Understanding fear can be understood by realizing our evolutionary history. Pain is good. Pain is absolutely wonderful. It stops us from drinking scalding hot coffee that will ruin our insides, and will make us shift around in our chairs from time to time so we don't squish our vital organs (notice the next time you move in your chair, and thank your pain receptors )
When is pain not useful? Lets think of this nice little hypothetical: you are being tortured by having the skin of your balls ripped off.
Your balls are probably the most vital piece of your body, and your body allocates a lot of pain receptors there to make sure you don't damage it. But what if you knew you were going to die anyway, and this pain is just fricken unnecessary!! Well, it's too bad
You don't have to go to that extreme, but many cases like broken bones and things of this sort will have a huge amount of excruciating pain. It has overshot. It doesn't want you to move your broken leg because you will damage it more, but the pain is so unbearable you can't do anything anyway!
Lets use this analogy of pain to realize what fear/anxiety is
Anxiety is great! If we are going to embarrass ourselves, or make a fool of ourselves, we realize there is a risk of showing our incompetence to nearby mates and possible companions, so we resist taking our pants off in public!
We resist doing things that will put us in danger, for fear of losing our lives!
But what if this gets overblown? What if this impacts our daily lives, and the evolutionary advantage that got us this far suddenly cripples us in everyday life?
The most severe form is called depression, but we usually settle for anxious and risk-averse.
"It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt" - Mark Twain (I thought it was Lincoln, but guess not lol)
Perception is everything in communicating with others. Many business people will tell you that perceptions of people are formed practically within the first 5-10 seconds of greeting someone.
As Drizzy Drake, a philosopher of our time stresses: the fact that people just "know" is pretty much everything in the game
So when you are in class, and a teacher says something you are unsure about, you don't raise your hand. Then your elders, in their infinite wisdom (lel) , will spill usual bullshit and tell you "What's the worst that can happen Sonny Jim? People will laugh at you ? So what!"
Well that IS literally the worst thing that CAN happen from an evolutionary perspective. You have demonstrated incompetence to everyone in your environment, therefore reducing your possible mating pool and reducing possible alliances.
This is A reason (but not all of them) why people will start projects/assignments/ revisions extremely late: If they say that they started late, then there is a reason why they will do badly, and so you cannot blame them for incompetence! This is the thought process that leads to many a late night cram sessions: the fear that you might to badly regardless, so better have an excuse ready to show it's other factors as well...
Demonstrating incompetence can be disastrous.....well it would have been if you were living in a fucking bush 10000 years ago.
The trick is, to realize this evolutionary trait and , just like pain, it can overshoot and lead into useless situations like delaying projects or remaining unclear about material. You just have to realize this unfortunate byproduct of being human. Once you do, you can start to fail a bit more and accept it, because that is the only way you'll improve
EDIT: Shoutout to Aaron Swartz and Steven Pinker for ideas here! Great guys, great guys....
Something I often grapple with is where to draw the line for phobias and other unnecessary fears.
Some people walk around 2 inches from the edge of a cliff, barely paying attention, and seem to manage fine.
Some people don't mind walking right up to the edge of a cliff, but they do so somewhat carefully.
Some people won't walk up to the edge of a cliff unless they have something they can hold on to, or get low to the ground first.
Some people are very hesitant to go near the edge of a cliff, and will only do so if they lie down completely, or have a sturdy banister/structure to lean on.
Some people are too afraid to go within a couple of feet of the cliff, and will panic if they are somehow forced to.
At which step does the person have a problem with heights? At which step are they being unreasonable? At which step is it a phobia? You can phrase similar questions for other phobias as well. For example, if I see a little spider on the wall it doesn't freak me out. If it sneaks up on me and starts crawling up my arm, I will get startled and rapidly try to brush it off. Some people wouldn't mind at all and might try to carefully guide it to another surface, having no fear of the spider whatsoever.
I'm not sure what a good description is of when fear is "normal" or when it is "too much." Perhaps the answer is subjective regardless of what school of psychology you belong to.
[B]Some people walk around 2 inches from the edge of a cliff, barely paying attention, and seem to manage fine.
This is a really rare case! Crazy ones are these lol
[*]Some people don't mind walking right up to the edge of a cliff, but they do so somewhat carefully. [*]Some people won't walk up to the edge of a cliff unless they have something they can hold on to, or get low to the ground first. [*]Some people are very hesitant to go near the edge of a cliff, and will only do so if they lie down completely, or have a sturdy banister/structure to lean on. [*]Some people are too afraid to go within a couple of feet of the cliff, and will panic if they are somehow forced to.
At which step does the person have a problem with heights? At which step are they being unreasonable? At which step is it a phobia? You can phrase similar questions for other phobias as well. For example, if I see a little spider on the wall it doesn't freak me out. If it sneaks up on me and starts crawling up my arm, I will get startled and rapidly try to brush it off. Some people wouldn't mind at all and might try to carefully guide it to another surface, having no fear of the spider whatsoever.
I'm not sure what a good description is of when fear is "normal" or when it is "too much." Perhaps the answer is subjective regardless of what school of psychology you belong to.
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I'm ashamed I can't bring up quotes for this, it's all lost in "How the Mind Works" which I have in hard copy and can't be bothered combing through atm
But I think it comes down to our experience, and need for exhilaration. This exhilaration is defined as trying something dangerous, which you know will not kill you. This is different from committing suicide and jumping off a cliff: the person walking 2 inches away knows they will (most likely survive)...Let me give some examples
The most tame example of a craving of exhilaration is drinking wine. That stuff is literally poison. Everytime you drink stronger flavors, it is really potent for you and affects you! But by constant drinking over time, you get more accustomed to stronger tastes. You slowly edge to more dangerous territory, never overstepping your bounds. Then, hey presto! It's been 5-10 years and you can drink the best wines with the experts! This exhilaration/love of fear that won't kill you has gained you a new social circle and reputation!
Motorbikes are another example. "Most " motorcyclists are not suicidal (I'm guessing). They just get an amazing feeling of pushing the edge of the envelope without dying. Eventually they get better and better, until they become really good (which gives all the benefits also)
The gym, tightrope walking, iunno! lots of these things are pushing the envelope of your capabilities, giving you that adrenaline rush of getting better everytime! It comes with experience, and an innate sense of pleasure that comes with completing the activity. This innate sense of pleasure that some people get from pushing a certain envelope, may just not be present in other people.
The guy waking 2 inches close knows he will most likely survive due to his experience, and love of exhilaration. Others may not be so confident: pushing their own envelope of walking near cliffs might culminate in a space of 10 metres!
We all have different pleasure sources, and this sense of exhilaration/pushing the envelope has countless ways of manifesting itself in real life.
It could come to learning as well! Those who ask questions and get laughed at may feel a sense of exhilaration from failure. Keep edging as they do, and hey presto in 5-10 years they are fuckin legendary!
Soooo....ya basically..TLDR: envelope and stuff
EDIT: But again I stress, it is all done with the knowledge that survival is a definite outcome. Suicide is completely different: this form of pushing your limits is all done knowing you have a high chance to live. The pleasure derived from completing said experience forms a repeating cycle where they keep pushing and pushing until they are maestro
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