Fear, Loathing, and Horror.

[Telarus]

Eh, good point. Learning is good means new reward chemical pathways, unlearning bad means fighting against existing reward chemical pathways. Makes sense.

[The Johnny]

1.  Fear:  The sensation that something bad in the natural order of things is about to happen to you.  Example:  A dog approaches you, snarling and growling.  Your reaction is fear; something very bad is potentially about to happen.  Your fight or flight reflex kicks in, and you drop down a few neural circuits.  Another example:  You are a soldier on the front line, and someone starts to shoot at you.  This is part of the natural order of things for that environment, and causes fear rather than any other emotion.  How you REACT to fear will vary from person to person and event to event, and isn't really relevant to the definition (at least for our purposes here).

2.  Loathing::  The knowledge and distaste of something undesirable about the natural order of things, but isn't a direct, fear-causing condition (though anxiety is definitely part of it).  Example:  The knowledge that the next door neighbor owns a mean dog that occasionally menaces you, but isn't doing so at the moment...Or the soldier on furlough from the front, who knows that he is due to return to the fighting soon.  Displeasure, hatred, and anxiety are the root emotions, and again, the reaction may vary (see above).

3.  Horror:  The sensation of being confronted with something utterly outside of your perception of the natural order of things.  Example:  Same dog confronts you and starts singing Elton John tunes.  Or the soldier wakes up to find that his entire unit has pulled back in the night, leaving him to die (He has been ingrained with the belief that no man gets left behind).

Its interesting to note that, Jacques Derrida in "The postal card" paraphrases Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" about the onset of traumatic neurosis which need be distinguished in three forms:

1. Fear: provoked by the prescense of a dangerous, determinate and known object.

2. Angst: provoked by an unknown danger and indeterminate (which prepares the person for danger, but more against traumatism, and is the cause of repression)

3. Fright/Scare: which is a danger that is unknown and indeterminate - which causes traumatism. (From which angst was unable to protect us from.

I found the parallels to be interesting.

[Triple Zero]

For a child, encountering something unexpected is a chance to learn something new, which is pleasant. To an adult, it means they have to unlearn something old, which is always unpleasant, regardless of Machines and social conditioning.

Why?

Why is it always unpleasant?

Don't get me wrong, I can feel it is unpleasant, I agree it usually is, but why is that?

It's almost so intuitively unpleasant, you look straight past it without realising it doesn't actually make sense, why would adapting, unlearning, changing our world-view automatically be something unpleasant?

Isn't that one of the lessons you can take from Discordia, the neophilic one? New stuff is awesome, smash your reality tunnel, and all that?

[Lord Cataplanga]

For a child, encountering something unexpected is a chance to learn something new, which is pleasant. To an adult, it means they have to unlearn something old, which is always unpleasant, regardless of Machines and social conditioning.

Why?

Why is it always unpleasant?

Don't get me wrong, I can feel it is unpleasant, I agree it usually is, but why is that?

It's almost so intuitively unpleasant, you look straight past it without realising it doesn't actually make sense, why would adapting, unlearning, changing our world-view automatically be something unpleasant?

Isn't that one of the lessons you can take from Discordia, the neophilic one? New stuff is awesome, smash your reality tunnel, and all that?

Debugging a program that was working fine just a moment ago is unpleasant, because it's hard work. But it has to be done, and you'll feel better afterwards.

[minuspace]

Why?

Why is it always unpleasant?

Don't get me wrong, I can feel it is unpleasant, I agree it usually is, but why is that?

It's almost so intuitively unpleasant, you look straight past it without realising it doesn't actually make sense, why would adapting, unlearning, changing our world-view automatically be something unpleasant?

Isn't that one of the lessons you can take from Discordia, the neophilic one? New stuff is awesome, smash your reality tunnel, and all that?


Debugging a program that was working fine just a moment ago is unpleasant, because it's hard work. But it has to be done, and you'll feel better afterwards.

> But it has to be done, and you'll feel better afterwards.
Some actually enjoy eating bugs.
Bugs can fortify others.
Some lose.
Some win.
Others can fortify bugs.
Some bugs enjoy eating people
Others eat other bugs.

[Xieante Antitheus]

The Buddhist Sutra of Mindfulness speaks about the meditation on the corpse: meditate on the decomposition of the body, how the body bloats and turns violet, how it is eaten by worms until only bits of blood and flesh still cling to the bones, meditate up to the point where only white bones remain, which in turn are slowly worn away and turn into dust...

A fantastic post.
There is a beauty in coming to terms with what most would consider to be the ultimate horror. Beyond any shocking revelation, bending of perception, or catastrophic event that could unfold to put us in such a state. There is something to be said when one of the most horrific of ideas is a simple fact. Death and decomposition over the decades has become so taboo most don't even acknowledge its existence until forced to confront it.

So horror then can be caused by even something well known, not unusual, not strange, nothing new...

Irrational- phobia?

But not regarded as being irrational...

I think I may be typing in circles here, I must apologize for that. However taking into consideration that 100 years really is not an obscene amount of time in the grand scheme of things; and at that point in time a family would clean, dress, and show their own recently deceased family members. It provides an interesting place to start looking at the developments and transitions we as humans go through that alter our perspectives of what is or is not horrifying.

Not 100% on my whole point, thanks for joining in the dysfunction of my mind as it drools on my computer screen...
Just as well I know great ideas can spawn from even the most redundant/silly of thoughts, so have at it.

[Kansai]

Here's two things I don't quite get yet:

1)  Horror relates to something outside of our field of knowledge about the natural world.  Assuming I have interpreted the previous posts correctly, would miracles, then, be included into horror?  Unless one accepts what the universe throws at them, as mentioned from earlier responses, an act of God would in fact shake one's understanding of their environment and thus horror comes into play.  Am I right on this statement?

2)  If fear is the feeling  that something bad is about to happen, then what is courage?  Would courage be simply the "fight" response to any fear-inducing scenario?  If so, then everyone would have fear and that the term "fight your fears" would be questioned.  Now that I think about it, what does it truly mean to use the "fight" response to fear?

[BadBeast]

1) No

2) Sphincter control.

[Requia ☣]

1)  Horror relates to something outside of our field of knowledge about the natural world.  Assuming I have interpreted the previous posts correctly, would miracles, then, be included into horror?  Unless one accepts what the universe throws at them, as mentioned from earlier responses, an act of God would in fact shake one's understanding of their environment and thus horror comes into play.  Am I right on this statement?

Depends on the person I think.  For people who think miracles happen all the time, no, not horror at all.  For one of the new atheists on the other hand, horror would be pretty expected (but not as much as if the concept of miracles wasn't in our culture).

[Phox]

Here's two things I don't quite get yet:

1)  Horror relates to something outside of our field of knowledge about the natural world.  Assuming I have interpreted the previous posts correctly, would miracles, then, be included into horror?  Unless one accepts what the universe throws at them, as mentioned from earlier responses, an act of God would in fact shake one's understanding of their environment and thus horror comes into play.  Am I right on this statement?

2)  If fear is the feeling  that something bad is about to happen, then what is courage?  Would courage be simply the "fight" response to any fear-inducing scenario?  If so, then everyone would have fear and that the term "fight your fears" would be questioned.  Now that I think about it, what does it truly mean to use the "fight" response to fear?

Take it from a Doktor, the answers are all there in the OP. Read it again.

[Kansai]

All right, Phox.  I might have missed something in this thread.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

All right, Phox.  I might have missed something in this thread.

Um, yeah.  Both of your questions were answered in the OP.

[Kansai]

Oh, duh.  How did I miss that?  Okay, that answers my questions.

Now I'm thinking about horror flics.  I guess from this logic, not all movies in that genre are actually horror.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Oh, duh.  How did I miss that?  Okay, that answers my questions.

Now I'm thinking about horror flics.  I guess from this logic, not all movies in that genre are actually horror.

Wrong kind of "horror".

[Kansai]

I know that.  I mean that the terms fear and horror are jumbled back and forth in the media without regard to what they mean.  It's just kind of funny to me.