You Scare Me!

You scare me.

There, now that is out of the way.  

It is an honest thing to say and I wonder if I am alone in feeling this way, but I do not think so.

I have been thinking a lot about our social connectedness and how something like trust (some may even call it faith) plays into what connects us.  I find that I am constantly wrestling with what are frequently thought to be "big" philosophical questions...

Is there Truth?
On what could/should we base our ethics?
Do we have a responsibility for anything or anyone outside of our self?

Importantly, who gets to determine the answers to such questions?  If we believe that it is up to us to decide for ourselves the answers to such questions, why even ask them aloud?  If we believe that it is the job of our wisest minds to determine such answers, again, why ask?

It seems to me that one can find a justification for answering such questions in every corner that we seek to find answers.  What I mean is that we find whatever it is we are looking for.

The Platonic tradition in philosophy holds that there is Truth that exists in a form that stands outside of our human constructs.  As humans, we are flawed, but the Truth exists to be found if we just seek it and try to remove the layers that obscure it from our conditioned responses.  The same holds for the form of a horse.  The horses we experience are representations of the perfect form "Horse" upon which all subsets are based.  The horses we see are imperfect representations of the perfect "Horseness" that precedes all horse existence.  And so it goes all the way up and down the line from the simplest to the most complex "things".

We do not know much about human thought prior to the Greek philosophical tradition, which accounts for the reason why we still cling so tightly to many of it's core ideas.  Since then, debates have raged and mind wars have been waged to try to parse out whether or not such an idea as "Forms" and other invisible "first causes" exist.  It's the old 'a priori' (before) versus 'a posteriori' (after) debate.


In more recent times, a more constructivist view has gained favor in much of the debate about where it is that ideas such as Truth emerge.  Sociological schools of thought put forth the idea that we largely construct our "reality" by means of language and culture (to name just two areas explored).  Evidence supports such theories, yet there is also an undeniable reality to being human that seems to stand apart from all these theory-laden constructs.  We all seem to know what it is to be happy, sad, angry, disgusted, and yes....scared.


Nobody needs to provide a biological, psychological, or social theory for us to understand fear.  We know it all too well.  The scientific methodologies may help us uncover mechanisms behind such emotions, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient in their explanatory power.


Of the five primal emotions mentioned above I have noticed something that I find interesting.  I can be happy without anyone else having to be involved in that emotion.  I may find happiness laying alone on a blanket staring into the starry sky on a cool, clear night.  Would such an experience be enhanced by sharing it with another?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  What matters is that it can be experienced alone and not lose it's inherent value to me.  


I think this is also true of sadness, disgust, and anger.  What about fear?  If I were truly alone in the world, could I know fear?  I think yes (as in fearing death), but I also think that there is a particularly social aspect that drives our fears.


So much of what we are and what we do is driven by a fear of social isolation or being ostracized by our peers.  In American Indian society, and indeed in most Indigenous societies, the greatest punishment a person could get was to be banished from their group...a fate worse than death (even though the likelihood of death was far greater from having to go it alone).  The very foundation of these societies is based on connectedness with others and the larger environment.


How do we come to a state of mind in which we begin to believe that we can trust no others and that it is up to us alone as individuals to either succeed or fail?  How is it in a sea of humanity, which in less than 40 years will likely find it's numbers well over 9 billion, that we can be so utterly alone?


I was thinking about evolution the other day.  We tend to group things because it makes it easier for our brains to work.  We lump people, animals, architectural styles, kinds of music, etc. into nicely organized categories in the name of simplicity.  But we have to ask the question, are any two things identical?  Is it not possible that each and every entity that exists in this universe is a unique species that is suited and adapted to the particular environment that it finds itself in at that moment in time?  


Perhaps this uniqueness, this difference is the source of our fear.  Perhaps somewhere buried deep within our psyche we know that there is not one other person in the whole of the universe that sees it the way we do.  In the end, we are utterly alone.  Yet we strive to find that connection with the other.  We seek it like the Grail.  It always stands just out of reach, yet close enough to keep us on the eternal quest.  


Perhaps the final frontier, the Truth, is not out there somewhere, but in you, and that scares me.