fear – Kyle's Blog

Reflection on Aphorisms #63

Today we hit 100 aphorisms. It’s been a bit of a journey, taking a little over two months with no breaks, but it’s been worth it.

One of the things that I love best about doing this is that it gives me a challenge to engage with the thoughts of some of the greatest people to ever live. It’s been a tremendously enriching experience, and I hope to continue it for as long as I live.

Aphorism 100

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Wilde

Oscar Wilde’s best statements are intended to provoke a response, and this is no exception.

Of course, at its surface this seems like it would be self-contradictory. In the traditional dichotomy, terror and optimism are at opposite ends (or nearly opposite ends) of the spectrum of outlooks.

However, there’s perhaps a sliver of truth to this.

One of the things that I’ve noticed ever since I became “enlightened” to it (the top experience I had in college, by a decent margin) is the nature and prevalence of self-deception.

I think this was probably because I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and put my soul into reading classic texts, finding like-minded companions along the way. I had a professor who stressed the concept of self-deception in works like Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. There were other books, including The Sorrows of Young Werther and Things Fall Apart that I experienced in the same class that added some nuance to this.

One of the things about self-deception is that almost all faulty outlooks are based out of it. Optimism is faulty in the sense that it is not capable of accurately perceiving the world, though I think it may also be fair to say that it has tangible benefits.

The motives for self-deception vary, but one of the most potent ones is terror.

There are a few reasons for this.

First, there’s something to be said for the fact that the world is absolutely incomprehensibly fear-inducing.

It’s a giant primordial ball of chaos.

And we’re just standing on it, basically hoping that things work out all-right.

The fact is that somehow, miraculously, they do. However, that is a result of so much sacrifice (both in the present and in the entirety of the past), that it’s a difficult thing to contemplate. We’re adapted for our world, molded to it and molding it to us. All the same it’s contained within a system so incredibly complex that any number of horrible things could plague our minds.

So we excise them all, aiming to protect ourselves from the dark.

I consider the fear of the dark to be an entirely rational fear. Not just because I myself am afraid of the dark, but because the dark is the fulfillment and physical embodiment of the chaotic unknown.

During the hardest part of my life, the time that probably pushed me to and perhaps a little past my breaking point, I remember being so terrified of the dark that I slept in front of the television with a standing lamp on next to me.

Later, during my first year teaching, I found it intolerable to drive home under a starless sky. There was a stretch of the route home that took me along a frontage road, and at parts of it the only lights would be from my own headlights. Normally have satisfied me but in this case the darkness was just too much to bar.

I started taking a different route home to avoid the dark. Once the stress diminished and I felt more confident, I didn’t mind the route.

The self-deception of optimism can be a similar form of aversion to darkness. By avoiding the contemplation of a terrible outcome, it becomes less real and less threatening.

Of course, I do not wish to merely tear down optimism. As I said earlier, it has value, and I think that Wilde is oversimplifying for the point of getting a response. If you want to see if someone is being optimistic to shield themselves from danger, see what happens when they are confronted with reality.

A healthy person responds to reality. One who is sick ignores it.

Resolution

Respond to reality as it presents itself.

Be open about fears.

Consider the worst in the future, but the best in the past.

Aphorism 101

Never show a risk number, even if it is right.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Because we’re talking about optimism and self-deception, I think that this is a case that logically follows its predecessor.

There are a few reasons you don’t want to consider risk when making decisions, at least not a mathematically derived question of risk.

First, one’s response to risk should always be found in the balance of fragility, resilience, and anti-fragility.

For instance, I do not take any excessive risks with money right now because I do not have the money to take risks with. I’m comfortable, but I can’t afford risk.

When I have extra money, I will often take risks with it. There’s less of a reason to hold back in this case because I can afford to hunt for a risk.

The problem with presenting a risk number is that it ignores this part of the equation.

The second problem is more in line with Wilde’s ideas. You don’t know what the future holds. We live in a world in which the vast majority of everything is beyond us. I struggle to find words to describe how far we are removed from knowledge of the future.

It’s like lying: when you lie you pit your wits against the entirety of the universe. If it at least seems to end well, you got lucky, but the truth is that most of the time there will be a problem later down the road that you can trace back to a lie.

In this case, you try to tell the truth, and it’s no less difficult.

One of the things that we have said as a culture is that lying is hard. It’s something that people used to back up polygraph tests (which don’t generally work), because a liar needs to actually try to lie.

The truth is a little more complicated, as truth tends to be.

Both lying and telling the truth are difficult. You can often speak easily, but the speech is fundamentally meaningless or so contextualized that it doesn’t matter.

Consider this writing itself. The act of putting words on a page is trivially easy for me. Spaghetti. Isotope. Fluorescence (which I originally messed up the vowels in, so I’m not even fully correct in my assertion!). The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains. She sells sea shells by the sea shore. I think, therefore I am.

The act of speaking truthfully, the act of finding Truth, is not an easy one.

And you can mess it up really easily.

Resolution

Be sure that what I claim is true is really true.

Don’t think I know more than I do.

Don’t mistake the apparent simplicity of an act for a facile nature.

Reflections on Aphorisms #42

After a day of dubious productivity, sometimes the best you can do is resolve to be better the next day. Today was one of those days.

I’m hoping to get some good sleep and make sure to get a walk in first thing in the morning so that I can really energize and prepare to get some stuff done tomorrow.

Aphorism 66

Truths turn into dogmas the instant they are disputed.
Chesterton

Interpretation

Truth is a funny thing. Everyone thinks they’ve got it, even if they say they don’t, and usually they don’t actually have it.

The problem is that a lot of our truths are wrong.

I see three great threats to truth (there are other ones, but they’re not immediately significant).

The first is our own human limitation. We form concepts based on what we think we know, but these are actually quite shaky and fluid. They reconfigure themselves to fit the situation, and they’re not nearly as detailed as we think they are.

Put frankly, we don’t know as much as we think we know, and even though we’re very good at faking it on a practical day-to-day basis, we’re not so good at faking it in the big picture. This is why the characteristics that lead to success are universal attributes (e.g. determination) and not usually a particular bit of knowledge or fluke of circumstance.

There’s a lot going on around us that we can’t even perceive, and the best we can do is hope that we’ve got it right.

Second is the society in which we live. We’ve got a limitation in terms of information that is available to us, and we generally rely on others.

This is wise. Everyone gathers information, and bringing lots of independent sources together is valuable. However, information propagates both ways, and it’s almost certain that one will wind up in a bubble, or an echo chamber, or any other sort of social structure that leads to misinformation growing stronger.

It’s not a question of whether one is in a bubble, but how they are. Just today, undercover reporting showed that Google is politically manipulating search results (not that this is much of a surprise).

Last but not least is the sum limit of human information. Carl Jung has interesting theories about this, but I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with him in substance regarding the evolution of human knowledge over the years. I think it likely that people have more or less the same level of knowledge as they have had historically, but where that knowledge lies is very different.

Because we’re social creatures, it looks like society has learned, when we really have more specialized individuals who all have more or less the same amount of information. Actually, better nutrition and childhood medicine may actually have improved modern peoples’ intelligence versus historical people, just as it has increased height, but this isn’t a radical shift as opposed to something that could have happened at any point.

However, even with so many people, there’s still a finite amount of knowledge in the world, and infinite (or effectively infinite) things to know. We’re always going to be playing catch-up.

Resolution

Respice post te. Hominem te memento.

Avoid relying too much on those I trust without considering whether they come from every sphere.

Never assume that everyone collectively knows everything.

Aphorism 67

Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.
Schopenhauer

Interpretation

The image that springs to mind (metaphorically speaking; thanks aphantasia!) is of a miserly dragon looking over a hoard of gold.

Hayek talks about the role that individuals play in creating value, and Jeffrey Tucker also talks about this quite a bit (sadly, his book A Beautiful Anarchy, which I recommend, no longer seems to be in print).

One of the things about money is that it’s an intangible holder of value. If there’s an exchange of money, it’s a way of saying that one appreciates the work that someone has done.

This is the idea that fuels capitalism. One person makes something and receives something in exchange. That system can’t govern literally everything (since, after all, you will have people who don’t want to follow the rules and no single system can provide for the totality of human existence), but it’s a great way of exchanging goods and services.

The idea that one hoards money comes from two possible desires: fear and greed.

Fear is, I think, more common than others point out. I’ve got experiences with fear (thanks to a couple phobias and an entirely reasonable fear of heights), and I think that it satisfies Schopenhauer’s points in a way that might not be immediately apparent.

When you’re close to a source of your phobia, your number one response is aversion. Even if you exist right at the edge of your comfort zone, you can’t contemplate the source of your distress. I find myself averting my focus from such things when I encounter them, and no amount of logical reason can make me do anything more than philosophical contemplation at an existence. Actually physically engaging with a source of a phobia requires pressing need, and is accompanied by the same stress that a much more dangerous situation would induce.

If you fear not having money, you’ve lost the plot. You’re not able to use it for its intended purpose because the transfer of money away from yourself becomes something to be feared and reviled. The happiness it should buy (within its limited capacity to do so) is eclipsed by a desire that does not bear fruit.

Likewise, greed is a focus on money, rather than its utility.

The importance of all things is their utility, though utility need not be merely materialistic.

Resolution

Never forget the purpose of things.

Fear and greed both kill value, and not only of their object.

Cultivate humble pleasures.

God as Provider Against Fear

One of the things that has been a repeated source of God-centered conviction in my life is my own struggles with anxieties and fears of what lies in store for my future.

I have no doubt that many of these fears constitute a spiritual weakness of mine, a failure to appreciate what I have been given and a blindness to the charity of Providence. Although I deserve nothing, I fear that my comforts and worldly position will be lost, when in reality these are the least of my treasures.

Foremost among all fears is the fear of death. Other than fears of inadequacy and questions of our own identity, nothing can drive us more than the question of what will happen once we die.

God gives us eternal life because God provides the tools to resist any fears. We can overcome anything with the right help, and God will provide for our needs. It’s not that we should focus on the concept of eternal life because of what it offers us; having an eternity with God is pointless if you don’t have a now with God.

The role of eternal life is to give believers a reminder that we have a relationship with God through Christ that cannot be ended by any worldly force. It is only by choice, by the intentional rejection of God, that we can lose our salvation.

The degree to which one has to act in violation of godly principles to lose salvation is unclear. God is love and forgiveness, even when it is not deserved. Merely sinning is therefore likely insufficient to jeopardize salvation, but a lifestyle of depravity illustrates priorities that lie outside God’s kingdom, and it would be foolish to live in such a way that virtues extolled by God and the saints are lacking and expect to have one’s name in the Book of Life.

Paul’s famous musings on this matter in Romans come to mind:

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?”
*Romans 6:1, NASB*

One of the things that I’ve noticed in my faith walk is that many of my fellow believers worry about their salvation; this is not necessarily always wrong, but I think that it overlooks the main point of life.

God wants us to succeed, but to do so in accordance with His will.

We may not appreciate those successes, since they do not always follow the paths that we want to follow. However, this development leads us to improved character, and from there we find ourselves bettered by God’s plan, so long as we follow the direction of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

When we are following God, we are earning our salvation; even though we will have moments of worldly weakness, we can strive to work toward our goals. An analogy for this is the notion of industry: not everyone can be successful, but people who strive for it are much more likely to do so.

Certainty can come in the form of an industrious pursuit of God.

If we do this, we will not automatically enjoy worldly success. This is a common heresy that has spread throughout the modern church, especially in America. However, as we follow faithfully we deepen our relationship with God, the loving Father, who will reward us with an eternal connection to Him. We also learn right principles of action from the virtues that come from that relationship with God, like self-control, being a good neighbor, and loyalty.

While these are not enough on their own to ensure worldly success, they are things that are important to have to avoid bringing destruction down upon oneself.

God’s support for us is found in both boldness and tranquility. We need fear nothing, for we are His children and servants. Through our service we can shine the light of the divine in the world, and while we may never have wealth or worldly success we can count on the auspices of God and trust that we will never be tested beyond what we can bear by the trials of the world. These difficulties do not come from God, and with the omnipotent Creator at our side not even death can take our hope.

Dream big and follow boldly.