Fear of Success

Success defined as individualized definition of success. Your own ideal personhood expressed as attitudes, interactions, influence, etc.

What's at the source of a fear of success? Perhaps it's a fear that no one will notice your brand of success, and the this will push you further into existential isolation.

So what's the solution to that? Getting grounded? Deriving sustaining energy from something separate? Perhaps. For me, this is not a problem to be solved pre-emptively, but to be experienced and dealt with concurrently. If not, that grounding or what-have-you could become another addiction.

The risk? That success will not be noticed by the outside world and this will magnify all of the existential struggles of the individual.

How most people deal with it: But making choices that they are fairly sure will result in some existentially safe combination of self-respect and societal-respect.

Is this bad? It could be a waste a of potential development if the "reason" for existence is to confront existential realities and to individuate to a maximum extent. So, those who avoid the struggle are creating a sort of retarding matrix of illusory values.

Thoughts?

Thought-Storm Realization About the Unconscious Language, Archetypes, or What-Have-You

Where does the Unconscious, Archetypal, or Soul-Language Come From?

I had a thought-storm tonight about the archetypal language (Jung) or soul language or just unconscious language that we all intuit but can barely describe. I realized it's source, and why it's source and definitions are so elusive.

The source is from a time of awe. Whether that awe occurred as an infant, or as a soul looking at human life before entering human life, or after childhood for some people for some aspects of this language, the source of this language was awe. Since the awe disappears over time, it is near-impossible to consciously feel the meaning of the language and therefore it becomes a forgotten or unconscious language.

Some examples. An infant, realizing that the mother is there to take care of it, an absolutely awe-inspiring moment of trust and amazement and thankfulness: there is something out there that is looking out for me. This awe fades, but appeals to this mother-like relationship is reflected and collected by the unconscious mind throughout our lives. This is the archetypal language of motherhood and our brain still uses it, though we don't feel the awe and so forget the language, but our mind still knows the importance of that meaning and both perceives and communicates it throughout our lives. Awe fades naturally over time, like the second or third time of seeing a great natural wonder.

It is similar with the father so I'll change the example. The soul that is deciding whether or not to be human sees how the mother gives birth and cares for the child and the father shapes the child's life in a different way, call it discernment or protection for short. The soul is in awe of witnessing this and doesn't quite remember it through the trauma of becoming human but echoes of it's meaning are still in the mind of that human, perceived and communicated throughout it's life. The awe of having a valuable resource that knows when and how to influence us fades and the meaning of that value-designation becomes unconscious.

Of course there are many more examples. The trick is this, if the feeling of awe cannot be conjured, then the language loses it's meaning and becomes forgotten. This is the unconscious language that we all have and intuit but cannot be conscious of. Without the awe we can only be unconscious of the awe-created language of existence. And yet, Jung and others are right that it is still very important. Dreams deal in it, and it affects us. Someone who appeals to our sense of motherhood will draw us in, someone who appeals to the protective father will gain our allegiance, etc. This was my thought storm.

The Kind of Revolution We Need

The revolution needs to be part humility and part letting go. We all need to decide if we are a political leader or a political follower. Then, we give our political power to someone who we trust and believe to be qualified, or we keep it. When faced with being given someone else's power, we need to decide if we can handle it. Giving up power should be a relief, etc., and valued as humble and simplifying.

On the Origin of Souls

Note: The title references Darwin's, "On the Origin of Species." Your soul is the part of you that benefits from being separate. It's that part of you that appreciates seeing another man kiss the woman that he loves, not the part that gets jealous. It's the part of you that responds with kindness upon seeing another man struggling in a way that is familiar, not the part that responds with repulsion. The question arises, what was the origin of souls? I'd say that before the universe there was only, for our purposes, some kind of confined energy. After the universe began, this confined energy was spread out but some of also existed in the previous non-universe state. Whenever a perspective existed in the universe that could "use" an observer, some soul was put in. I will skip what soul-energy is as compared with universe-energy. I truly cannot imagine what the first souls would be, but perhaps we can figure them out by working backwards from human souls. Souls seem to provide comfort for existential crisis. Whether one believes in souls or not, one should agree. If souls are only "invented" for avoiding the existential crisis of death, they still serve this purpose. The next important question is about consciousness. It seems that wherever consciousness exists, there will be potential for existential crisis. Where the potential for existential crisis exists, a soul could be useful. Now let's start with imagining that everything is conscious. A large mass of particles is conscious, and it's crisis is "What am I doing?" or "What can I do with my time?" I'd like to posit that larger consciousnesses might have time move quicker or some such thing. They would also seem to have more internal things to focus on. So, if there was a conscious moon, for example, it could be aware of all the creaks and movements of a massive body, and that might cure the boredom. Also, time might move quicker so that it would feel the gravity of the earth changing swiftly as it orbited and spun, almost like a constant massage. In this way, I do not see how a soul would be necessary for a moon, but it still could be possible. There is nothing that might benefit from a perspective of separateness. A plant, (or anything with a life-cycle) on the other hand, seems to have a need for a soul, if conscious. A conscious plant couldn't help but notice how it's growth was going, how much sun and nutrients it was getting, etc. The plant might also be able to sense other plants nearby through chemical communication, and sense relativesly and offspring. When thing started going badly for the plant, it seems that an existential crisis would natural ensue. A conscious plant, whether able to choose its actions or not, could have the kind of suffering that a soul, something that benefits from being separate, could help with. Whether the plant work for you or not, you can see how the graduation system might occur. A plant-soul that not only deals with stress but thrives with it, could maybe float around after death and be a good match for a frog. In this way, the environment is important, like in species, but perseverance/adaptation is really the most important factor. I believe that thinking about life in this way can relieve a lot of guilt from our minds. If one kills a bird, one doesn't know if that bird had a graceful soul or a troubled one, but knows that it is not the end. And the only thing that was killed, or ended, was the silly consciousness that bounced between comfort and crisis continuously (in all likelihood). If the soul was powerful and good in that bird, then perhaps the consciousness had been well-trained. If so, that good soul was moving on to greener pastures. And so on....

Dream 1.4.2012

I somehow found myself in a large shooting range trying out huge video-game-style weapons. I was, in many ways, the most bad-ass person there and a salesman-type following me around as I tried out different guns. It seems I was rich or prestigious in some way and deserved this kind of attention. There was very little concern for safety, basically all the targets were just high up, but people were everywhere, including workers near the targets. After locating the weapon that I liked the most and destroying a target, the salesman had me try gripping it a new way and I immediately felt uncomfortable but shot anyway and saw blood spurt out from a worker near where I was shooting.

The salesman-type rushed me back to the clubhouse, suggesting that he would take care of any issues arising from the accident. I felt very strange and wandered around through some back rooms until I saw a man with a gun-shot wound in his back on a couch, topless, and clearly struggling. No one seemed to be helping him so I checked in with him, gave him a bucket to spit blood into and he responded with something like, "good, because I am sometimes spitting up blood," and I left the room. I couldn't forget about him so I went to the kitchen and made an ice-pack. It was a tricky process and I fumbled over it quite a bit.

I brought the ice pack to him and touched his skin to see if he was hot. He felt very cold and so I immediately dropped the ice-pack, put my jacket over his shoulders, sat next to him on the couch, and slipped my hand under the jacket to put pressure on the wound. It was clear to me that he would die without help. He reached over and embraced me, saying something like, "I'm doing this because I'm very cold," as he did it. This touched me very deeply as I of course suspected that I had shot him.

I then made up my mind to save him, I swung my legs over his legs and kept my hand on his wound and we embraced as I thought about Jesus Christ and imagined the blood leaving his lungs. I bargained with Christ, opening my heart to whatever forces might assist me in healing this man. I was on the verge of tears for a while during this process but never cried.

After a time the man sat more upright for a moment and said something like, "I'm going to live!" and put his arms up in celebration before collapsing again into a hunched position. I woke up soon after that, holding him until the end.

another angle at collective existentialism

Do you ever have those "grrr" moments where you know that what you are saying is both new and correct, and it seems like no one will just take what you are saying as a potential solution, instead getting bogged down in how some aspect of the idea could never work?

In these moments, right or wrong, we can feel very alone. It's as if we are experiencing the world by ourselves, instead of collectively. We also see other people as both trapped and in cahouts, intensifying the lonliness. I offer collective existentialism (CE) as a way to understand this perception.

The aspect of CE that I maybe didn't stress enough in my last post is that people cannot experience reality fully when they are subject to collective existential forces. This is not a choice of theirs, however much of a choice or precess of seduction the initial leap into CE was. And so, this concept is along the lines of many anti-groupthink, anti-media concepts but provides a different focus, a different angle for compassion, and a different strategy for change.

The strategy for change is key, and what I wish to flesh out. How can we end the now-unconscious cycle of CE in an individual. I believe that this could be done using the same kind of tools that a spiritual guru might utilize. Essentially, one who wishes to end CE in another must simply experience reality in a charismatic way around that other person. I think examples of this should be obvious, take watching a grieving widow, if charismatic, for example. And of course the charisma would depends on the experience.

That's all and well, you might say, but what about dealing with groups? How can one really affect a group, all under the spell of CE, through mere charisma? The short answer is that most people cannot, and attempting to will make one feel attacked from all sides, having potentially serious long-term psychological effects. This is of course because the individual would be attacked from all sides by the varied, unconscious resistance of each individual in the group. Poison arrows with different poison on each because, we must keep in mind, it is CE that is the illusion and each inidividual succumbs to it in different ways.

In the end, we must all focus on ourselves and lead by example in this arena, thereby lessening the need for the great charismatic leaders that come so infrequently. Keep in mind, too, that some aspect of experience that for you has always come naturally, might be the greatest struggle for another individual who has succumbed to a deadened collective exestential attitude toward that aspect of experience. You could be the example that helps set that individual free, the key to their birthright paradise.

Did I stumble upon a new field of study?

So I titled my last post "Collective Existentialism" after stumbling across the phrase in my mind-wanderings at 5am. I think it has a lot going for it so here goes:

Collective existentialism grows from individual consciousness. For an individual, there are many escapes from the rush of consciousness: unconsciousness, cultural simplicity, etc.. Collective existentialism is a symptom of one or more of these escapes.

In my last post, I suggest that a true genius is someone who can create change that overcomes collective, unconscious restraint in an elegant way. To put it another way, a true genius can create change that does not cause a collective existential crisis.

A collective existential crisis might look something like a leader persecuting someone unjustly and the community going along with it even though there is little logic to support the punishment, in whatever form. The community would go along with it because of a collective, unconscious aversion to something that the persecuted individual represented. The collective would accept the injustice because of it's function in stopping a collective existential crisis.

It's important to point out that existentialism and crisis are a part of life/consciousness and there is no value judgment as to what is better, only that perhaps the ideal would be to live as consciously as possible and never experience crisis.

I believe that a prime example of collective existentialism is death, generally, and funerals in particular. This is to say that funeral rituals serve, in part, to avoid a collective existential crisis. The ritual in itself reflects he existence of the collective existentialism. As children, many of us attempt to take on the issue of death by ourselves, experiencing a few sleepless and tear-laden nights as a result. Most of us transition from this individualized existential crisis, however resolved, into collective existentialism with regard to death.

Collective existentialism is very powerful in temporary instantiation as well. A group watching a performance can begin to perceive reality in similar ways and this is in fact part of the reason that people enjoy large performances. This group perception is a kind of break from individual consciousness. The existential aspect of this phenomenon consists of the conscious processes that are not occurring as they normally would in the individual or collective mind.

For example, an individual at performance is not asking him or herself, most likely, why am I doing what all of these other people are doing? generally, is this what I should be doing? and likely not having the same kind of sexual thoughts that occur when surrounded by strangers normally. If this individual were to suddenly awaken in a room where hundreds of people were sitting in chairs and looking at a performance, there would be a period of existential crisis, perhaps slipping into a collective existential peacefulness but likely causing a panic.

This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of collective existentialism. A person allows it to happen in a semi-conscious or ritualized manner. This process then becomes unconscious, especially when the ritual is similar to a previous experience with collective consciousness. For example, a good way to get people to be calm in a crowd and not worry about what might happen in a small, enclosed, area that they have never been to before is to give them each tickets, take the tickets at the door and give back stubs, have seats in the room, etc.. This ritual will cause a reduction in the conscious processes that might question the situation. In short, this is a great way to reduce individual consciousness and promote collective consciousness.

If, instead, a large group of dispersed people were told to go into a room and the room had no chairs (just beds?), no clear front or back to the room, no tickets, no stubs, etc. then you can be sure that many people would panic or simply refuse to go in, whatever the non-ritualized content might be. At the same time, this could perhaps be overcome by simply having music playing and a table with drinks prominently displayed.

What I'm really curious about, is how to get a group of people who, for example, have stopped worrying about why they are a a certain location and doing a certain thing, to start thinking about that and other things, as a group or individually.

I mean, could there be a way to make a hundred people seated in a movie theatre suddenly feel as if they are one hundred people standing up in an empty warehouse? And would it be possible to get people at a funeral, besides the grieving widow, to have existential crisis concerning death?

The fact is that I believe that this collective existentialism creates a problem. I believe it carries over into daily life for many people and essentially stops them from having certain conscious thoughts and reacting to experience in certain ways. Perhaps church-goers are less able to experience the divine outside of church, in nature of in the eyes of another person. I'm just saying that this might be the case. But also, people who watch lots of tv news and political talk might find it difficult to fully engage in a political discussion with a friend, or an interesting stranger.

When collective existentialism extends into daily life, there is the problem that the individual is neither having that portion of consciousness available to them, nor experiencing the collective. It's as if no change can occur until another ritual has occurred and what are the chances, in modern times, that another ritualized, collective consciousness event will be liberating for that person?

I worry that people are not really small-minded, that much of their minds are trapped in a collective perception of reality. Going back to politics, it seems that many people believe that television pundits bring up all of the important political issues. And so, an individual might hear of another issue from a friend or stranger and not be able to have a fully conscious reaction to that new piece of information, perspective, or what have you until they hear it on television or perhaps begin to reject the ritual of televised political debate. The sad thing is that if a person hears about something and cannot fully experience it until the next ritual, they are almost guaranteed to adopt one of the perceptions that exists in the ritualized presentation.

In this way, collective existentialism is the result of a ritualized perception of reality.