I'd like to add: I don't think it's just fear of nonexistence, but fear of having to sort out the world independently, both because it's hard and because they could be wrong, with consequences of that ranging from none to extremely severe. Basically, this is fear of thinking about imporatant things all by themselves. So, all information must be filtered and warped to fit the savior. (Savior meaning the psychological comfort, not Jebus.)
And maybe, within a certain set of preferences, it's not sensible to try to figure the world out yourself. It seems to me that there are two basic attitudes toward figuring out what you believe: valuing trying according to a set of values like scientific inquiry, "the journey," if you will, vs. valuing succeeding in finding absolute unchanging truth. Why waste time breaking your head over something you're never going to completely understand? If what you require is the safety of absolutely no doubt, brain-breaking would be a senseless source of misery. Complexity and uncertainty seems to be unacceptable to the 'success people,' but almost required for the 'journey people.' 'Journey people,' on the other hand, seem to find it worth it because of the self-esteem from not succumbing to easy comfort. Heh, it's probably pretty obvious which side I'm on by now...
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-22 12:24 am (UTC)And maybe, within a certain set of preferences, it's not sensible to try to figure the world out yourself. It seems to me that there are two basic attitudes toward figuring out what you believe: valuing trying according to a set of values like scientific inquiry, "the journey," if you will, vs. valuing succeeding in finding absolute unchanging truth. Why waste time breaking your head over something you're never going to completely understand? If what you require is the safety of absolutely no doubt, brain-breaking would be a senseless source of misery. Complexity and uncertainty seems to be unacceptable to the 'success people,' but almost required for the 'journey people.' 'Journey people,' on the other hand, seem to find it worth it because of the self-esteem from not succumbing to easy comfort. Heh, it's probably pretty obvious which side I'm on by now...