FEAR v. ANXIETY (referring to LeDoux)

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT “ANXIOUS,” 

a book by Joseph LeDoux  

LeDoux feels that what we call “anxiety” and what we call “fear” are two different phenomena that are managed differently by the amygdala and brain connectome.  

He speaks of the “split brain” research he did with Gazzaniga, in which it was vividly demonstrated that if one side was shown something, it could name and identify it accurately.  If the other side was shown the same thing, they couldn’t name the images but derived a kind of feeling from them and explained it creatively.  Consistently, one side could say what something actually was and the other side would “explain” it by inventing a story.  This has been distorted by some theories, calling it female/male, etc. 

Our culture insists that only humans have consciousness, that consciousness is a matter of words, that consciousness (self-awareness) is “better” and “higher” and is the same as “thinking”, which to them is the management of relationships among words.  The sensorium is assigned “poetry,” which is a language of art, sometimes considered fantasy, invention.

It seems that the difference between anxiety and fear is that anxiety is a felt emotional concept, a state of being, and fear is focused on a legitimate threat to survival and suggests something to be done about it, according to the identity of the individual and the resources of the culture.  The object of fear can be named and addressed, but anxiety is a feeling that lacks a story but drives the person to look for one.  Maybe what psychotherapy does is resolve anxiety by finding a convincing object of the fear and suggest ways to resolve it.  

LeDoux feels that fear and anxiety are addressed by two different connectomes or systems: one that responds to internal felt emotion and one that responds to the sensorium, raw neural information.  Behavior can come out of either or both.

I relate this to “spirituality” which is a felt experience that is hard to name or describe (liminality, transcendence, numinous, sublime) versus “religion” which offers named entities to fear (God, the Devil, atheists, “Commies”) and a narrative in which to embed them.  Thus, I suspect that spirituality relates to the same connectomes as anxiety while religion is about named threats that a theological system can explain.

Today there are so many rational threats that religions should be booming, but the offered naming and abating are not working -- they are only effective for those who live in a world that has passed.  Some “religious” wars are about trying to restore that world.  Even in supposedly peaceful settings, there’s a craving for writing and relationship as a source of surrogate authority. There is also much felt anxiety that is going unnamed in relationships, economics, government.  We’re aware of how much is secret or not what we expected (the internet) and how many of the institutions of reassurance have been dispersed (unions, families, school).

It seems to me that spirituality is a creature of images (sensorium) we can feel, but that religion is verbal, often adversarial, and both narrative and logical but logic that takes introspection as a source rather than the sensorium.  This is at the heart of the “Western” religions.

These ideas generated by LeDoux and team seem to lead somewhere instead of shutting down discussion or new evidence.  Whatever the amygdala has to do with it (which seems hard to pin down), it would be a mistake to assume we already know.  The very long bibliography and discussion of various theories show how hard it is to resist closure.

A FIVE-STAGE ACCOUNT OF 

HOW HUMAN BEINGS DEVELOP

Keep in mind that as each new ability or understanding comes “on-line,” it then loops back to connect with everything previous and that creates new synergies that weren’t possible earlier.

I.

Human beings are self-unfolding, pulling in what they need from around them, and creating their own internal order.  The drive to do this is kindled at conception and guided by the genome, the epigenome, and the womb environment which connects to the mother’s molecular status and reactions.

So the first stage of fear/anxiety is in the mother, whether she is safe and peaceful, or aroused and frightened.  This affects not only the state of the baby -- when the fetus is old enough she will feel its movement and know how much it participates in her emotional state as expressed in the blood according to the secretions of her organs -- but also the development pathways as the baby’s organs are created and calibrated.  Adrenaline, cortisol and so on can influence gender, both whom to desire and gender identity, to say nothing of genital formation.

Once outside the womb, the baby begins develop its sensory systems, not just eyes, ears and so on, but awareness of gravity, nearness, velocity, and some estimate maybe several hundred other things related to what is outside the body/skin.  As soon as something is perceived, it is built into the “map of the world” of the baby.  At this early point the new entity forms an opinion of whether the world is trustworthy, but there are also genetic factors.  If some genes are missing, the baby has no fear.  This anomaly will not last long in an unprotective world.  The original genes were meant to promote survival by wariness.  It is also possible that an epigene might turn off this gene.  There is a named syndrome in females, who are more likely to be protected and even treasured for their fearlessness, NOT the kind that is learned, but rather innate, an innocence.

The development of emotions at this stage is unfocused and unnamed inside the person, but identified and treated differently by the care-giving persons.  Some feelings could lead to abuse, which can cause suppression of emotions with internal consequences.

II.

Once all the senses are in place and the skeletal and muscular body has developed, the adrenals activate puberty, a whole new system of hormones and organs that adds new capacities, but also new reasons for worry.  A changing body can be hard to manage and can evoke predatory attitudes from others.  Increased awareness of other people’s emotions means realizing the state of the marriage on which the family is based, the restrictions and requirements of school, and possibly larger forces like racism, or war.  

By now the impact of the world outside the skin is causing emotions the person is able to name and that the culture will treat according to its way of labeling and managing.  Suppression, soothing, rage, laughter or mocking -- these will teach the person about the world.  The autonomic nervous system, combined with hormonal signals, are felt but perhaps not named nor accurately understood.

III.

By this stage the brain is doing a lot of sorting and filtering.  The person can reflect on what they see, actively reject some things and fasten onto others.  Not until the early twenties are they able to get to the meta level of thought, understanding why things happen, what ought to be done, make introspective inquiries, consider revolution.

This is the most obvious stage, the one we are aware of and act on.  But I begin to realize how many people never step outside their cultural boundaries or even know there is anything out there.  If it intrudes or if they much leave the familiar, they are both anxious and fearful.

IV.

This level is meant to refer to the person’s ability to connect to others.  When there is a threat, to look to see whether the others take it seriously.  As personality dictates, to respond in concert or in defiance.  To assume a responsible role, like a teacher or soldier, and react according to what is one’s duty.  The body of learning from experience is enlarging all the time.  Mirror cells, empathy, bonding, team-building, there’s no way to evade being a social animal.

V.

Cosmic awareness  Transcendence.  Not everyone seems to have this direct experience of “being,” but for those who it can be “the mysterium tremendum and fascinans” that overwhelms with the power of the universe, or the “oceanic feeling” of belonging to everything reassuringly.  Not only is it a felt and emotional concept, trying to define it into a theological system will end it.

IMMANENCE VS. TRANSCENDENCE

The first commandment of this approach to deep meaning in human life is the simple advice to “pay attention.”  But in my system commandments and advice are ruled out -- the need to pay attention should and will arise inside you.  The most basic assumption is immanence, that life unfolds by itself without tricks, drugs, instruments -- because that is the definition of life.  All the rest is captured and exploited by imposed terms describing someone’s idea of transcendence.  This is not a bad thing unless it is used to oppress, but then it can kill.

It turns out that there are far more then five senses.  The brain alone has maybe 200 kinds of neurons, each specializing in some kind of perception of the world outside the creature’s skin.  One of the most recently investigated was a little locus behind the top of one’s nose that tells you how fast you are going.  It remains to figure out what electrochemical signals it is using and whether it is accurately and actually reporting the real speed you are going, or just the speed you THINK you are going.

An apparatus for training the sense of smell to perceive meaning.

It turns out that what you THINK far too easily (from my stubborn point of view) overwhelms what actually is being reported via electrochemical signals to the sub-sorter cluster of neurons, which edits before sending to the brain where it is edited some more.  I do not like the idea of neurology being organized by dropping out information to preserve earlier heuristics -- giving clarity more importance than reality -- but what alternative do we have?  

Brains are limited because there’s only so much space inside a skull.  That’s why the originating sense-cells are all over the body -- but there’s only so much space in a body, either.  The skin limits a creature, even a dinosaur, who didn’t allot much energy to thinking anyway.  If the skin weren’t limited, we would simple dissolve into the energy needs of the environment and its other creatures.  We are only borrowed from the world because of our skins making the boundary between oneself and everything else.  This way of thinking is biological, practical, operative.

Is this about food?

But what we think of as psychological also has a boundary, which is not perceptible but built (immanent) from the interaction of the neurons trying to understand what’s going on and therefore forming concepts which is a way of creating divisions, boundaries, categories.  They are heuristic:   “involving or serving as an aid to learning, discovery, or problem-solving by experimental and especially trial-and-error methods; also :  of or relating to exploratory problem-solving techniques that utilize self-educating techniques (as the evaluation of feedback) to improve performance.” 

This is in sharp contrast to supernaturally-based institutional religions, whose “magic” is believed to be inalterable, unvarying, and the only real interpretation.  The claim is that unnatural things of another realm can be known by only one source -- person, book, god -- which demands obedience.  A ring, a token, a crown, a throne, are understood as the button that controls power.  If you argue with that, it is justification to confine or destroy you as a danger.

A cat can look at a queen, but what does it see?

Perceiving the world outside one’s skin in a way that respects immanence, the being of something simply as itself, gives one’s inner life many ways to connect and create, which are the third step after sorting and recording what is perceived.  Then one can connect with others (fourth step) and feel the simple obvious fact of being embedded in the universe, separated only by one’s skin and one’s assumptions (fifth step).  

This might not be pleasant. Suffering, awareness of death, rage, sadness, and loss are real.  To look for a supernatural (rather than metaphorical and symbolic) escape is an overwhelming temptation and can successfully fend off despair.  It is those who have no way of interpreting the world who are dangerous.  It is a death and some deaths want to be shared, maybe with a gun.

But interpretation is the second step.  The first is only feeling.

Some geneticists are asking whether one’s ability to create inner categories that are based on peace have anything to do with human wiring as it results from particular helical molecular constructs.  Our skills and knowledge are too primitive to know.  It has been heuristically suggested that the Euro-personality might be operating off inherited Neanderthal hunter/gatherer traits, emphasized by the need to fend off a wave of evolved African people.  And that the Asian genome, after millennia of agriculture, had become peaceful.  This doesn’t allow for the dynamic horse-based people who galloped down from the Asian steppes to spread Genghis Khan’s genes all over Europe.  Obviously it must be over-generalizing.

“Mongols were highly tolerant of most religions during the early Mongol Empire, and typically sponsored several at the same time. At the time of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, virtually every religion had found converts, from Buddhism to Christianity and Manichaeanism to Islam.” The anonymous expert in Wikipedia includes only one Asian system and three from the complex of choices in the Middle-East.  All are the systems that Karen Armstrong (and Karl Jaspers) explicitly felt were “Axial”, foundations of today’s major institutional religions.  These are transcendence-based systems, claiming supernatural sources as authorization.

Alexander Nevsky among the Shamans

The foundational religion of Genghis Kahn was shamanic which is an immanent system.  Its super-powers are rooted in reality, like bears or cranes or mountains which should be taken as symbols with meaning rather than imitation humans.  The religious systems of Europe before the “Axial” religions were shamanic and so were those in the Americas and Africa.  Institutions are creatures of settlement and wealth.  Kings and armies.  

The 13th century in Europe is described by some historians as “high,” which is not about altitude but about prestige and power.  Maybe it comes from the practice of putting powerful people up on a platform where people could see them.  “High” table, “high” church, and so on.  These are all institutionally ascribed, but also we associate “high” with the sky, whether angels or bomber planes, images of power, though we don’t recognize bombs as religious unless we call them “demonic” -- which means they should be connected to underground, like landmines and terrorists.  Immanence is considered “grounded”, an eruption like Pluto bursting up in his chariot to seize the innocent Persephone, which deranges the order of the seasons.  The earth is "low," meaning vulgar, uncivilized, dirty, and probably sexy.  Maybe childlike.

St. Mary Roman Catholic Church, High Hill, Texas

So does that mean that the intended “high” civilization of skyscrapers, space stations, and church spires has deranged the world into famine and rising oceans?  Maybe.  Or maybe our categories are just wrong.  Are the Bioneers verging into institutional hubris?  Is the media now a hegemony imposing its own worldview from broadcasting satellites?

I would argue that the immanence of pure perception and a willingness to break down boundaries through empathy and compassion are the true Sacred strategies.  How to do that is hidden behind dark glass.  We should be cautious: it may be protective.