“Don’t Know” is an Answer; the Root of Anxiety
Warning: Long article, get some coffee.
Nervousness comes from trying to forecast the future. The brain only has information about the ‘now’. It can make a general trajectory to the past and future based on present observations and data from our memory.
Because of us, people, having a extensive, though hidden from consciousness, memory – we have a ‘past trajectory’ that is better then the ‘future trajectory’. Our past consists of a large amount of low-quality data, since most of us don’t have a photographic memory, but still keep a respectable understanding of what has happened to us. Due to this, we sometimes expect to estimate our future better.
The best (in terms of quality) information available to us about the future is the ‘now’.
Sometimes our data is insufficient to produce a good estimate of the future. We cannot produce a good enough guess of what is to happen to us. Inside, we may feel a certain lack, emptiness, a void. Our ‘function’ is not defined in this area, we cannot get a result.
This is usually a momentary experience. Our brain will quickly start to gather more data from its environment. Maybe we can do something else, in a different way? Yeah, my boyfriend doesn’t want to see me (void experience here), but i know the shop next street will be open only for a few minutes, surely i can get a tub of ice-cream to eat tonight if i hurry enough? Quick, i need to find my keys, there’s my money – oh and i need to call a friend i told her i would show her a movie…
This void thing is all only a feeling, and is as such not dangerous to us. But it is something we, people, will go to great lengths to avoid, sometimes in silly and unreasonable ways, as in the above given example. It is on the other hand, a reaction that keeps us alive, since going the other way means death. Surely we have known someone who temporarily or permanently chose the wrong direction, and instead of running away from it, jumped into the void. I lost my car keys again, i am always loosing things, i cannot do anything right.
The other way is a that of a person who is sad, grieving, or in the worse case even a person with depression. Especially in the later case, their main problem is to get out of their cycle. This is why telling depressed people just to lighten up will not work – their brain for some reason refuses new information to avoid the issue; not getting out of something is their main problem. The issue with their car keys is real, eating ice cream will not work to solve this, as the keys will still be lost. The little silly mechanism of the mind that gives us the impression that eating ice cream makes the lack of a person in our life less relevant is broken.
But what happens when there is simply no way to get out of a situation, distract ourselves with something else, but we still want to get out of – that is, make our future known and predictable to us enough to be in control?
There are two possibilities.
As i have said before. The feeling of emptiness, by itself, is not harmful to us. We experience it, some things come up and give us more data about our world, and this is how it all ends. We go on about our lives.
But what if we keep pushing it, even though we know nothing new about it?
Yeah, i don’t know how i should tell my boss something, so what do i do? The brain replies nothing. I ask again, What do i do? No reply. What the fuck do i do? Nothing still. WHAT DO I DO, FUCK, WHAT? {}. With enough motivation, we may consciously or subconsciously do this to ourselves for hours. You may imagine, as it is quite logical, that in some time, the thing will no longer be about ‘I kindly need to do something’ to ‘AAAARrRRGGG$#3##$$!!!?!!!!!!’. That is, a feeling commonly known as anxiety.
Putting more energy into trying to forecast something will only result in overwhelm.
Swaying away from my topic, as every good SAR dog handler knows, if you push too hard on the dog to find the missing person in a place where there is actually nobody there – the dog will eventually bark or signal that the person is there even if they aren’t.
And this is exactly what the human brain will do, and it is called creativity.
When our boss told us something in a slightly annoyed way, we were concerned, but how do we come from that, to anxiety, to panic, overwhelm, fear?
This comes from a mix of void with creativity. See, the brain got pushed into a corner by its owner, it knows the owner will keep pushing it, so it just makes something up. The brain knows the topic is ‘unpleasantness’. So how do you make someone shut up on this topic? You reply with fear, panic. If they didn’t pull away before, they will now. The way your brain worked when you were playing the ‘What do you think of when i say x’ with your friends works here, and it works exactly in the same way. You feel ‘unpleasant’, the brain thinks up ‘bad’, then thinks up ‘worse’ to that, then what do you think of when i say the word ‘worse’? Well, horrible maybe? And instead of in words like the game is usually played, the brain has no issue of playing it with its owner in feelings. It is the same thing, it is fun (no one is making you do it, you are still there, you must think it to be fun or else you’d surely leave \sarcasm).
When you badly wanted to do something before, instead of acting, now you are paralyzed with fear. It was a slight feeling of insecurity that got a sweet topping of human effort and creativity. We didn’t want to feel the uneasiness, so we got panic; feelings know how to make themselves felt, if at least partly. This cannot be avoided. The funny thing is, you may not even feel that afraid, its just when you want to do that thing. Such feelings can be very strong, but by our efforts they stay in the darkness. The problem with this is, when they are not addressed, they tend to grow. They never become strong, but in a certain situation the uneasiness always pops up for some reason.
This is also why young people tend to be more active in their choices, in business or such – through our lifetimes, we accumulate and fail to ‘clean out’ (that is, experience completely) many such feelings.
Our circumstances may only hit us with a kind of pain. It may be physical, emotional.
On the other hand, feelings of anxiety and fear come from within, they are our own production. To be afraid, we need to know something about the thing we are afraid of. Naturally, we are fearless, we only have reflexes of avoidance (or attraction, or dismissal). If you don’t believe it, observe very young children. They pull away. They don’t go “shit what if this-n’-that is going to happen to me”. They cry because they are cold, not because they are afraid of becoming cold. You cover them with a blanket, and they stop crying. Fear and its relative, anxiety, are fabricated feelings, and can be undone. Firefighters respect fire, but don’t fear it. Doctors take measures to prevent infection, but they don’t wake up during nights in fear of a virus. Step-by-step those emotions about something are constructed, and they are deconstructed in the same way (and the same amount of effort is required).
To deconstruct a feeling, we will have to experience all the components we have built up. Trying to avoid feelings is basic human suffering.
If we don’t know something, writing out the ‘don’t know’ in larger letters will not change the meaning. It is the same with our experiences. What we need to do to find an answer, is acknowledge the problem, but then really do something else.
The Return of the Living Dead
1. She had a husband, but now he had passed away. I was her guest.
“This rice is expensive” i said.
“Yes, but it is also tastier than the other kind” she replied.
2. “I think the gift you got me is way too expensive, why did you get it, you really shoudn’t have.” i heard him say in a concerned voice to me. I did not find words to tell him off proprely. What a jerk. I felt embarassed.
3. She told me she would sure be dead in five years. I asked her about it, and she did not have any medical or even any reasons for the claim. We went on to adjust her bread maker and eat dinner.
In a few days i got on a plane and left. I didn’t hear from her since.
4. I have this lingering thought that if she had cooked the expensive rice for her husband, she would still be alive today. I ate her rice with gratitude, but was it already cold?
5. I don’t want to make the same mistake. My own relationship may end tomorrow, but today is real. I may not get the chance of doing what i want to again. If it is about something silly i want to bring you because i want you to have it, something as trivial as a number next to a dollar sign will not prevent me. So fuck off.
Is Wikipedia the Best We’ve Got?
1. Knowing the way we learn has become more important. We no longer live in a world where we would spend more time trying to acquire the information (we, exceedingly, no longer need to go to expensive schools, be born in or travel to a certain (social) place etc.) then we take to understand it (that is, work ourselves through the material).
2. When i went to grade school, the way people learn wasn’t discussed. The assumption was – we give you access to the information, you will deal with it. But now, with internet, we all have access to the information. So the question should be – how do we efficiently present it, making the best use of the medium (this now being a computer with ever-advancing software)
3. We tend to still think in terms of traditional media – we were thought what a pencil can do; but few know how to actually use the advanced tools a computer brings. Sometimes we use the ‘fake’ markers, brushes, animation. But few can actually present something well in an interactive form – something peculiar to the medium.
It is like we did not develop the ‘fine motor skills’ to use the computer. We fiddle with software like young kids do with pencils, we are unsure what to do with the new tools. We write text, we stuff the gadgets in things resembling pencil cases. We look at whether their cover glitters or doesn’t, or looks like it has been blessed by the latest (now geeky) celebrity. We show our friends how our tools – computers, smartphones, look on the outside, never having a real clue about what they do. It is a good thing that the tool is similar enough to our old one that we do not try to eat it, like small children would try to do! Often we never realize that the new functionality we think it has, was really possible in our old one too. We buy them, ‘sharpen’ them, lug them around in bags for awhile, and throw them away when our friends no longer seem impressed by them.
This time, there will be no grown up teacher telling us what to do, and no parent making sure we attend and listen – but still we should all take some time and learn to use the tools we got as best as we can. The computer will always be a bad pencil. We should learn to use it as its own tool, not as an emulator.
4. How do i present what i know if i don’t know how people learn? The science is getting there, but i have this impression that this issue is most often showed off as of inferior importance, mostly of the ‘grade school’ assumption that is still made by the majority of people.
5. Literacy of today is not the literacy of yesterday. A program has substituted the word. We cannot read if we cannot use software, nor can we really write if we cannot program. Today’s new illiterate are tolerated, but this is only so because they are the majority. It is something we, as people and as a society, will have to overcome. How will we teach the use of the new medium? How long will we postpone and reserve it for the ‘blessed’? I wonder, how long the majority will have to ‘work in the fields’, to gain the time (as money is no longer an issue much) for an education?
The ‘How To’
The painful yearning of being in love is usually just a sign that one needs to take one step forward in trusting the other person.
Often, that one must do what is forbidden or impossible – and thus prove it otherwise.
zacione 