"The main advantage conferred upon adherents is Virus provides a conceptual framework for leading a truly meaningful life and attaining immortality without resorting to mystical delusions."
In my opinion, part of "leading a truly meaningful life" is conciously and rationally grasping firm control of your life in any way you can. I supported Mermaid's suggestion for the CoV Boot Camp for this reason, and have chosen to champion another of her ideas for the same reason.
What does it take to conciously and rationally grasp firm control of your life? Again, my opinion: Virian, Mold Thyself! That's right. Who are you? Who do you want to be? When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you percieve flaws? Fix the damn things! Would you like to change anything about yourself? DO IT!
In my experience, it seems that very few people have the ability, strength, perspective, whatever you want to call it, to actively mold aspects of themselves. How many weight loss clinics and diets are there? How many "stop smoking in only 7 days" advertisements do you hear on the radio?
One of the first and most powerful benefits I got from the rational thought processes I learned here was the ability to mold myself. Lets call it a meta-mold, in that I am changing that aspect of myself (the ability or lack thereof to mold myself maybe). This is an ongoing process, and I hope will be the rest of my life. My meaningful life.
It started out with a suggestion to write down self-percieved flaws and address them rationally. Sounds easy! Well it can be.
So, here's the idea: We're going to do Fear Factor, CoV style. Each one of us who decides to participate in this little exercise will have several responsibilities:
1) Identify your greatest fear. 2) Assist in the process of rationally analysing this fear. 3) Assist in the process of designing/implementing ways to address this fear. 4) Confront and Conquer!
As this is a work in progress, I would love for any suggestions as far as HOW we're gonna do this! And don't just suggest; if you have something to contribute, do so. Please. Jump in and take charge of some aspect of this!
So to start this off, I had an idea bouncing in my head about this. Notice two of the headings above start with "assist". So here's part of how we're gonna do it. We'll run the Fear Factor on a distinct thread, and we'll each be required to use a certain number of Karma 'applaud' and 'smite' clicks per interval. Lets discuss the number, and interval. Comments? Concerns? Got an idea of a way to do it better?
Please make suggestions like the above, and we'll implement the ones we like. Or maybe we wont.
I have very limited time right now, but I wanted to get this brainstorm off to a start, and why procrastinate? When I return and have time this evening, I'll be making a vote about some aspect of it, yet to be decided. Help me decide by replying to this thread.
Lets prove the "About" page right. Are you with me? Thought so ;-}
Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now. ---Goethe (1749-1832), German poet and dramatist
Re:virus: Fear Factor meets CoV
« Reply #1 on: 2003-10-20 23:23:30 »
One of my biggest fear is being by myself in the woods. I just conquered that fear this past weekend. Well..kinda...Kalkor and I had a brief discussion on why and how we let our fears stick to us. We decided that I should take it slowly and attack the issue one little part at a time. I cant say that I was successful in diagnosing myself regarding the sources of my fear, but I told myself that I will not be afraid of walking alone in the wilderness. I spent a night alone in the woods in the midst of a whipping wind. I was awake until two in the morning because I was scared that some wild pony would chew through my tent to get to the granola bar I forgot to toss outside. I was afraid that lightning would strike when I am adjusting my rump inside the death trap called a 'tent'. I was mostly afraid that I would freeze to death because the wind chill brought down the temperature several degrees.
I cant say that I conquered my fear, but I took the first step. Who knows..I might still be scared shitless several months from now..but I am willing to find out why I am afraid. Out of that exercise came the idea of Fear Factor, CoV style.
We are all afraid of *something*. It is never as simple as it looks too. The direct result of fear is avoidance. We avoid, as much as we can, anything that would even remotely fuel the fear in us. Fear cripples us. Fear binds us. Like with the fitness boot camp, many wont feel inclined to discuss all or any of their fears on a public forum. Once again, the idea is to get it 'out of your system'. Public disclosure isnt part of it. As far as how we can go about it, I'd just welcome everyone to keep adding to this thread. Your thoughts, your fears and how you dealt with it. Maybe it will be useful to someone else. As always, give yourself a deadline. Thats all for now.
Re:virus: Fear Factor meets CoV
« Reply #2 on: 2003-10-21 10:58:53 »
I am still trying to place the issue of the Fear Factor. I do understand that they are real fears and there are imaginary fears which can cripple your actions.
For example, a minor true fear of mine every morning is that the turtle will bite my toe while I am working. This is a real enough, predictable, and useful fear. I only have to lock her out, or wear shoes, or make a habit of keeping my feet dangling in the air (which I usually do according to my principle of least intervention), or just let her have some bites. Apparently this is not the kind of fears we are talking about.
The issue seems to be the unfounded fears, or the real fears that their consequences or their significance have been magnified out of proportion and are crippling us. Such an example would be if I had no reason to believe that the turtle would bite my toe but I still kept my feet dangling just in case. That fear, I would have to confront by testing against reality and finding out if I have to take some action or not.
A difficulty is that, if the turtle doesn't bite my toe one day, that does not mean that she won't the next day either. So, confronting a fear may help break a mental block, but it doesn't completely rid you from that fear, except if you manage to think yourself into believing that it did.
So, I would still have to make a decision under uncetainty. To do that, I would have to take into account the significance of what I am afraid of -- how bad would that be if it happened, and what is the price I am paying for avoiding it. This is the closest I have come to confronting possibly unfounded fears. I have always been taking many risks (or perceived risks) testing my limits. But the evaluation of the results is still mine.
What all this meant to me was knowing myself, the environment, and my place in it, but usually I didn't associate it with taking control of myself. It was rather like more efficient floating.
Re:virus: Fear Factor meets CoV
« Reply #3 on: 2003-10-21 11:55:47 »
I have a fear of fucking up.
Not failure, I can deal with that, just fucking up again...and again...and again.
I used to be scared of spiders, now i cant be bothered with them.
Quote:
What does it take to conciously and rationally grasp firm control of your life? Again, my opinion: Virian, Mold Thyself! That's right. Who are you? Who do you want to be? When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you percieve flaws? Fix the damn things! Would you like to change anything about yourself? DO IT!
When I used to look in the mirror all I saw was a dead person staring back at me, and thats how it was for a long time, it really does feel like I have taken control of my life since then, praise rationality! Not that I wasn't rational before, but 6th form dragged me down, people died, it was crap, but my rational mind pulled me through, and now my greatest fear is seeing others around me become what I used to be, which was shit ....basically, the only problem is they all think i'm a kook, no matter how much I try to rationalise things for them, and make life sound much nicer, they still regress into a depressed fucked up state.
So....blah I forgot my point, please tell me if you find it somewhere
So, confronting a fear may help break a mental block, but it doesn't completely rid you from that fear, except if you manage to think yourself into believing that it did.
[Mermaid]Last night, Kalkor and I couldnt agree upon whether banishing a fear means that the fear is replaced by some other emotion or if one just accepts that fear is not the right emotion and accepts whatever happens. e.g. aging and dying.
If you are afraid of death, how would you deal with it? Do you accept that death is inevitable and stop wasting such a useful emotion as fear on it or do you replace the 'fear' with some other emotion? Can the 'other emotion' be resignation?
[rhino]What all this meant to me was knowing myself, the environment, and my place in it, but usually I didn't associate it with taking control of myself. It was rather like more efficient floating.
[Mermaid]Fear can be crippling(fear can be useful too...it can motivate...it can act as an amulet protecting us from our own reckless stupidity). I agree that 'going with the flow' is sometimes better than being anal about decisions, but is it true for *everything*? Surely, there are fears that destroy us and fears that reside harmlessly with us. Regardless of what kind of fear it is, there is always some reason why it takes over. Investigation of our fears and their origins can be a rational exercise. No?
Re:virus: Fear Factor meets CoV
« Reply #5 on: 2003-10-21 13:40:12 »
You will fuck up, over and over, as long as this fear persists. And, too, you will succeed occasionally, in the moments where the fear does not. One way to purge you fear is to declare your courage to othersm in word and then, with intgrity, in action.
And, in a way, that is preciseluy what you have begun... putting youself into this forum...and shamelessly admiting your fear and its impact... took courage.
quote peter gabriel: i have my fears.....but they do not have me!
_________________________________________________________________ Never get a busy signal because you are always connected with high-speed Internet access. Click here to comparison-shop providers. https://broadband.msn.com
what's coming through is alive, what's holding up is a mirror... totally void of hate, and killing me just the same... coming over like a storm again now considerately.
Re:virus: Fear Factor meets CoV
« Reply #8 on: 2003-10-22 01:10:51 »
I found this while looking for info on fear..its rather dated, but still interesting..
February 22 1998 The Sunday Times
Science finds key to beating fear
by Steve Connor Science Correspondent
SCIENTISTS have found the seat of fear in the brain, proving that one of the most potent human emotions has a chemical basis and raising the prospect of a new generation of drugs that could make man fearless.
In a ground-breaking study, researchers have shown how the electrical circuitry of the brain is altered by an individual's exposure to frightening experiences.
The study will increase our understanding of how fear can overwhelm the normal functioning of the brain and open the way to the development of effective treatments to combat panic attacks, anxiety and phobias.
Scientists found that the emotion of fear is biochemically manufactured in tiny pathways between nerve cells in a small, almond-shaped structure within the brain called the amygdala, which is thought to be central to the processing of other primal emotions.
A key finding is that certain connections between the nerve cells within the amygdala become strengthened when someone learns to fear something. This raises the rate at which nervous signals can flow through the brain's fear centre, and so increases the intensity of the emotion. In this way the scientists have shown that, emotionally, the brain can learn from experience.
Patricia Shinnick-Gallagher, professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the University of Texas, who led one of the two research teams, says it is the first time anybody has shown that the experience of fear has a physical impact on the wiring of the brain.
"I guess you could say we have described the seat of fear in the brain.
"We can now determine the actual mechanisms underlying fear and can specifically design drugs to treat patients who cannot exert control over their fears," she said.
The latest findings on how the amygdala handles fear stem from the work of Professor Joseph LeDoux, a leading authority on the emotional nature of the brain at the Center for Neural Science at New York University.
He discovered that rats conditioned to a frightening or painful situation developed more intense neural communication in the amygdala than those who were not. The rats were given a small electric shock following the sound of a buzzer.
They learnt to be fearful of the sound of the buzzer. "We are born with the ability to be afraid but we learn about most things that make us afraid," said LeDoux.
Professor Barrie Gunter, a psychologist at the University of Sheffield, said that fear was one of the most basic emotions and evolved as a vital survival reflex.
It provoked a range of physical responses - including increased adrenaline production and raised heart rate - which improved an animal's ability to defend itself or to escape from danger.
"It's a way of learning to cope with our environment and we still have this vestigial need to face up to challenging situations," Gunter said.
Excessive fear can, however, be crippling. In wartime, exposure to repeated terror has caused total psychiatric collapse among soldiers. In the second world war, more than half a million American soldiers were treated for mental illness provoked by uncontrollable fear.
In civilian life, psychological disorders such as anxiety and phobias are often untreatable. Valium, the most popular anti-anxiety drug, carries a risk of serious side-effects, from loss of balance to hallucinations. The discovery of the amygdala's fear circuitry now offers scientists a specific target to design drugs that affect only the fear centre of the brain, leaving other functions unimpaired.
The amygdala lies at the base of the brain and is considered one of its most ancient structures, which first evolved many millions of years ago, long before the evolution of the "higher" centres of the brain in the cortex responsible for thinking and consciousness.
LeDoux believes that humans are at a point in their evolutionary history where the emotions created by the amygdala overwhelm the thinking brain in the cortex. In the future, he said, this balance could shift away from emotion, but this would take thousands of years and in the meantime the only way of repressing unwanted fear would be to develop new drugs.
"We have shown that the amygdala is like the hub in the centre of a wheel of fear. If we understand the pathways of fear, it will ultimately lead to better control," said LeDoux.
(end article)
the other interesting one is an opinion piece and recent..
Re:virus: Fear Factor meets CoV
« Reply #9 on: 2003-10-22 14:48:22 »
i've done counting my big and small fears and realized that most of themhave the same pattern. When i feel like loosing control of situation, and fear comes up and paralyzes my ability to think rationally. Sometimes even physical symptoms appear, and it gets from bad to worst.
Now what i'm saying is that lack of control makes you fear somthing, so by establishing more control on one's surroundings it would be possible to get rid of any fear. An illusion of control would probably do too.
Re:virus: Fear Factor meets CoV
« Reply #10 on: 2003-10-22 16:32:42 »
Regarding loss of control.
The simplest way to regain control is to reassert your integrity.
Integrity is defined here as doing what you said you would do, even when you said it to yourself.
Imagine if you were a person who alswaid did what they said they would do and was careful to say precisely what they will do.
Your path would be clear and yet clearly defined by you.
The fear of losing control may always be there, in the moments where your integrity lapses. However, this fear is quickly rectified by acknowledging your lack of integrity, and, in the same breath, reasserting it with conviction and presence. --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
When i feel like loosing control of situation, and fear comes up and paralyzes my ability to think rationally. Sometimes even physical symptoms appear, and it gets from bad to worst.
Now what i'm saying is that lack of control makes you fear somthing, so by establishing more control on one's surroundings it would be possible to get rid of any fear. An illusion of control would probably do too.
I have a "fear" of needles and this fear manifests itself when people (or movies) (anywhere where I am in a public situation) mention a multiple number of terms in sucession such as "blood", "aids", "injection" etc. I have a resulting physical symptom of a whiteout (conscious, just extremely brightly washed out vision) which I previously rid myself of by removing myself from the speaker (ie. the room where the speaker is) and going outside for some air, sunlight and water (this was in high school during guest chapel devotions or our pastor talking about donating blood plasma and also in a year 12 guest presentation on some topic of sex probably) or in the case of the movie(s), drinking something or trying to take my mind off it.
I really have no idea how to prevent the physical symptons from manifesting or even if anyone else experience such abnormal symptons. It takes a succession of the aforementioned words to trigger the physical symptom.
I believe this fear manifests itself because my imagination is highly active, people actually say i don't have any sometimes, but maybe i fear using it? I could be completely wrong...
Oh, I first felt these physical symptons after recieving an measles/mumps/rubella (?) vaccination in grade 7. The next case I remember was simply doing some library research as part of the class (which I don't think had any of the above trigger words), and from then on this fear manifested itself about once or twice every year throughout highschool (with the relevent words), Thankfully, I don't think I've experienced this year (my first year of uni).
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