

It’s also safe to say now the winds only signify change and the movement into something new. My friend suggested we stop the pizzas on Monday instead of continuing for two more weeks as originally planned. At first I took it in the same stride of paranoid lunacy I had previously been experiencing and planned on having it out with him when I next saw him. In the end with that being about two days later it was just a chat between two people who had been mates since they were eight years old. In that time I had already started to calm down but he had seen how much I needed a rest and he was right to suggest we stop. I’m grateful for him pulling me out of the rabbit hole because I doubt I would have been able to do it on my own without doing something overly dramatic and ridiculous.

Life is full of pressures. Some pushed upon us but many entirely of our own making. When we look in from the outside we can rationally understand were things need to change. If it is ourselves though, when it’s our own minds which seem to have gone AWOL being able to make sense of things can almost be an impossible act. It is time mentally for some recuperation. With the awakening of my senses this is already underway. The pressures are off and I can breath again. We rest, we recover, we take a step followed by another and we get on with it. We get on with what comes next. Something always comes next, how you experience it is up to you.

A Ramble Through Little

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I was doing so well living the life of oblivious bliss. No news for ten days, suddenly the world felt like a beautiful place. When you have no idea what is going on outside of the bubble you live in on a daily basis then things can very easily start to appear relatively calm. It helps that the bubble is a small seaside village and despite peoples best attempts at creating them, there are few genuine regular issues worth being demoralised over. That doesn’t mean things don’t happen but certainly little worthy of national attention let alone global and geopolitical. Saying that in places like this all you have to do is scrape below the surface and you’ll find something worth getting carried away with. It does explain the propensity for gossip in places like this though.

It’s interesting to see how we respond to moments of drama. I know I could live in a small village and life would be relatively stress free, likely it would be safe and although there wouldn’t be many people around I would know enough of them to not experience loneliness. Living in a city is far more exciting, there are things to do, places and people to see and there would be enough action to absorb you attention as required. Life though would probably be more intense and potentially more stressful, also in my experience far more lonely than any small village I’ve ever lived in. I’ve never quite understood that, and suspect the lonely feeling in cities is something born out of not being brought up in one and knowing how really to exist within them.

Perhaps a balance between the two. Always a balance. Always a fence to sit on. A sleepy but interesting and cultured city beside the sea. That’s the dream. I imagine if that existed so many people would have moved there in search of it they would destroy it in the process. It’s like being a tourist and wanting to visit the idyllic spots and being oblivious to the fact your presence helps in destroying any sense of idyllic you once had. We just can win. But we should never give up. What kind of life would that be. Too busy, too noisy but never settle. Or does that just miss the point for acceptance and appreciating what you have. Perhaps that’s for another time when I fancy another little ramble. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again.

The Game

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Without having news to talk about, which I’m really enjoying, I think football is in order instead. As I’ve mentioned recently it’s my one weakness. I remember travelling all those moons ago and hanging out with forest and caravan dwellers, football always felt like my dirty little secret. I know it’s total bullshit. The money involved is obscene especially when I attempt to discuss the ethics of money in other posts. And if I can suggest there is no real difference in my day no matter what the news says, the same must be said for football too. But you know what I like it. I love the thrill and excitement leading up to a big game. At the moment any game. The joy when a goal goes in for, the sorrow when one goes in against. Football has even managed to become more than the game itself. Like the news, football coverage is now 24/7 and like the news they have managed to sensationalise and create drama in every incident. Transfer season is insane. The managers falling out with the players. Being sacked. Being signed. The hope. The fear. On the whole it’s nothing more than a soap opera for men. If gender stereotyping were a thing.

My team are doing incredibly well since football has started up again. Genuinely I’m actually confident and expect us to win a game for the first time in seven years. We’re playing at a level we haven’t seen since the days of Sir Alex and even then the reality is that it wasn’t as common as nostalgia has convinced us. We’re two points off Champions League qualification and three points off third position. Chelsea in fourth looked good until they lost to West Ham last night so they’re fallible. Leicester in third are falling to pieces and to the point that I think they’ll finish sixth or seventh at this rate. Wolves behind us in sixth look like a really good team but they may lack the squad to make a sustained push. Football is a process, like everything in life and while celebrating qualifying for a European competition is not enough it is a sign that we’re heading in the right direction. I have a feeling we’ll finish third and I’m nervous of such confidence. Chelsea will probably finish fourth. We’re just playing so well and we have on paper an incredibly favourable run in. It’s dangerous to say but I think it’s ours to lose. Glory glory Man United et al.

A Bad World With Negative News

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I read an article last night about the future of schooling in the UK in regards the consequences of Covid-19. It was after I had written yesterdays piece on returning to schools and the possibility of fines for those who don’t, otherwise it would have been included in the article. I thought of writing about it today though but I won’t. I won’t for two reasons, a quite important one being that while my gut feeling from what I read was that they were teaching this generation a certain necessity to be controlled and it scared me, I can’t find the article or remember exactly what it was that made me feel so worried. The other is that today I feel a bit tired of writing these pieces damning some politician, political party or whatever example of systemic corruption that takes my fancy. I will again for sure but today my mind is in a different place.

Why then do we keep coming back to these articles which do nothing but confirm our understanding that the world is a corrupt and bullshit place. The obvious would be that we’re searching for some kind of confirmation or negative bias. We hear of research that social media companies use suggesting we’re drawn to and spend more time responding and reacting to bad news over good. There’s also the instinctive scared animal within us which is constantly on the look out for danger in our quest for survival. My direct experience of the world is not that it’s a dangerous place, quite the opposite, of course that is just my experience not one representative of anyone else or any collective group.

My view of the world through my news, political and social internet search history is an alarmingly different one to what I have seen through my eyes. Don’t get me wrong I have seen some shocking things in my life but proportionally these are but a fraction of the overall experience. What keeps drawing us back then to following a different vision of the world. Perhaps we know that there is more out there than our small bubble, maybe we just want to. There is a chance we just want some more excitement in our lives. Could these bad world experiences draw us in because we’re actually collectively deep down unhappy and they appeal to that. Certainly I’m online less and care less about world events – football aside – when I’m having fun, travelling and living more in the moment. There just seems to be something unhealthy about it all. The news has not all of a sudden become a negative thing but we now have a constant live stream of it and with their need to keep our focus, there surely can be little beneficial about it. With that in mind I’ve just had an idea. I will avoid the news and therefore my Facebook feed too for the next ten days and see not only how I feel but what it forces me to come up with on here. Oh god, I’m getting the shakes already. What have I done?!

A Tangent Of Change

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As I struggle to think about anything to write today, scrolling through Facebook and the news channels for inspiration I am left with the feeling the world is falling apart. We seem to have moved on from the virus pretty quick to the virus of racism. Prior to that of course we moved on from the virus of power and corruption in the form of Brexit. I wonder what we’ll move on to next, a second wave of infections perhaps? I know someone who drives a lorry and apparently the word going around is to prepare for a second lockdown in November, this is what they’ve been told and apparently lorry drivers know stuff so I should believe this. I have seen memes online suggesting this is the worst year ever and what terrible things are going to come next. It might be the worst year ever but that is simply because typical issues which many in poorer parts of the world have to deal with year after year are finally landing on our doorsteps. Face to face with the uncertainty of catching a virus, a hidden bullet we can’t see. Deaths we are impotent from preventing. Is this the new-normal the politicians were talking about.

The unknown is scary. We are scared of the dark because we don’t know what is there, all is unknown. We fear change because we don’t know what it is or what it could entail. We are quick to want to conserve our current way of life if we view it from the standpoint that it works for us and has got us this far. Why change it. Clearly something out there is not working though because we still have violent systemic racism, we still have ideological approaches to saving lives in a pandemic, we still have people manipulating a population for their own personal benefit and greed. So it’s time for society to take that collective step into the unknown and as one step out of that bubble we live in. We don’t know what is going to land on our safe little doorsteps next. We’ve flirted with working together throughout this virus which means we’ve shown we are capable of it. Much of what we’ve heard has been feel good propaganda but we’ve all seen people at some point at least thinking about others before themselves. Some change might need a few generations of social reeducation which sounds ominous, but some we’re clearly capable of. Maybe there is hope for deconstructing the state, decentralising decision making and creating the opportunity for people to achieve self-determination, autonomy and respect. Maybe that’s just me going off on a hopeful tangent but then that is all today seems to be, what life has now become.