marlz. daughter. sister. friend. cousin. girl. 1988. born to die.
sunnuntai, lokakuuta 01, 2006
yay
my dad fixed the problem and so i am here at 12.21 am, blogging.
its time for some mind exercise! i'm so tired of not thinking of something properly. i miss erudite cell! and since i need practice, i shall mentally discuss (and write to the best of my ability) a gp question in my gp essay question revision list.
and the question is...
Is knowledge an antidote to fear?
and since i always have an opinion on everything, i shall present it (though not in a gp manner of course)
i suppose this is in some ways true, but as always, there are always exceptions to the norm. one thing we would have to address is an antidote to what kind of fear.
through my short years in the world, i have had my fair share to "scary" experiences when faced with unfamiliarity. we've all had them. kids cry on their first day of school because they are afraid of being torn from their parents. they are thrust into an unknown environment where they are supposed to orientate themselves about new, strange looking adults, other kids whom they may not like, and an unfamiliar playground in which they are unsure of the best spot to play in. i remember my heart palpitating on the first day of college, wondering if i would fit in, whether anyone i knew would be there, what it would be like, whether my workload would rival the Himalayas. everything. its natural for Man to be uncomfortable when faced with the unknown.
why else would people be afraid of the ghoulies and creepy crawlies. the unknown brings with it uncertainty, and uncertainty means Man is unable to control the situation, and no control = unhappy, fearful person. and i guess that is the underlying reason to the need to know.
but is it really a cure, a means to the end of the feeling of fear?
to some extent yes. i have a silly example that i hope would suffice to illustrate my point. at one time in ol' prcs, i recall there being a rumour around school about strange sneezing/sniffing sounds coming from the toilet. indeed, i heard them myself. and the creepy thing was that the sniffing sounds would occur in the toilet, even when you were the only one in there, and you weren't the one sniffing. obviously there was talk of spirits in the toilet, and students would refrain from going alone, if not at all because they were afraid. then it came to our knowledge that the sounds were actually the timed toilet perfume thingamajig that sprayed a scent into the air in those toilet at certain times. once there was a rational explanation for the matter, talk of ghosts died down, and people started frequenting the toilets again.
the point of that little recount was to illustrate my point that people, when given a rational, scientific, or even plausible explanation to an issue that was previously painfully mysterious start to feel secure, and in control. it may have been a rather isolated example, BUT it mirrors many other situations.
In George Eliot's Silas Marner (i hate to bring this up, but i must due to a lack of a better example), the people of Lantern Yard and Raveloe attributed Silas' cataleptic fits to be the work of the devil, as such, Silas was thought of as a mysterious being with connections or as a pawn of invisible entities. what else would explain his spaced out looks and rigid body, besides him being visited by some demon or his soul going awandering out of his earthly shell? and so he was regarded with suspicion and in some instances, outright incivility ( if such a word even exists). however, if the people of LY and Raveloe had known that such fits were a medical condition, and if their rigid minds were open to such a notion that the cause was in fact due to illness, then the probability that Silas would have assimilated into the society with greater ease would be much greater.
science, research and knowledge in general would, in this instance, be an antidote to fear due to ignorance.
but the fact is, some types of fears cannot be attributed to ignorance or a fear of lack of control in general.
look at all the people with irrational fear. fear of public speaking, phobias of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth (apparently there is such a phobia), agoraphobia, fear of women. all the knowledge in the world about women or of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth wouldn't appease the people who have these fears, simply because the fear is in their mind. it is a fixed, rigid sort of fear that cannot be swayed with any explanation, simply because the mind itself is fixed and rigid to the dangers of the source of fear. it is perceived, as opposed to being dangerous. and in many cases, the fear cannot be remedied with simple facts. one has to go through therapy, hypnosis and gdness knows what other kind of new-fangled cures we have these days to get rid of such fears.
fear of the first day at school? i guess no matter how may first days at school one may face in their lifetime, one will still feel that restless, nervous sort of feeling when the day approaches. this can only be remedied with personal experience, and not the summary of "life in so-and-so-institution" on the institution's website. and why is that? because everyone's experience is different, and knowledge about that place cannot be given by an outside source, but rather, gathered by yourself. it is a suppose a sort of knowledge, but not the kind of knowledge one would get through hearsay.
and i pose the question, how can knowledge be an antidote to fear if the knowledge we have on this earth is flawed, manipulated, and often just plain wrong. acceptance would be more of an antidote to fear. because the facts we have are accepted as truth, we are assured, and thus less afraid. if one accepts that a situation would be beyond their control, they are most likely to ride the storm calmly, without even letting a frazzled curl get out of place. however, if one is constantly fretting about how to control the situation (as many people are wont to fret so) then, of course, we'd emerge from the situation tired not only because of the incident, but also because we were trying to manage our own emotions the whole time. and honey, trust me, that is tiring.
faith is a strange thing (forgive me is this is starting to get a wee bit messy). faith gives one encouragement to face what one who didn't believe would grimace to even think about. if someone thought that God had asked them to fling themselves of the highest cliff, and if they had faith that God would keep them safe, and that He would save them then they would do it unflinchingly. look at all those people during thaipusam, who pierce themselves, believing ardently that the spirits would protect them and enable them to carry out the whole event without pain. believing is an antidote to fear, even if it may be deemed irrational and even if it cannot be backed up by "knowledge" we may have (for who on earth has perfect knowledge about that murky realm beyond our land of the living?)
and so after all that jabber my point really is that knowledge cannot always be an antidote to fear. we all know that the world does not work on absolutes and there are so many grey areas. and since knowledge is a whole mass of grey area, it can't really solve our fears it being a fear of the unknown, or an even dimmer grey area. rather, if one accepts that there is a grey area, (its getting convoluted now) then they are more likely to cope better with that novel situation, thus reducing the fear that they may experience. like all human emotions, i suppose, that the solution would lie in ourselves, as opposed to something external.
and thus i conclude my musings. heh.
now i guess i should sleep because there's school tomorrow.
(talking abt school, there's econs lecture, and that means erratic behaviour on the part of the econs tutors, and that means not knowing whether they will ask us a questions, and whether that question will be something we might be able to answer, and that means FEAR of the unknown, and thus the daily class even called the 'rat race' to the LT to get safer seats so the teachers are less likely to question us. haha)
gdnite sweeties
marlz
10/01/2006 04:27:00 ip.