Fear is an experience similar to fear, but deeper than fear. Fear is facing a specific object. Fear and anxiety are the same. No specific object may be boundless. Physical attacks (such as a tiger coming at you) will make you afraid, but mental injuries will produce fear and eventually lead to despair. Fear is now, and fear may happen in the future and unknown things. So, how does fear happen? Or, why are people afraid? A pig will be killed at night and can eat happily at noon, but people can't do this because people will worry about the future. If there is no sense of security in the future, no happiness brought by ease, and no communication between personalities, people cannot find a suitable position for their existence. Once he stepped out of the standard of existence, anything could threaten him. Without a greater protector and unreliable self, where does comfort come from? Man raises himself to the center of the universe, but he can't control his own destiny. In the face of such a severe living situation, fear is inevitable.
Fear has many faces, but it can be summarized into three forms: first, fear of things without personality; The second is fear of "non-existence"; Third, fear of death. Maybe we can think of some other forms of fear, but the above three actually cover most types of fear. The intensity of fear is also different, some are weak, some are strong enough to cause despair, and some are in between. Many modern people have experienced this terrible darkness, resulting in a philosophy of despair, and fear is manifested in trembling, which shows that people have suffered more than they can bear, so that their psychological actions have lost their sense of security and dependence. In the face of existing threats, people need a greater protector.
Why are people afraid of "impersonal things"? The reason is that since everyone's self has become a cocoon, they can no longer understand the existence outside the self. He ignored the divine existence and no longer imagined the perfection of human existence. In fact, man's own existence is open, and he is eager to unite with higher existence to make up for his own shortcomings. Therefore, the East has the idea of "harmony between man and nature", while the West has the enlightenment of "harmony between man and nature". In ancient China, people emphasized that "man" and "heaven" must be unified, coordinated, consistent and harmonious, which was called "towering over the sky, praising and enlightening". However, there is no sacred reality corresponding to "heaven" in China's thought, and "heaven" seems very empty. Finally, "the unity of man and nature" is understood as "humanization of nature", and the result is "man". In western thought, "heaven" is God, Christ and the holy spirit that gives life to people. "Unity of Heaven and Man" means that the divinity of the Trinity meets the humanity that it redeems in time, but it does not produce the third sex. It is the duality of God and man represented by Jesus Christ, and its ultimate unity is "heaven"-"a new heaven, a new earth and a new Jerusalem". Nowadays, in this era of blasphemy against materialism, the East and the West no longer advocate "heaven", but enthusiastically pursue territorial things, and human existence is completely close to sacred existence. This kind of existence is closed, and people begin to know themselves from the standpoint of people, just like wearing an eye patch. As a result, the more modern people understand their own humanity, the more they find it difficult to identify and have no connotation, so they begin to fear the "impersonal" things of human beings, and fear is justified. This is why the more modern artists want to know people, the less people have a place in their works. In fact, the original meaning of the ancient Greek famous saying "know yourself" is "remember: you will die!" However, modern people misunderstand this sentence.
An example can illustrate this problem. Children are usually afraid of being left alone in a dark and "impersonal" room. No matter how people comfort him, in western countries with Christian tradition, parents will say to their children, "Don't be afraid, because God is here." This is a simple and wonderful truth, because personality exists, infinite, in the past and eternal in the future, and people with the same personality need not be afraid of "impersonal" things. Many psychologists use this method to show the appearance of "God exists" pragmatically, but it can help the sick to some extent. Carl Jung often tells his patients that in all life, if God exists, they can cope with psychological fear. Eight days before Jung's death, in his last interview with reporters, he talked about what he thought was God. "Anything that invades my will from the outside or emerges from my collective subconscious." His suggestion is to call it "God" and submit to "He". Why can Jung cure many people in this way? Because the existence of God dispels people's fear of "impersonal things", which is too real.
The second basic fear is about "nonexistence". Why are many people afraid of "nonexistence" today? Since it doesn't exist, what can be used to arouse people's fears? Because modern people generally don't know the origin and end of everything, and don't know where they come from, unpredictable theory and existence itself make them at a loss. Moreover, most modern people think that everything, the world and people are accidental, which denies inevitability and dominance and will naturally lead to confusion in understanding. Since everything is accidental, everything has infinite possibilities: what exists may become nonexistent in one moment, and what does not exist may become existent in another moment. Where can I feel safe? Existence is meaningless, because it lacks a fixed foundation, and people will naturally be afraid of "non-existence"
The third basic fear is the fear of death. This fear is the most obvious and destructive. "Remember: you will die!" For everyone, it is a cruel fact. Death is so indisputable. Augustine said: "Everything is uncertain, only death is certain." The power of death will invalidate the meaning of all living people: everyone alive is dying, preparing for death, and finally throwing himself into the arms of death without exception. Since I am doomed to die, and death is out of my control, it may come to me at any time, so what is the meaning of my life? The fear of death is actually a question about the meaning of life, which is almost the most fundamental problem that puzzles all philosophers. There must be too few people who look forward to death as a kind of happiness like Socrates, because it requires the courage to devote themselves to the truth. Plato's thought originated from Socrates' uncompromising death. For Socrates, dialogue with truth-saying "Tao" (logos)-can make him ignore some terrible essence of death. Even when the person in charge of poison warned Socrates to talk as little as possible, otherwise the poison would attack slowly and he had to eat two or three servings, Socrates replied and prepared wine, "I might as well eat two or three servings." Socrates overcame his fear of death, but people in this era have lost their pursuit of Tao. What else can he use to resist this fear? Fear means a threat, the threat of time to us, and the self-threat caused by self-defects, which is related to sin, because "the wages of sin are death." In Genesis, Adam was cursed by God after eating the fruit from the tree of good and evil: "You must die!" " "This shows that the fall of people has fallen into the bondage of time, and death means that time limits people. The threat of time is not only that it will end our lives, but also that it may end in a violent way in advance, such as diseases and disasters. Because everyone has infinite and eternal desire (to have children and write a book to prolong his life), everyone wants to die later, but in fact, people can't do this, so the fear of death arises, because this is an unexpected guest who may knock at the door at any time. Another reason for fear of death is that people can't be responsible for what they do in their lives. Man's conscience longs for justice and holiness, but there is no goodness in man. When people live in sin, there will be a kind of pain of self-blame and self-righteousness. Because people can't face death with their own holy knowledge, the fear of death is actually the fear of judgment after death.
How can we alleviate fear and gain the power to control it? I think, first of all, people should realize their limitations and shortcomings, so as to maintain awe of the unknown world, instead of rashly seeing themselves as the ultimate and thinking that they can bear everything. The truth is that man is placed in a world beyond his control, and he can no longer break through the cocoon of fear by his own strength. He must admit that man is not alive by himself, and he must believe that there is a bigger existence in this world. Only this bigger survivor can protect his own survival, the meaning of human life can be confirmed, and "impersonal things" and "non-existence" can be overcome. This fact will become more and more acute, because mankind has reached an extremely fragile position at the end of the century, and he can no longer find the confidence he had in himself a few years ago. In other words, many cruel facts in history prove that when human beings lose the guardian of greater existence, they may become as savage and do whatever they want as animals. In this case, it is not surprising that people feel fear, but to completely eliminate their inner fears and anxieties unless they become citizens of another world-citizens of the eternal world. This world will give him new and more valuable strength, confidence and courage, and let him successfully liberate himself from the world of fear. This is indeed a secret, and I want to quote james reid again: "It is in this eternal world that Christ discovered this fearless secret. He knows that neither natural disasters nor human cruelty can touch the things in the eternal world in which he lives. In this eternal world, nothing will be threatened by water and fire, because the power of water and fire will never reach this field. " Pascal seems to say it more clearly in the Record of Thoughts: "The real fear comes from faith; False fear comes from doubt. True fear is accompanied by hope, because it comes from faith, because people are afraid of the God they believe in. The former is afraid of losing God, and the latter is afraid of finding God. " Indeed, fear in the ultimate sense is not pure fear, nor is it an emotion. It concerns the origin of our existence. As long as there is a sense of existence, as long as people don't want to live, as long as they haven't stopped thinking, they will face this problem sooner or later, because it is so real and unavoidable. Philosopher max scheler said that man has completely become a problem relative to himself-the beginning of solving these problems lies in understanding and estimating these problems, and I began to face up to and explore my fear and its basic forms, which may show that I am on the way out of fear.
Fear of spiders is the first reason. Think back to whether there were any unpleasant experiences that caused psychological shadows before.