Fear, Loathing, and Horror.

[SmokeyMcChickenson]

In high school I cut every class and went to the library and out to the woods and educated myself.

I did pretty well.

Yes, that Wilhelm Reich Orgone technology has made you the man you are today.

His body of work it quite a bit larger than the topic of orgone energy. I would have assumed such a scholarly lad such as yourself would have known that.

Here is one of my favorites from his catalog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism

[Doktor Howl]

Did I ever tell you about the time I proved Einstein's theory of relativity wrong?  Funny story.

Jesus Christ.   

[SmokeyMcChickenson]

Did I ever tell you about the time I proved Einstein's theory of relativity wrong?  Funny story.

Jesus Christ.   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You just don't GET IT, do you, Dok?  He doesn't care, and is bitter about his education!

I was bitter about education my first day of kindergarten.

Alright everyone get in a single file.

Fuck This!

The American education system is a fucking sham.

In high school I cut every class and went to the library and out to the woods and educated myself.

I did pretty well.

The stoners who would cut class to come out to the woods and hang out with me and learn about what I was reading would get credits for it.

My principal and guidance counselor thought pretty highly of me.

I aced the state required testing and graduated without ever sitting in a classroom

I dropped out of third grade and  taught myself under conditions of poverty, deprivation, abuse, and neglect. I had a bicycle and a library card... the library was five miles away.

Yet, miraculously, I STILL learned critical thinking.

But you know NOTHING of monopole magnets and perpetual motion!  NOTHING!

[minuspace]

Ehhm, I remember this album by one of those hipety-hopety djs that equated the horror with the passage of time.
It was terrifically funny.

Then I was like, what about the confirmation bias?  If having to integrate horror is difficult on a neuro-chemical level, because of having to work against dominant feed-back loops, is this not the same as explaining things from the perceptual level?

Dopamine feeds that seeking behavior that rewards recognition over loss.
The confirmation bias supports recognizing things that already conform to a worldview over whatever horrible truth that may threaten it.

Recognition is the monster...

[axod]

Recognition is the monster...

Sounds fucking fine but this cognitive shrink I like to sodomize reminds me a little of the Semmelweis reflex.  Really, you should look her up. 

[Epimetheus]

I put a piece of cantaloupe

Underneath the microscope.

I saw a million strange things sleepin',

I saw a zillion weird things creepin',

I saw some green things twist and bend–

I won't eat cantaloupe again.


-Shel Silverstein

[Fujikoma]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyVx28R9-s

[Doktor Howl]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GyVx28R9-s

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? 

[altered]

Here Dok, for the removal of the rancid flavor

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_tLNXSuF9kg

Also I just think you'd like this but haven't yet found a good place to drop it anywhere, it's been weeks, I'm just leaving it here

[Fujikoma]

LMFAO, I don't know why I linked that.

[altered]

I want to return to this with a special addendum.

The end result of horror is rejection of a natural order existing at all. Nothing is impossible, or if it is, some dumb bastard will bring it to your world real soon anyway. After a certain point, you no longer fall into the is-ought fallacy because there is no "ought". There is, there is not, and there normally would be if Jennifer from Idaho hadn't cocked this whole fucking thing up for you again. Ought is not a part of our world except in the minds of idealists, morons, and politicians.

QGP and my other activist friends may be quick to ask about my activism. That isn't an "ought", it is a "this is the logical outcome of what you profess to stand for" and a "this is how it's GOING to be one fine day if I get my fucking way."

Ought is for non-Doktors.

[chaotic neutral observer]

I want to return to this with a special addendum.

The end result of horror is rejection of a natural order existing at all. Nothing is impossible, or if it is, some dumb bastard will bring it to your world real soon anyway.

I would disagree, at least in the general sense.  Almost everything is impossible.  The number of impossible things is infinite.

To paraphrase the OP's definition, horror is when you discover that the line between possible and impossible doesn't lie where you thought it does; either something you thought impossible happens, or something you took for granted turns out to be impossible.  Experience horror often enough, and you may learn that the exact boundary is unknowable, but that doesn't mean you can't make a fair guess.

Of course, I'm talking from a viewpoint of physical determinism (no perpetual motion machines allowed).  You can't make a "fair guess" regarding anything like a limit on the human capacity for evil (or stupidity), which makes humans a prodigious source of high-quality horror (which is I think is part of what you were getting at).

[altered]

Nope.

If it's physically impossible, some mad bastard will find a way to AT LEAST convincingly fake it. Even if it's just bad signal. Witness the faster than light neutrino. Witness the flat earth movement. Even the physically impossible is meaningless, nothing but a never ending source of horror.

Once you stop being surprised, you've either decided that physics is STAYING THIS WAY FUCK YOU or you just start to admit that yes, technically speaking a grown cat can just materialize from nowhere in a locked safe, and no matter how improbable that is, there is no reason to believe that any particularly unlikely event is more unlikely in our lifespans than in someone else's. So fuck it. Let's just bask in this bullshit while we have it.

We know nothing for certain and will in fact never know anything for certain, that's the truth of things.

[Fujikoma]

There's a bright side to horror, one the goddess has seen fit to show me. To the rest of you, this may seem to be a dark side. I assure you, the color pink is going to come into style with a vengeance befitting its long lack of acknowledgement, and Trump is going to thoroughly exhaust every kind of stupid ever thought, and a few which yet remain unmentioned, before packing up like the salesman from "the star-bellied sneeches" and moving on, leaving everyone feeling thoroughly foolish and naked. On the upside he'll be packing for hell, because he will be the first sitting president to be lawfully executed.