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InvisibleKurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
Anxiety; Reified Theory
    #23364425 - 06/20/16 05:10 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Anxiety is definitely one of the basic human moods we encounter. We should study it, and probably have some practical leeway for it. It is human. But what is it? I think it is important not to "reify" theory. This would be the fallacy both in meditation and expressed arguments that I think is crucial to avoid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

A vague "apprehension" of things, a mood of anxiety, is not to apprehend what one is apprehensive about. It seems that "this" is largely what we call the anxiety.

There is a circumstance, in respect to the world and the vicious circle it inspires. How much is anxiety rationalized, and yet more and more, not dealing with its problem?

Some people say angst is itself substantive, something like a human instinct. But is this exactly true? Or could anxiety even be the opposite of instinct?

If anxiety is "itself" particularly not  grounded in a sense of its object or thing in particular, what then? This seems to be where many paths diverge. Perhaps we associate this vague circumstance as a whole, with human instinct, presuming this is even all the more "implied" by a complex world we live in and can't always understand. Disconnect implies connect. All these pathways must come to an end though.

I think the place ascribed to anxiety as something substantive (or essential) to the human existence, especially as instinct, is questionable to say the least.

This spiral of anxieties which a person subjectively manifests out of his or her own psychology largely, seems to me to be something we could have some leeway for, but it may be just as far from being instinct, or a "sense" of something concrete. So where is the burden of argument? Such an extrapolation as been expressed by philosophers from Martin heidegger, to Psychologists like Freud, to social theorists like Ernest Becker, as well as not to mention the less systematic thinkers. I think it is more reasonable for Nietzsche to talk about existential apprehensions than say, Heidegger, because it is not an overarching theory or system he seeks:

Quote:

Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual preference for the hard, gruesome, malevolent and problematic aspects of existence which comes from a feeling of well-being, from overflowing health, from an abundance of existence? Is there perhaps such a thing as suffering from superabundance itself? Is there a tempting bravery in the sharpest eye which demands the terrifying as its foe, as a worthy foe against which it can test its strength and from which it intends to learn the meaning of fear?




Practically speaking, if we value some way of coming to terms with a world we are over our head in, our natural disposition is not necessarily in any abstract principle, actually anxiety. We may traverse ambiguity and intensity, otherwise can't we? What is that way you ask? Maybe it is not a system...maybe it is recognizing that looking for a system is a problem, or something not even consistent with itself.

We should not either overanalyze the physical facts, or disregard them. We can acknowledge that modern life is generally overstimulated, inclining us to neurochemical responses which we consider in our simultanteous skepticism and partiality to their being there, to be interpreted. But perhaps more ideally (at least by comparison) we do not need to suffer anxiety in general, any more than believe the tower in the distance is a phallic symbol. That is itself a projection.

This neurotic attitude, as much as we interpret it, and theorize it, is not particularly "true" to human existence. Return to the original question. What is there to anxiety that you would say is real, in terms of burden of strict argument? As important as it is to understand this condition, I think people over-interpret the modern malaise - the psychoanalytic model itself, as if it were universal. That's a miss step.


Edited by Kurt (06/21/16 06:08 PM)


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Invisiblesudly
Darwin's stagger


Registered: 01/05/15
Posts: 10,812
Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23364468 - 06/20/16 05:25 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

Anxiety is definitely one of the basic human moods we encounter. We should study it, and probably have some practical leeway for it. It is human. But what is it? I think it is important not to "reify" theory. This would be the fallacy both in meditation and expressed arguments that I think is crucial to avoid.




I think it's important to understand the "reify" theory.

Reify doesn't mean no thoughts are real, it means that a lot of them stem from separated entities and coincidences.

The thoughts that are real are the ones based on observations from multiple sources on repeatable tests and experiments such as in a scientific community.

Anxiety can come from real stimuli like seeing a lion or it can come from imaginative stimuli like a fear of what others may think.

Anxiety is incredibly diverse in the ways it can be expressed but at a base level anxiety seems to be an instinctive feeling or intuition that we have as the result of our shared evolutionary history.


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InvisibleKurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: sudly]
    #23365103 - 06/20/16 09:19 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Well Sudly I will respond to your generally pedantic concern, but I am not going to haggle over definitions or concepts too much. For the most part, I am going to say what I do, and take the oppurtunity to hit the nail on the head, again, in respect to what you have said, and assume argument speaks for itself, for anyone here to judge. Sound fair enough? Feel free to give your own substantive response, which I'll look forward to.

In view of what I said, I would say you might focus less on your preferred conceptualization, and instead the logic of what people say. You quoted me in a completely general way, rather than in much comprehension. I am not asking to peruse definitions and concepts. I am asking people to engage certain terms, and I'll argue those in terms as my premises. Accept them or do not, and propose your own premises  of course, but provide a reasoning, that isn't over-general.

What I was basically saying in the OP, in one way, is that anyone can look for a specific burden of argument in what psychologists attempt to explain as anxiety. I am saying that when specifically interrogated, psychological theory does not have a sufficient argument, but is typically over-broad, and projective. As  theoretical models go, this what I called a reification fallacy. Simply put psychology interprets what it theoretically projects. That is the point, you can contest or not, it fits the academic meaning of the term, without beating around the bush.

Let's look at what you are saying now. What you are saying about anxiety, is too broad. You do not define the term, "scientifically" but only generally associate with something you project in a concept:

Quote:


Anxiety can come from real stimuli like seeing a lion or it can come from imaginative stimuli like a fear of what others may think.

Anxiety is incredibly diverse in the ways it can be expressed but at a base level anxiety seems to be an instinctive feeling or intuition that we have as the result of our shared evolutionary history.





By conception, what psychologists refer to as anxiety is usually not based on "real stimuli" like you say. The distinction is appropriate. There is a vast difference in the case of seeing a lion or large cat; or in other words, a situation where there is something in nature you see or hear, and respond to. In the case of fearing what people think of you, based on ideas, you are talking about something basically different for the purpose of this discussion. Psychologists are right to acknowledge that anxiety is something people broadly associate with, according to their ideas of the world and life as a whole, rather than in more discrete and proximate sense experiences, like in fear. That concept is essential to understand my argument.

Anxiety is generally not something we can possibly or at least so easily naturalize. It is not a human instinct that we refer to. It might indeed come out of instinctual responses; (I am quite sure of that) but this human anxiety can't be so generalized in itself, as an instinct.

It seems to me that anxiety is by and large artificially induced, whether by a person him or herself, or by a society. If it is anything of nature, it first has to be considered a condition of overstimulation of senses and instincts, and it is not particularly sensible or "fit" response to a natural environment in that sense, which modern humanity is so partial to. What we broadly associate with anxiety, as something we are working out, as something crucial to us, and even positive as a whole, could be worked with more advantageously, for instance, like in lucidity and groundedness of understanding what needs to be done in a moment, one to the next, without anxiety about it.

Anxiety is something though, and it can be observed as much as it can be somewhat understood in its terms. It is the vague "apprehension", or feeling of "uncanniness" that is somehow broadly correlated to complex and overwhelming condition of circumstances, as the environment. There is not a particular closure here. For example, we can be clear it is not simply a kind of fear, like what happens for the most part, as a basically sensory response to a particular thing. What happens in the brain, when a shadow crosses through your field of vision, is something that happens pretty much automatically in the nervous system. Generally you get a pump of adrenaline and respond, depending on how meditative you are. Or you can see a big bear (or a deer or a turkey) move the woods, and respond. That is close to sensory input and the particular response.

Anxiety is a distinctly observed condition, indeed a similar unease, but more protracted, and indeed lacking these definitive terms, and specifically a sense of "closure" to them. Anxiety is what psychologists take to effectively study in human beings, in these terms as clear as they are. I would say (as a side point)  this sort of general awareness doesn't necessarily only belong to humans, but because our method of understanding and probing into a preconceived concept of anxiety is in psychoanalytic dialogue that only humans can carry on in terms of symbols and dialogue with themselves, our theories of anxiety are pretty human, and narrative based, in their general association.

The point is, we can be clear enough that there is a difference between fear and anxiety, (even as the latter is so protracted it is undefined) and I would say this distinction is basically essential for this discussion of anxiety.

The second point, based on the first, is that there is no ideal closure upon either the anxiety itself, or a theory of it, and that is a problem to theory. Anxiety is an uncertainty, or a vague apprehension, and in a certain way not having to do with a strictly concrete object or thing. Something has to be vague and lurking, or "unconscious", according to psychologists, as a point of entry. (whereas it is very difficult to work with a fear itself, for instance) Psychologists themselves are assuming by equally vague association in their theories, that this condition can be considered in a general way, as a reductively basic stimulus from an environment when really this is a myth or story they project. They make that correlation, only as they unravel or interpret whatever theory/narrative of how human society and repression works, into what they interpret in human beings, by a projection of narrative, (for instance like a story of Oedipus the King) to draw the relationship together, as something we all traverse.

The necessity of such an apparatus (narrative, mythos) to a psychologist is based on a fact, though, (or I suppose the contested concept). Anxiety is not a basic stimulus response mechanism, in final consideration, but essentially, a projection. Psychology is as much an observing, as an interpreting of constructs of explanation that are generally projected, and not just by the subjects or patients, who can be appropriately considered in these terms, but the kind of feedback loop, that I am calling a reification, typically of the psychologist, or psychologically institutionalized culture, interpreting its own projected narrative.

There are some essential limitations to this approach. Psychology interprets something vague and associative, as the "object" of anxiety, much as it only possibly could. It is a study of pathologies in most cases, and it is narrative based rather than scientific. The reification fallacy, is in how psychologists make anxiety out to be based on something in human culture, as an "environment", when in fact it is an artificial situation which, the one which psychological theory basically is, or makes itself to be, as an ediface. Psychology interprets its own projection.

For instance, there is little doubt that Freud's theories fed into themselves and our interpretation of them, made us a Freudian society. That was only first through a matter of suggestion, of narrative and association - if indeed by a manner of observation as well.

What is anxiety in this particularly vague sense that is essentially laid out by psychology? It is something we can indeed  observe, and in a certain way work with in certain ways. But what would it be as something more like a physical science? That is the question. Again, the so called apprehension, or "uncanniness" of anxiety, it's "object" is paradigmatically not a "sense" of the object or thing feared. According to psychologists, it has to be hidden. This is a vagueness, and essential association with it, is what psychologists are complicit to project themselves, as meaningful in a general way, that people can collectively believe in.

This can be therapeutically effective of course, and I am not saying it is just a story. To their credit, most psychologists do not usually say that anxiety, or "the unconscious" even is an instinct, exactly, but perhaps we can see it in the latter terms as a generally projected apparatus (not just a patients' projection but in general), that its relative generality can lend itself to revealing certain insights, into a modern human beings idea of identity and self, or nature. I am not saying that psychology is useless. Certainly there is alot of personal power to working that way, with general associations, and reflection on narratives and stories, and giving these human stories meaning, through some empirical bases.

I don't think there is ultimately any scientific credibility to the theories, at basis, as if they were claiming certain things about human nature. The situation is artificial. For instance, the Oedipus complex, is a projected narrative about how humans relate to a society. It is not exactly true. Psychology seems at best a useful apparatus (for instance in the psychoanalytic dialogue which is therapeutic and not argumentative) to bear open interpretations, with some empirical basis, of a modern human condition.

I would say the terms are this. Psychology may be a very empirically driven approach to understanding, and so in that sense a lot like a science, but it is not in its particular claims, or theories, general, or scientific. It is more essentially a projected interpretation. A true science of human nature, or "psyche" is something that would have to be based on a more robust dialogue, and yet I imagine those terms do not appear to be anything we are at all given to, in reductive terms.

My conclusion is that "anxiety" is very real, but it is induced by artificial conditions, which modern psychological/psychiatric institutionalism is in part complicit to creating in its way. Anxiety itself in simple terms is not exactly a study of any crucial human nature, and it is not an "instinct". I think it must be just the opposite. Anxiety, is not a sign of fitness. It is if anything the failure of instinct in an overstimulated organism. It is the failure of the organism to come back from mental projections and associations and narratives to its basic gut sense. Whether that is something psychologists can help human beings achieve, through their means, is the only question I put to them. I don't entertain the assumption that psychology is a robust science. It is too complicit to these same narratives.


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OfflineRJ Tubs 202
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23365194 - 06/20/16 09:57 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

Kurt said:

My conclusion is that "anxiety" is very real, but it is induced by artificial conditions, which modern psychological/psychiatric institutionalism is in part complicit to creating in its way.





A huge contributing factor is "specialists" have identified anxiety as something bad, and to be avoided or cured.

The more we resist anxiety and depression, the stronger they grow.

Psychology isn't a robust science, but methods like CBT help reveal our cognitive distortions that create our anxiety.


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Invisiblesudly
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23365269 - 06/20/16 10:31 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

Simply put psychology interprets what it theoretically projects. That is the point, you can contest or not, it fits the academic meaning of the term, without beating around the bush.




Yes, and sometimes what psychology theoretically projects turns out to be true, E.g. The physical and behavioural tendencies of specific mental disorders. 

I agree that anxiety is often not based on real stimuli, I am also putting forth the argument that what creates the 'synthetic stimuli' is the fight or flight response being overactive in modern social environments.

Quote:

Anxiety is generally not something we can possibly or at least so easily naturalize. It is not a human instinct that we refer to. It might indeed come out of instinctual responses; (I am quite sure of that) but this human anxiety can't be so generalized in itself, as an instinct.




The anxiety itself isn't the instinct, it's the feelings of intuition and instinct battling with our individual thoughts that creates the anxiety. We question ourselves because our feelings and thoughts aren't aligned. When we don't fully agree to something, when it just doesn't feel right, that feeling fuels much of the anxiety people experience.

The feelings of fear from trying to fight the fight or flight response are pretty evident here.


Quote:


For example, we can be clear it is not simply a kind of fear, like what happens for the most part, as a basically sensory response to a particular thing. What happens in the brain, when a shadow crosses through your field of vision, is something that happens pretty much automatically in the nervous system. Generally you get a pump of adrenaline and respond, depending on how meditative you are. Or you can see a big bear (or a deer or a turkey) move the woods, and respond. That is close to sensory input and the particular response.




It's called the 'Fight or Flight Response' and it's governed by the sympathetic subsection of the autonomic nervous system.


I believe it's battling the fight or flight response that causes most people anxiety. An argument between intuitions and thoughts. 

The fight or flight response is either stay and fight or get the fuck out(run), when that response goes off and there is no physical threat the person is left with an elevated heartbeat, higher blood pressure and a shot of adrenaline that exacerbates the symptoms of anxiety in high pressure situations such as work.

Quote:

Psychology interprets its own projection.



So does mathematics, that doesn't mean it's wrong.

Anxiety is the result of uncontrolled and overactive instincts of the fight of flight response left over as a remnant of our evolutionary ancestors whom it helped greatly to survive in the wild. Since most humans don't live in the wild anymore it isn't as helpful or necessary.


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I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.



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OfflineRJ Tubs 202
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23365323 - 06/20/16 11:01 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

Kurt said:

Anxiety is generally not something we can possibly or at least so easily naturalize.





Do you mean "neutralize"?

I find most of my anxiety to be driven by fearful thoughts.

They are irrational fearful thoughts though, not flight or fight response.


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Invisiblesudly
Darwin's stagger


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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
    #23365358 - 06/20/16 11:24 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Irrationally fearful thoughts are the influenced by an activated fight or flight response in situations that aren't physically dangerous.

E.g. Being scared of what you think someone else's thoughts are.

Irrational thinking is influenced by the physical symptoms of a fight or flight response such as elevated heart rate and adrenaline.
Learning to overcome and neutralise the fight of flight response can help an individual to prevent their anxiety from occurring as often or as intensely.

Quote:

When a threat is perceived, the sympathetic nerve fibres of the autonomic nervous system are activated. This leads to the release of certain hormones from the endocrine system. In physiological terms, a major action of these hormones is to initiate a rapid, generalized response. This response may be triggered by a fall in blood pressure or by pain, physical injury, abrupt emotional upset, or decreased blood glucose levels (hypoglycemia).

The fight-or-flight response is characterized by an increased heart rate (tachycardia), anxiety, increased perspiration, tremour, and increased blood glucose concentrations (due to glycogenolysis, or breakdown of liver glycogen). These actions occur in concert with other neural or hormonal responses to stress, such as increases in corticotropin and cortisol secretion, and they are observed in some humans and animals affected by chronic stress, which causes long-term stimulation of the fight-or-flight response.
http://www.britannica.com/topic/fight-or-flight-response




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I am whatever Darwin needs me to be.



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InvisibleKurt
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Registered: 11/26/14
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
    #23365372 - 06/20/16 11:33 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

RJ Tubs 202 said:
Quote:

Kurt said:

My conclusion is that "anxiety" is very real, but it is induced by artificial conditions, which modern psychological/psychiatric institutionalism is in part complicit to creating in its way.





A huge contributing factor is "specialists" have identified anxiety as something bad, and to be avoided or cured.

The more we resist anxiety and depression, the stronger they grow.

Psychology isn't a robust science, but methods like CBT help reveal our cognitive distortions that create our anxiety.




Well I think generally while we can definitely lean to give ourselves some leeway, anxiety is not the best response. You can think of it is as a kind of crude energy that you learn to burn in your lungs, and feel vital and alive by - that is pretty affirmative, but I think it is important that anxiety is not essential, especially when you learn to have alot less of that kind of "stuff" in you through practice, and just have your breath. (For instance under a certain yogic concept,  anxiety would probably be a state of Rajas - being restlessly energetic, which is at least better than Tamas - lazy and tepid, crude, whereas Satva is a stillness that is ideally conducive to yoga practice and realization.)

Under prevailing psychological theories, I notice that consciousness is essentially interpreted according to a lurking pathology - and that's of course to say, pathos, or passion, (essentially human activity really) is something either inherently bad, in whatever sense, or otherwise, to be according to the schematic, appropriately repressed. Why is pathos something we automatically interpret as "bad", low or underneath, to us? That, RJ, seems to me to be kind of a hefty problem, as much as in general, psychology is not like some too nefarious thing (only its own essential underbelly...)

To me, in one sense psychology is pretty much a con or clergy that a collective humanity puts itself up to. At the same time, I am sure most individual psychologists and psychological settings are generally alright people, and probably offer a pretty pragmatic tool they can help us use. Maybe one day I will look for one, I am not too proud to. :shrug: I had some anxiety in my college years, but I never tried anything like CBT.

Whatever you do, I am sure it takes work, and self drive. Or maybe it just turns out life has much bigger problems than the ones which in a certain sense, we essentially fabricate? What about that? Turns out life, and "the man", and society, or whatever is a whole lot more of a son of a bitch than what I had a vague comprehension of back when I felt "anxious"! When I think of that, it was like I was only hearing a bark, and didn't even get a feel for the bite, which makes the bark seem like a lot of noise as impressively as it might suggest itself, to be about nothing. (Is that what they always meant when they said you'll figure things out?)

Anyway, I appreciate your position. I am not here to say there is nothing to the stories we tell ourselves, and the way we probe and build a path, down the way, through telling stories. I think we all do that. To say psychologists are not scientists, is not to say they are just a dogmatic clergy, although they can seem to be taken that way. They are more like modern peoples shamans - they probe, and tell stories about the domains visited; sometimes give their special medicines, which are both worshipped and reviled, and I would definitely admit there can be something to this kind of approach.

I just think there is alot to be said for the DIY approach. Then you can really bite down on the stories people tell, or gather what wisdom you want from them, and make them your own. You don't need someone lurking over your shoulder to read signs in the world, or to be disciplined in self inquiry. The great lie is the denial of modern peoples psyche, which should be a philosophical question; not so much just a projection.

Also, just got your other response:

Quote:

RJ Tubs 202 said:
Quote:

Kurt said:

Anxiety is generally not something we can possibly or at least so easily naturalize.





Do you mean "neutralize"?

I find most of my anxiety to be driven by fearful thoughts.

They are irrational fearful thoughts though, not flight or fight response.




In the last part that is what I am talking about. There is this essential distinction. One situation of fear is concrete - a sense experience in a natural environment, (a fear of a lion or any physical thing) and anxiety is more generally projected in terms of ideas, and can be protracted (for instance for weeks on end, years etc).

The neurological response is in some ways essentially different as I recall, even though again, the general stimulus-response basis of fear can partly come through anxiety. I think I covered it, in my previous response. Sudly is just talking a little bit of pedantry  about the nervous system and noodle, as usual. (:tongue:)

What I meant by "naturalize" is basically the idea of making a fundamentally truthful proposition (of nature), or to establish a field of propositions, about the nature of something.

My thought is that we have to consider the deeply conditioned artificiality of modern humanity's situation, before we make fundamental statements about human nature, by these means.

I'd say anxiety is almost definitely a product of some kind of messed up ideological programming of society. This doesn't mean fundamental stimulus and response between environment and organism. What psychologists themselves say is that it is some programming, but they act in my opinion somewhat irresponsibly on some occasions, as if this artificiality is the most general experience, (for instance, they make a proposition about what is human nature) or take something like this for granted, or suggest its "reality" otherwise.

Freud's "structural" model of consciousness, is an apparatus that is based on the id "it", (or animal instinct) ego "I" (individual moderation of urges) and superego (collective repression apparatus, reactive morality). I don't personally acquiesce to that projected theme of human existence, as manifest as it may be in western society. So I think this is something that be useful by association to describe alot, but it is not fundamentally truthful. It is a projected construct, and maybe  pretty damn false.


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OfflineRJ Tubs 202
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23365442 - 06/21/16 12:08 AM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

Kurt said:

I'd say anxiety is almost definitely a product of some kind of messed up ideological programming of society.





I'm repeating myself, but most evolutionary biologists find anxiety to be very functional.

Note the functionality of a skiddish hamster or cat.

Fear has helped keep many species alive, including our own.


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InvisibleKurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
    #23365614 - 06/21/16 01:54 AM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Oh, I thought we had agreed on terms.

The stimulus-response mechanism that occurs automatically when a shadow flits by, or rustles in the woods, is based on a sensory experience. There is a certain unique neurological response, that comes for the most part automatically when this happens. The response stays "close" to the sensory experience. (I can get a source for this if your interested, but not tonight.)

There are also experiences that are sometimes associated with fear, particularly for humans, but are more protracted experiences, typically because they are based on ideas of the world, and not visceral encounters with things. These kinds of experiences are different both in terms of what is projected as reality, and in the kind of neurological response. To come to a definition, I mean basically that anxiety based on ideas of things.

Naturally the sensory stimulated fear, and anxiety may be associated and related in many ways, but they are clearly different. The second case ("fear of ideas of things") is not a stimulus-response mechanism, but a more general association, that is rationalized and projected, even if it seems to feel the same as the fear of some particular thing. These experiences are different.

The people who say that anxiety can be functional, (in one sense, rightly) are also invested in a construct that is broadly projected based on projected ideas. There is no other way to tie it together, because that is what it "is". So that is what I am doubtful about in general propositions.

For instance, is it "functional" to care or be anxious about what people think when I speak? You may say yes. Freud would say that this is what in the long run makes me a morally upstanding person, a functional member of society. I take that argument with a grain of salt. If you say it is functional to be aware and respond to what's in the bushes over there, in nature, a real underlying thing there, that is different. That could be fitness in terms of nature and actually and strictly demonstrable evolutionary fitness, and so such a general proposition, I would accept. (Though even in that scenario in nature it would be good to keep calm, as much as possible as it always is.)

What people call human instinct tends to be a more constructed and projected anxiety, and just the opposite of living in the gut and senses. It is projecting into ideas, and thinking of them as if they were real threats. Hell, there may be plenty of truth to that in human life. But there is a real burden of argument to generalizing that, for instance, saying this is generally functional.

That feeling in your stomach, or sweating when you are nervous is not particularly fitness and self confidence speaking for the most part. Maybe there is something we should repress, through our lives and temper into a bashfully shy and appropriate existence to other people? Maybe developing a stutter could make us endearing to our boss, and be better in the long run. You can say controlling our inner struggle is what teaches us to be confident, and must happen.

Pretty much it seems like you could say any damn thing. I think all that inner struggle and moral value of it is what people sometimes project and try to hold other people to though. On what principle, say it is necessary. If there is something outside, like a wolf, let that condition you. It is not necessary "to have tamed your unruly nerves and stomach for things, in an inner struggle", to be confident and fit, in what you are doing. There is no necessity to that kind of thing, in general.

So sure, anxiety can be seen as fitness for humans, in the same way as fear can, but I see that burden of argument really start to come up in every place, the more ideologically conditioned the situation is. The sort of proposition: I should care what people think of what I say; in general, is essentially ideological, a projection, or a construct based on assumptions we have about how a human individual and society fit together appropriately. There may be truths there. But I generally think it's also a bit too projected.

I appreciate the feedback though in general. Look; paying attention to what is in the bush outside, an actual growl of nature, felt in one's senses - even having a bit of fear in that respect, is something I could see as an experience of fitness. People say that we should look for what lurks in us, something not in things, but in our ideas of things. I think they tell stories, unnecessarily about self and identity, and sometimes get caught up in this...

It may be true that anxiety is something like a human instinct, but first there is the burden of argument in that. And second, that argument may not hold true. This conditioned structured ideological existence that humans live in terms of, these real stimulations of what we put ourselves through as a trial, may be artificial and not hold to anything significant at all.


Edited by Kurt (06/21/16 04:46 AM)


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Offlinezzripz
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23365725 - 06/21/16 03:41 AM (7 years, 7 months ago)

hanging over most people's heads, especially if money to live is insecure is homelessness and all the misery that entails, and/or having to live in horrible places that are grinm, with others who may be very angry and violent and out to rob you, and harm you.

Also there is all this speculation the very system is going to collapse, and this will bring further hardship

There is all the horrific warmongering, terrible attacks on innocent people, men, women, and children ~~ that could be us!! All the terrible sht we see happening to others, that very well could be us. FEAR.

And over all this, and THE most important, is the concerted disrespect and abuse of the ecology ALL life depends on. Fear of global warming, mass extinction of other species, and even the Bee is threatened by GMO industries like Monsanto and other GMO and pesticide industries

More and more people are finding out more and more info about the real state of things and this causes FEAR which gets labeled 'anxiety'. Anxiety is really just another name for fear, particularly of the future, whereas 'resentment' is fear of what has happened in the past, and 'hostility' is fear about what is happening in the present, but it is all really fear

The 'mental health movement' love to label these natural feelings as 'disorders' because then they can profit from pushing you drugs for them, and other therapies, but few look at the bigger picture, because they are in denial about it themselves, and don't wish to threaten their own livelihood which depends on blaming the victims of an oppressive system

The powers that be WANT us living in fear! As sick as it sounds, their system depends on it.


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InvisibleKurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: zzripz]
    #23365741 - 06/21/16 04:07 AM (7 years, 7 months ago)

People themselves seem to want to live in anxiety, I take it. It is a sign of their authenticity, I guess.

So fine let's acknowledge fears, the shadows of ourselves, and all that but be real about it. I think people sometimes like to pretend they are assessing some kind of general truth about human condition or nature in what they take to call the "psyche". Stick to the burdens of philosophical argument. If you are telling a story, or projecting a bit, you can admit it. And b iting down, or getting bit, something real, is actually lot kinder than telling or believing lies.

Quote:



"Brenin died a few years ago. I still find myself thinking about him every day. This may strike many as overly indulgent: he was, after all, just an animal. Nonetheless, despite my life now being, in all important respects, the best it’s ever been, I have become, I think, a diminished thing. It’s really hard to explain why, and for a long time I didn’t understand. Now I think I do – Brenin taught me something that my protracted formal education did not and could not teach me. And it’s a lesson that is difficult to retain, with the necessary level of clarity and vibrancy, now that he has gone. Time heals, but it does so through erasure. This book is an attempt to record the lesson before it is gone.

There is an Iroquois myth that describes a choice the nation was once forced to make. The myth has various forms. This is the simplest version. A council of the tribes was called to decide where to move on for the next hunting season. What the council had not known, however, was that the place they eventually chose was a place inhabited by wolves. Accordingly, the Iroquois became subject to repeated attacks, during which the wolves gradually whittled down their numbers. They were faced with a choice: to move somewhere else or to kill the wolves. The latter option, they realized, would diminish them. It would make them the sort of people they did not want to be. And so they moved on. To avoid repetition of their earlier mistake, they decided that in all future council meetings someone should be appointed to represent the wolf. Their contribution would be invited with the question, ‘Who speaks for wolf?’

This is the Iroquois version of the myth, of course. If there were a wolf version, I am sure it would be quite different. Nonetheless, there is truth here. I am going to try and show you that, for the most part, each one of us has the soul of an ape. I’m not investing too much in the word ‘soul’. By ‘soul’ I don’t necessarily mean some immortal and incorruptible part of us that survives the death of our bodies. The soul may be like this, but I doubt it. Or it may be that the soul is simply the mind, and the mind is simply the brain. But, again, I doubt it. As I am using the word, the soul of human beings is revealed in the stories they tell about themselves: stories about why they are unique; stories we humans can actually get ourselves to believe, in spite of all the evidence against them. These, I am going to argue, are stories told by apes: they have a structure, theme and content that is recognizably simian.

I am, here, using the ape as a metaphor for a tendency that exists, to a greater or lesser extent, in all of us. In this sense, some humans are more apes than others. Indeed, some apes are more apes than others. The ‘ape’ is the tendency to understand the world in instrumental terms: the value of everything is a function of what it can do for the ape. The ape is the tendency to see life as a process of gauging probabilities and computing possibilities, and using the results of these computations in its favour. It is the tendency to see the world as a collection of resources; things to be used for its purposes. The ape applies this principle to other apes as much as, or even more than, to the rest of the natural world. The ape is the tendency to have not friends, but allies. The ape does not see its fellow apes; it watches them. And all the while it waits for the opportunity to take advantage. To be alive, for the ape, is to be waiting to strike. The ape is the tendency to base relationships with others on a single principle, invariant and unyielding: what can you do for me, and how much will it cost me to get you to do it? Inevitably, this understanding of other apes will turn back on itself, infecting and informing the ape’s view of itself. And so it thinks of its happiness as something that can be measured, weighed, quantified and calculated. It thinks of love in the same way. The ape is the tendency to think that the most important things in life are a matter of cost-benefit analysis.

This, I should reiterate, is a metaphor that I use to describe a human tendency. We all know people like this. We meet them at work and at play; we have sat across conference tables and restaurant tables from them. But these people are just exaggerations of the basic human type. Most of us, I suspect, are more like it than we realize or would care to admit. But why do I describe this tendency as simian? Humans are not the only sorts of apes that can suffer and enjoy the gamut of human emotions. As we shall see, other apes can feel love; they can feel grief so intense that they die from it. They can have friends, and not just allies. Nevertheless, this tendency is simian in the sense that it is made possible by apes; more precisely, by a certain sort of cognitive development that took place in the apes and, as far as we know, no other animal. The tendency to see the world and those in it in cost-benefit terms; to think of one’s life, and the important things that happen in it, as things that can be quantified and calculated: this tendency is possible only because there are apes. And of all the apes, this tendency receives its most complete expression in us. But there is also a part of our soul that existed long before we became apes – before this tendency could catch us in its grip – and this is hidden in the stories we tell about ourselves. It is hidden, but it can be uncovered.

Evolution works by gradual accretion. In evolution, there is no tabula rasa, no clean slate: it can work only with what it is given and never go back to the drawing board. Thus, to use the stock example, the grotesquely twisted features of the flat fish – one of whose eyes has in essence been pulled around the other side – are evidence that the evolutionary pressures that led a fish to specialize in lying on the sea bed were pressures acting on a fish that had originally developed for other purposes and, therefore, had eyes located on its lateral, rather than dorsal, surfaces. Similarly, in the development of human beings, evolution was forced to work with what it was given. Our brains are essentially historical structures: it is on the foundations of a primitive limbic system – one that we share with our reptilian ancestors – that the mammalian cortex – the particularly brawny version of which is characteristic of human beings – has been built.

I don’t mean to suggest that the stories we tell, and believe, about ourselves are evolutionary products like the flat fish’s eyes or the mammalian brain. However, I do think that they are built in a similar way: through gradual accretion, where new layers of narrative are superimposed on older structures and themes. There is no clean slate for the stories we tell about ourselves. I shall try to show that if we look hard enough, and if we know where and how to look, then in every story told by apes we shall also find a wolf. And the wolf tells us – this is its function in the story – that the values of the ape are crass and worthless. It tells us that what is most important in life is never a matter of calculation. It reminds us that what is of real value cannot be quantified or traded. It reminds us that sometimes we must do what is right though the heavens fall.

We are, all of us I think, more ape than wolf. In many of us, the wolf has been almost completely expunged from the narrative of our lives. But it is at our peril that we allow the wolf to die. In the end the ape’s schemes will come to nothing; its cleverness will betray you and its simian luck will run out. Then you will find what is most important in life. And this is not what your schemes and cleverness and luck have bought you; it is what remains when they have deserted you. You are many things. But the most important you is not the one who schemes; it is the one who remains when the scheming fails. The most important you is not the one who delights in your cunning; it is what is left behind when this cunning leaves you for dead. The most important you is not the one who rides your luck; it is the you who remains when that luck has run out. In the end, the ape will always fail you. The most important question you can ask yourself is: when this happens, who is it that will be left behind?

It took a long time, but at last I think I understand why I loved Brenin so much, and miss him so painfully now he has gone. He taught me something that my extended formal education could not: that in some ancient part of my soul there still lived a wolf.

Sometimes it is necessary to let the wolf in us speak; to silence the incessant chattering of the ape. This book is an attempt to speak for wolf in the only way that I can."




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InvisibleLunarEclipse
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23367880 - 06/21/16 06:50 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Anxiety is what you make it.

If you overthink things, that will make you more anxious.  You seem to overthink things.  Be concise breathe deep the gathering gloom.  Does gloom make you anxious or just gloomy?  How does aluminum affect mood?  Is Al your Pal?


--------------------
Anxiety is what you make it.


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InvisibleKurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: LunarEclipse]
    #23368305 - 06/21/16 08:50 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:


If you overthink things, that will make you more anxious.  You seem to overthink things.




Sorry LE, but we don't take personal deliveries here...

But hey, yeah, what's going on? What did really happen on 9/11? Aluminum in our foods/water? I know you don't ever let your rationale escape you, so you're the one to ask about these things. Since I'm here begging for advice, yeah I think that's what I'd ask you. :wink:

I have very few hidden apologies to what I think lately. The idea is to bite down with sharp teeth on philosophy. I think I might as well put a sign above the door. The door opens and lets in a nice friendly breeze that's always welcomely met in kind.

Only thing is, we don't take deliveries, and hope that's alright with you.


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OfflineRJ Tubs 202
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Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: Kurt]
    #23368589 - 06/21/16 10:54 PM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Quote:

Kurt said:

For instance, is it "functional" to care or be anxious about what people think when I speak? You may say yes. 





It might be functional from the ego's perspective.

But not necessarily from the evolutionary perspective.


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InvisibleKurt
Thinker, blinker, writer, typer.

Registered: 11/26/14
Posts: 1,688
Re: Anxiety; Reified Theory [Re: RJ Tubs 202]
    #23368780 - 06/22/16 12:00 AM (7 years, 7 months ago)

Well, I agree. I am not so sure that we are laying out what would be evolved if we are asking that question though.

If you ask yourself this, (or me or whoever) I'd say it is usually best to deal with an anxiety in the "appropriate ways". That may even be in not giving a shit. But I still think it would be better to not be anxious.


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