The Root of all Fears

When do you feel afraid? Crossing a dark alley? At night, running from the bathroom to your room, alone in your house? Some people would say they're terrified before exams and stuff like that, but I don't mean that kind of nervous fear, I mean the crippling, cold, terrifying one. The one that comes from within your mind, that freezes your limbs and makes you feel your own heart.

There are two great types of fear. Irrational fears, phobias and rational fears I don't have any phobias, and neither do I understand them. My sister freezes completely with spiders. My girlfriend with rats. I don't understand why; it seems to me you can rationalize what to do when faced against such small creatures. However, it IS considered an irrational fear, so maybe trying to understand it is the only thing that is wrong here.

Moving on to rational fears, you can define them as an emotion that arises from our perception of risk towards ourselves. It is an interesting thing, isn't it? Even when the danger lies solely in our imagination, we can still feel afraid. That's why people love watching horror movies or play scary games. I can't tell you how scared I was watching The Conjuring or playing Outlast. Not only did I jump, scream and held on to the closest person to me at the time, but after we were done watching/playing, I was still scared and went around the house checking for monsters. I know this sounds silly, but I'm not afraid of admitting that at 21 years of age, a damn movie scared the shit out of me! Even though it's an imaginary story that we are being told, when we are imersed in it, all the emotions come alive. It's a thrilling sensation, and one of the reasons why I love watching horror movies. 

Well, anyway, I remembered this post because of a story I read, Anansi's Goatman Story. It's a very realistic account by a teenager where him and some friends went camping and there was a sort of moster blending in among them. Even though my rational mind knows it's a fake story, there's always that one chance that it is real and that something like that actually happened. Imagining myself in that situation still gives me the creeps, even though it has been months since I've read it. Read it, drop a comment on what you think about it.

Now, my question to you on a previous post was "why are we afraid of death". This relates to why you are afraid of anything. My answer to it is quite simplistic: we are all afraid of the unknown. What we don't know may represent a risk for us, hence it causes fear. We are afraid of dying because we don't know what will happen when we close our eyes for the last time. Will the Christian's Heaven and Hell greet us? Will a paradise with 72 virgins welcome us? Or will nothing be there for us? And we will simply cease to exist? We are afraid of the dark because we have no idea what is lurking in the depths.

When we know what we are facing, we can come up with plans, strategies, ways to tackle our problems. But when the unknown faces us, when the realm of possibilities extends far beyong our own imagination, it is then that we are terrified beyong any logical argument.

Hoping I didn't scare you,

David

Bad Ways to Go

After reading this post, i remembered something i read in the newspaper today. For those of you who can't read portuguese, this old woman in my town died because her house was on fire and, due to her old age, she couldn't leave the house. (Great start for a cheery post, talking about someone burning to death.)

Now, this is one of the worst ways (I can think of) you can die (in the modern era, at least). Hundreds of years ago, when flaying and dismembration were common things, burning to death might have been quicker and less painful than the worse kinds of torture. Nowadays, and assuming you're not a war prisioner with vital information *cof*, burning really is a terrifying way to die.

When people think about how they would like to die, there's usually one thing all answers will share: fast or painless. It's logical, isn't it? You either want a painless death in your sleep or you will want a quick death that won't drag on for hours or days or even months. People don't like pain, so they want to avoid it. People are scared of death, so they wish for a quick one.

Now, what ways to die do not match any of these criteria?

• Burning, obviously. Extremely painful, and those few seconds that will take you to lose consciousness will seem like an eternity. 
• Drowning comes to mind. Water in your lungs is already painful when you're swimming at the beach and you breathe at the wrong moment. Feeling the inevitability of your air running out while you're under the surface of the water must be something beyond despair.
• Long term disease. This one is interesting. Depending on the disease, you can either know you're going to last a few days, or a few years. I like this one better than the others mainly because it gives you a motivation to do something you've always wanted to do but never had the courage to. We'll get back to this one.
• Battle wounds. I say battle and you think of swords, but cops, criminals, soldiers and innocent people die everyday with gunshot wounds, bleeding cuts, infected injuries, either from civil wars, robberies, vehicle accidents or even accidents in the kitchen.
• Poison or intoxication. Either accidental or intentional, if you realize that you are doomed and have a few painful moments left to live, what would you do?
• Fall damage. I know, this is a quick death, it's why so many suicides are jumps from bridges or tall buildings. But I've always wondered... In those few seconds where you see the pavement approximating real fast from your face, do you not feel scared shitless? Or do people just close their eyes?
• Starving/dehydrating (this includes being buried alive O.o)
• Suicides gone wrong. I'm not including this in the "battle wounds" category, because an attempt at a quick death resulting in a slow or painful death (or sometimes not resulting in death at all) is really different from someone who was shot or got hit by a car. I've read somewhere about suicides that didn't kill the person attempting them and that must have made the person suffer so much more than they intended to.

Ok, I can't remember many more ways to go, except for these. I want to talk some more about the disease topic and the suicide one, because i feel they're the ones who have room for discussion, but that will probably be left for another post. I will also talk about what would be a go way to go.

For now, i leave you with the following thought. Above, i said "People are scared of death, so they wish for a quick one.". Most people will agree, they are scared of death. If you ask them why, they usually can't answer. Some will say "I don't want to feel pain" or "I still have things i want to do" but that is answering why they don't want to die, not why they are afraid of dying. I have an answer for this question, but maybe someone can give me a different point of view.

All the best

David