WHAT is with all the fear right now?

[davsand]

A selection from GD's front page tonight:



Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America - Officials Advise Stocking Up on Provisions

Ummm...you might want to start stocking your freezer with meat when it's on sale.

70% chance that the North Pole will be melted by end of summer????

Royal Bank of Scotland AND Barclay's warning customers of global crash - WAKE UP!

The Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash




Has anyone else noticed how much free-floating anxiety seems to be around? Sometimes it is hard not to feed the fear.

Peace to you all, I think I’ll go watch Harvey with the family.



Laura

[amitten]

1. Happens whenever the economy is bad.

Human nature I guess...people just start to freak when their finances are suffering.

[SheilaT]

2. Lots of people seem to get their jollies

by spreading gloom and doom. I've been noticing this for at least forty years now, so this is really nothing new. It's just that every so often it's more noticeable.

[Why Syzygy]

3. The past 7-10 days

I have been aware of a sense of impending doom within myself. It probably isn't related to global concerns, though.

If there is a higher sense of public alarm at the moment, it could be distraction, or the bad guys trying to cover their butts as their house of cards crashes.

[Callie McAllie]

4. I'm inclined to agree that it's a distraction

If we're all focused on all the bad things that will impact our pocketbooks, we won't notice those soldiers slipping into Iran.

I am very guilty of doomsaying. I read recently that people predict a dire future in order to make themselves feel better about the present. I think that's part of it. I think it is for me, anyway.

I also realized my doomsaying tendancy really escalated as I was approaching 50. I think the fact that so many boomers are now in the second half of their lives is a factor in this. There's something that happens, you lose your youthful optimism, you see the feeble legacy you're leaving and realize you can no longer change it, you feel your health start slipping away and anticipate how much worse it's going to get. Just the sheer number of boomers who are already hip deep in that kind of personal doom and gloom...it's got to carry over into the rest of life.

PS I don't consider myself a boomer. I am Generation Jones.

[Why Syzygy]

5. What is Generation Jones?

I'm a Boomer, and have always been a 'hippie' because I grew up before I could be a beatnik. Hippies are really getting a bad rap from some of the younger gens, and I just don't understand that. We are so harmless.

The more that goes on, and based on what we read in this group and our sites, the more I believe we are in for a stunning future. That's from MY (hippie/boomer) perspective. Just imo, things aren't going to go the way many WANT. MANY WILL view coming attractions as "Doom". Yeah. Doom to the old structures! Illusory security is a thing of the past.

Oh! That reminds me of a VERY LIKELY reason for the dooms-stuff. There's the "political" ploy of creating problems just so "solutions" can be introduced which serve TPTB. Invented chaos. More restrictive and power grabbing "solutions". That's what I'd look for in these situations. hmm . I wonder what that looks like on a micro level...

[Callie McAllie]

14. Generation Jones

didn't see this until just now. Generation Jones could also be described as "late boomers," those who grew up with Boomer dreams and expectations only to find a Gen X reality. I count myself in this group, and think of us something like the little siblings who come late to the dinner table only to find that the big kids ate all the goodies already. My husband is an early boomer, proudly a hippie, and the difference between our youthful experiences really brought this home for me.

I was prepubescent during the Summer of Love...
I got my driver's license and my first car during the Opec Oil Crisis...
Getting into college was very competitive by the time I went...
Getting a job after college was even more competitive..
I bought my first house in the 80s when real estate was in high demand and interest rates were double digits...
By the time I get to Social Security, I expect the program will be significantly overhauled...if it still exists.

Sort of like that. There are good points to being Generation Jones, too. I'm always younger, for one thing!

:D

[I Have A Dream]

15. My experience is almost exactly the same as yours, Callie.

(Even my husband.) I never heard of Generation Jones before. Thanks for explaining it. :)

[Eurobabe]

17. Born in 60 here

Sounds like I might be a GJ'er too?

[Shallah Kali]

11. The media spreads seemingly unsolveable fears on purpose

If problems are unsolveable why even bother to try? why not live it up, consume more than ever, to heck with the environment and imported goods made with slave labor, etc. As long as me and my immediate circle (family, friends) are comfortable to heck with everyone else. Oh and it helps the sales of those prescription drugs they have ads for so often cuz we need to be sedated to cope from all the fear mongering.

I am not saying there are not legitimate problems that would *should* scare the you know what out of any sane rational person who pays attention to events out of their immediate circle. It is the media who hypes it up for higher ratings and IMO to spread despair and a sense of inevitable doom. People who think they are doomed won't resist and fight back as hard or effectively if at all against those who seek to exploit and oppress them.'


re: living in the future (or past) is a way some people do cope with feeling unable to deal with the present. As awful as they imagine (or remember) it to be it at least isn't what is *really* eating at them right this minute. It is a variation on focusing on another person's problems when one's who life is fouled up in some way. Again it is a little less hard to fret and obsess over a friends life dramas than to think about one's own and actually do something about it. I do this at times myself and have to drag my mind back to the present and figure what is my issue(s), what can be done and if nothing constructive can be done at least try to redirect the energy constructively to something that can be dealt with.


re: generations - children are emotional respositories of their parents. we carry the imprint of the emotions around the time of our conception and usually pick up our world view from them as we grow up. I was struck by this phenomina when I read a book by Miriam Greenspan called Healing Through the Dark Emotions ( http://www.miriamgreenspan.com/description.html ). She is the daughter of Holocaust survivors and was born right after the war in a refugee camp. She described what she said many children of surivors felt they carried the despair and anguish of their parents. They would feel it's opression even when their parents never discussed what happened. I wonder how much what the families went through in WWII is carried on in their children born after the war.

[NJCher]

6. my story about handling fear

Those are some very interesting thoughts, votes. I will be watching for those manufactured solutions, too.

I have a story about fear. Decades ago, I used to have this shrink, Angela. I went for self-exploration reasons, and I think everyone who can afford one should do this for precisely the reason I'm going to explain.

So since I was going for self-exploration reasons, I asked Angela what we should talk about and one thing she suggested was that I should confront my fears. That sounded good to me, as I had legitimate fears at that time.

At the session where we were to discuss fears, I brought up two of my fears. One was of losing my home and being homeless and the other was of losing my parents. At that time my dad was having heart problems.

So as we went through the session, I had to talk about what I imagined would happen at each stage of this loss. This in itself was pretty interesting as it forces one to confront how one might handle such a situation.

In the end, I came away with a couple of things and I never forgot them. Angela reminded me that I'd always been able to handle rough situations in the past so why wouldn't I be able to in the future?

I walked away with a visual metaphor of a lumberjack working floating logs:



That's what it might be like sometimes but I've always managed to jump from one log to the next.

In regard to the second fear, the loss of my parents, Angela helped me see that what I feared was that their absence would mean I would have no one to love in that way. It wasn't hard for me to see that there will always be someone to love. Our world needs love and those who have it to give will always find a place for it.

Thirty years and one quadruple bypass later, Dad's still around! :)

I will not tell you my sessions with Angela have helped me escape negative emotions.

Rather than fear, I feel sadness: sadness that our beautiful oceans are acidifying. Sadness that as a people, we can't stop putting CO2 into the air so we can stop this problem. The saddest thing of all is that we could solve this problem but with the leaders we have now, we're not going to.

So to return to my point about confronting fears: over time, these problems solved themselves or I learned a way with which to work with them. I've been able to build up enough "firewalls" between me and homelessness that I don't think it will happen. In the case of the fear of the death of my parents, I've learned enough about death now that I don't fear it at all and I view death as just a crossing over to another form of existence.

Fear is a wasted emotion. There are other, more fruitful ways to deal with it.




Cher

[Why Syzygy]

12. This arrived in my inbox and made me think of your post >>>

From: The Infinite Plan
by Isabel Allende

“I was not deceived by my supposed triumphs; the truth is that all my life I had been pursued by a vague sensation of failure. It took me an eternity, nevertheless, to learn that the more I accumulated, the more vulnerable I was, because I live in a world where the opposite is drummed into us. Tremendous lucidity is required not to fall into that trap. I did not have it, and had to sink to the very bottom to attain it. At the moment my world caved in on me, when I had nothing left, I discovered I didn’t feel depressed, I felt free. I realized that the most important thing was not, as I had imagined, to survive or be successful; the most important thing was the search for my soul, which I had left in the quicksand of my childhood. When I found it, I learned that the power, I had wasted such energy to gain, had always been inside me. I was reconciled with myself, I accepted myself with a touch of kindness, and then and only then, was rewarded with my first glimpse of peace. I think that was the precise instant I became aware of who I truly am, and at last felt in control of my destiny.”

[I Have A Dream]

13. This is so true. Thank you so much for posting it, vsm. nt

[Celebration]

7. We watched "Little Miss Sunshine"

We Tivoed Harvey, one of the greatest films of all times.

[davsand]

8. We took our daughter and my mother to a production of Harvey for Mother's Day.

A good time was had by all. It was the first live play my kid has ever seen and she was absolutely blown away. We got hold of a DVD of the movie and watched it together. She liked the movie a lot but says the play was more fun.

To be honest, something that really amazed me was the political/social/spiritual commentary in the piece--I had never noticed it the first time around.

Quick question, completely off topic: Is Little Miss Sunshine ok for an 11 year old? I have not seen it.



Laura

[Celebration]

9. eh, probably not

Unless you are really lax parents like us (at least with the third). As an example, there is a scene where someone buys some porn magazines, though they don't really show anything. There are also some scenes with bad language. Olive, the girl, is listening to music on her headphones and doesn't hear it, which is good. Most of the comedy is straightforward, but some is black comedy. I found with my kids, black comedy disturbed them at age 11.

I would think that a fifteen year old would appreciate the film a little more. The core message is great and it is both funny and touching. It really is a favorite of mine.

[Dover]

10. I'm not sure this is new.

Quite honestly it was fear and loathing and a feeling of isolation that brought me originally to DU several years ago. I needed to process some of the strange and alarming things going on in this country with others and give voice to my concerns.


I feel relatively sure that if I lived in most any other country this whole fear thing would not be so pronounced. This country really has issues with insecurity, which is why we need our guns to keep us warm at night. I can't believe how guns and freedom are so intertwined in this country's psyche. If we'd join with the rest of the world, perhaps we wouldn't feel so afraid.

Anyway, we've all had to process so much and for me it was actually a 'gift' in that I became so overwhelmed with anger and fear and so invested in the fearmongered reality that was being dished out in large daily doses that I finally hit a big wall, which also coincided with my personal spiritual journey, relative to how fear operated in my life.
And that propelled changes that might otherwise have been slow and stuck in my psyche without me recognizing it. So THANK YOU Bush and others for slamming me so hard against that wall! We have a choice of how and where we focus our thoughts and energies. DU as a whole is still stuck in the fear and loathing muck, so it's not nourishing or even interesting to those who have moved on emotionally, spiritually, etc.
Or at least one has to carefully navigate DU's various rooms and niche communities, to find those who are operating more or less outside the sticky flypaper of negativity here.
Perhaps it's habit more than attraction though, and a lack of someplace else to 'play' in cyberspace.
I'm guessing Eckhart Tolle would take one look at DU and see all the pain bodies getting their fix.

And quite honestly, it is hard to get beyond the head when operating in cyberspace, because it is inherently a disembodied medium. So it's easy to lose one's balance as one cannot operate as a 'whole' embodied person in cyberspace.

[Eurobabe]

16. It's the US.

I spend most of my time overseas, but I swear every time I come back to the US, I get caught up in this negative energy -- like I feel it sucking the life out of me. The TV, the news, radio, all such a drain.

I think this will be my last visit home until Thanksgiving, and that is iffy, as much as I love the holiday -- the US is just so awful to be in right now. :shrug: