Fear: Can it take away your choices...?

[EverChanging]

We all have a subconscious desire in us to control,want approval, and survive.
Once these become a conscious desire then how the subconscious interprets this becomes different.
If you consciously want to control, then the subconscious responds as I must not have control. If you consciously want to survive, then the subconscious feels threatened.
To cast your cares asisde is to let go of wanting to control consciously and then the subconscious feels in control and confidence is released.
Same as when people who want to be good at a specific skill. When they first start the conscious wants to do it right and so the confidence is not there subconsciously. As one starts seeing themselves get better at the skill, they let go consciously and the skill starts becoming more subconscious and confidence grows..

You have not demonstrated any evidence that there is a subconscious or that anything is in or out of consciousness.

Do you think worrying when someone is coming home late is not a choice?You can choose to worry and assume they were in a wreck or you can assume they had to work a little late. Its your choice what you hold into consciousness? We are not controlled by chemicals.

No, what I worry about or think is not a choice of some autonomous self or ghost in the brain. My brain activity obeys natural laws. Period.

 

[EverChanging]

There is a huge difference in how introverts and extroverts approach science.
Unfortunately we live in a extroverted world and very few introverts find there way into science like Newton, Einstein and Tesla, were all three introverted.
There approach is different and more intriguing to me but this is jumping into a different subject right now so..

It's interesting that you downplay a very important element of science, skepticism. Einstein was a pantheist, identifying God with the universe. He even used the word "atheist" to describe himself in at least one letter, although he didn't like the word. Einstein did not believe in free will or a life after death. Although he was spiritual, he also said, "Religion is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." I have that quote on my fridge. So do you think he was just one of those blind skeptics, coming in behind the "introverts" to claim the glory?

Also, where is your evidence that more extroverts than introverts are involved with science? It seems to me it would attract more introverts.

 

[Starsoul]

I knew that fear could limit your options. Just because you can do it doesn't mean you will, which means the fear HAS taken that option away.

Fear does limit our options, thankfully to a great extent or this world would have become just a waste land in no time.

If you don't fear the law or the consequences of a certain act, you will end up doing something quite criminal to release your fear related insecurity/anxiety etc. I'm sure there are people in this world who want some other people dead or to be miserable in this world, its probably only fear of messing up their own lives in prisons that such people do not act upon those strong instincts.

Agree with kathryn, fear can be really useful in binding some parts of our morality, if not all.

 

[waitasec]

there is no fear in freedom, imo

we can choose to do something scary...like skydiving or speaking in front of a crowd...

i think fear does limits us..based on past experiences, or what we've been taught/indoctrinated

 

[Walkntune]

=EverChanging;2220299]It's interesting that you downplay a very important element of science, skepticism. Einstein was a pantheist, identifying God with the universe. He even used the word "atheist" to describe himself in at least one letter, although he didn't like the word. Einstein did not believe in free will or a life after death. Although he was spiritual, he also said, "Religion is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions." I have that quote on my fridge. So do you think he was just one of those blind skeptics, coming in behind the "introverts" to claim the glory?

I pulled out some notes. "Once, in England, I was at dinner with people highly trained in meditation, among them Professor Suzuki who asked me to ask you if spiritual vibrations and electricity have the same original cause or force."
"I believe," Einstein answered, "that energy is the basic force in creation. My friend Bergson calls it élan vital, the Hindus call it prana."​

This acknowledgment of at least certain types of energy that cannot, or not yet, be measured by instruments is noteworthy but it is perhaps not completely surprising. Einstein was responsible for showing us that matter and energy are interchangeable. He understood empiricism to be only a tool of intuition. Finally like Spinoza, he saw God, the universe, and all of life as a harmonious whole.[/quote]

Einstein did believe in an energy force behind all of creation and not just energy being a property of matter.It is the same force I believe in behind all of creation and I think is responsible for intuition and guides our instincts.I sense it intuitively and have researched and found scientists like Einstein and Tesla who have also spoke of such a force of creation.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CBcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fintuition-indepth.blogspot.com%2F2007%2F11%2Feinsteins-intuition.html&rct=j&q=einstein%20intuition&ei=qVLPTK_6I4T6lwfu5fjiCA&usg=AFQjCNHTRoniwSZOsBFwDTaoyH-OJWKRIg&cad=rja

Also, where is your evidence that more extroverts than introverts are involved with science? It seems to me it would attract more introverts.

[/quote]

Introverts are usually more attracted to the arts and are not usually logical but more intuitive.
This is my experience with them as it is a subject of interest with me.Some do venture into science and they are very intuitive with their science.

 

[MW0082]

I pulled out some notes. "Once, in England, I was at dinner with people highly trained in meditation, among them Professor Suzuki who asked me to ask you if spiritual vibrations and electricity have the same original cause or force."
"I believe," Einstein answered, "that energy is the basic force in creation. My friend Bergson calls it élan vital, the Hindus call it prana."
​

This acknowledgment of at least certain types of energy that cannot, or not yet, be measured by instruments is noteworthy but it is perhaps not completely surprising. Einstein was responsible for showing us that matter and energy are interchangeable. He understood empiricism to be only a tool of intuition. Finally like Spinoza, he saw God, the universe, and all of life as a harmonious whole.

Einstein did believe in an energy force behind all of creation and not just energy being a property of matter.It is the same force I believe in behind all of creation and I think is responsible for intuition and guides our instincts.I sense it intuitively and have researched and found scientists like Einstein and Tesla who have also spoke of such a force of creation.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sour...sg=AFQjCNHTRoniwSZOsBFwDTaoyH-OJWKRIg&cad=rja

[/quote]

Introverts are usually more attracted to the arts and are not usually logical but more intuitive.
This is my experience with them as it is a subject of interest with me.Some do venture into science and they are very intuitive with their science.[/quote]
However Einsten was also an Atheist so what does that REALLY say....?

 

[Walkntune]

However Einsten was also an Atheist so what does that REALLY say....?

[/QUOTE]

"In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views."5
"I'm not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangements of the books, but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God."6
​

 

[EverChanging]

Einstein did not believe in a personal god, though he used the word in a poetic sense and did have antagonism toward militant atheists.

“It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.”

“I am a deeply religious nonbeliever.… This is a somewhat new kind of religion.”

He did not believe in an afterlife.

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own — a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.”


Nature has no goal.


“I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”


His spirituality comes from a sense of interconnectedness.


“The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere.”


And he didn't believe in free will.


“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.”


“A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death. It is therefore easy to see why the churches have always fought science and persecuted its devotees.”

This site has many quotes that help put some of his poetic usages into context, and it has sources.

http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/quotes_einstein.html