More noodling on fear

[firecat]

Replying to comments here,, where I asked "To what extent is having irrational fears a luxury?"

The context was a comment on alt.poly where someone who lives in an urban area said zie had an irrational fear of SUVs. My thinking went something like this: "Some people live in circumstances where they need an SUV. If a person lived in such circumstances, zie couldn't really afford to have an irrational fear of SUVs. So to an extent this person is able to have an irrational fear of SUVs because zie's privileged not to live in a situation where zie needs to have an SUV or needs to deal closely with other people who have them. Therefore, it's a luxury."

Rethinking this:

1. Hm, actually it's not strictly true that anyone needs SUVs. Some people live in circumstances where they need a truck or something with high ground clearance or something with four-wheel drive, but it doesn't have to be an SUV per se.

2. I'm conflating fear with the ability to avoid the feared thing. In some cases being able to avoid a feared thing could be considered a luxury, or could be considered the result of having a lot of options in one's life, and having lots of options could be considered luxurious in some senses. But that doesn't mean the fear itself is a luxury.

3. I'm assuming that if one has no choice but to deal with the feared thing, one will get over the fear, or perhaps have irrational aspects of the fear replaced with a more rational view of the feared thing. I think that's true sometimes, but certainly not all the time, and certainly it's not a good default assumption for addressing fear.

gconnor, you brought up some good points, which I might noodle on as "being able to cite an irrational fear as a way of manipulating other people might map to some kind of luxury."

elisem, you talk about people beating themselves up with the idea. It sounds like you mostly come across people who consider "luxury" to be something that's not OK. I don't use it with that connotation. Mostly I use it to mean access to more choices.

Papersky, yes, your comment about "putting it in perspective" was very close to what I was getting at (and much better said).

kyubi, I like your definition of luxury, and I agree that being lower on the Maslow scale doesn't offer freedom from irrational fears. Do you think being lower on the Maslow scale might map to having somewhat different irrational fears, sometimes? I like the notion of the shadow side of creating meaning. I definitely think irrational fears are one way that shadow might manifest.

Comments

Stepping in...

[crazed-lynn.livejournal.com]

I've made almost this same comment about irrational fear. I have rethought it, too.

First, for this discussion, I will limit "fear of" only to those fears which persist over time. These can be rational or irrational.

Second, I will define "irrational fear" as a perception of and belief in a threat where no threat exists or is minimal.

Starting with those ground rules, I think irrational fears are created and flourish within societies of privilege. Often privilege looks a lot like luxury, but they aren't quite the same thing. Note, that I'm not talking about personal privilege, but social privilege.

Human beings have a biological mechanism, like all animals, for self preservation. When a society is sufficiently privileged, preservation drops down the priority list. We worry over "lesser" concerns. But the mechanism is still in place watching for serious threats to our personal and tribal existence.

It is my opinion that in the absence of real threats, that mechanism becomes hyper-sensitive. It's threshold drops to absurd levels and the testing criteria lacks grounding.
The mechanism adds to the list of threats those things which merely startle us or make us merely uncomfortable.

Our primate selves learn to fear what our family/tribe fears. With modern means of communications, it is possible to suggest a threat and fear will spread in increasingly virulent rings. The threat learning mechanism assumes that it is not being lied to.

We are evolutionarily ill-equipped to deal with privilege and several of our basic animal mechanisms have run amok.

As privilege increases in a society, it becomes more and more important to learn intentionality so that we create a garbage collection mechanism to scour the irrational from our lives.

(My friend just suggested that creating the garbage collector is very suitable for long-lived creates. And humans have only recently become a member of that group.)

Re: Stepping in...

[firecat]

Second, I will define "irrational fear" as a perception of and belief in a threat where no threat exists or is minimal.

I would also add "a perception of and belief in a threat as a result of not understanding the feared thing." It's possible to fear something that's inherently dangerous in an irrational way.

Often privilege looks a lot like luxury, but they aren't quite the same thing.

Excellent point.

And interesting theory in general.