The Primal Existential Crisis

[Veritas Aequitas]

I claim that the inherent primal existential crisis is one of the root cause of all our philosophical issues, re epistemology, morality, logic, metaphysics, theism and others.

Here is a presentation of how the existential crisis emerged within ALL humans [not other animals].

If one were to reflect deeply and widely on the history and evolution of the universe, living things and mankind, one will be able infer evidently the default existential crisis that emerge therefrom within all humans.

Based on evidences, the following is the reality of an existential crisis;

1. It is evident all humans are "programmed" to survive as long as possible to avoid premature death until the inevitable of mortality.

2. All humans [and all living things] are also "programmed" with reproductive features [sexually or asexually] to produce the next generation. This imply the continual and preservation of the species.

3. From history, it is evident the survival of the individual is more likely with collective co-operation; efficient survival of the individual will facilitate the tribe and the species. If there is an existential threat by aliens from outer-space, I am sure, humans [despite all their differences on Earth] will co-operate to get rid of that threat from aliens. Agree?

4. To ensure optimal survival, all humans are "programmed" with an inherent and very strong 'fear of death' at least till the inevitable to facilitate survival. If there is any conscious awareness of a threat of death, these terrible 'fear of death' is triggered, to force humans to fight or flee to ensure survival and avoidance of death.

5. For good reasons, humans are evolved with adaptive of self-consciousness and self-awareness.
Based on very explicit evidence, mortality is 100% certain. Thus, this will automatically trigger the inherent and instinctual 'fear of death' program which manifest fear and terror within the human mind.
While, humans can fight or flee to avoid external threats of death, the self-consciousness of mortality is internal and one cannot fight or flee from it.
This create the inherent cognitive dissonances, i.e. mortality is certain but one cannot escape it while being flooded with terrible primal fears.
This is the inherent Existential Crisis which exists ONLY in ALL humans [not other animals].

6. Fortunately, to avoid paralysis from fears, [that could hinder living and reproduction] all humans are also programmed with with inhibitors [brakes] to suppress this inherent, primal and instinctual fears.
These inhibitors only suppress the impulses of primal fears but do not get rid of the necessary "programmed triggers of fears".
Being human, these inhibitors are not 100% effective and it depend on the psychological state of the individual.
As such, the terrible fears from the cognitive dissonances while being suppressed, also leaked into the conscious mind but only as existential angsts most of the time with exceptions as momentary at times or constantly if the inhibitors are damaged due to various reasons.

7. Since the above is universal in all humans, throughout the history of mankind, humans have been seeking solutions to soothe the leaked primal fears of death [existential angsts] via different methods from the external world. Such methods range from believing in supernatural external entities via primitive religions, shamanism, polytheism, monotheism, various "spiritualities" and also secular and philosophical methods to soothe the inherent existential angsts.

8. For the belief adopted, the truth of reality is not critical, what is primary is whether the belief can soothe the existential angst or not.
Up the present, theism [personal God] is the most effective method to deal with the inherent existential crisis. This merely need one to surrender, belief in the God and viola one is saved and alleviated from the terrible existential angsts immediately and sustained.

8. If one's belief is not theism, then it is one of the many other methods of seeking solutions in the external world beyond experience to deal with the inherent existential crisis to soothe its existential angsts.

9. There are other secular methods that is based on reason, rationality, philosophical, psychology, changing brain states for the better, e.g. in Buddhism, Stoicism, and others self-developments approaches.

Discuss??
Views??

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes:
Most of the time, all humans do not have a conscious fear of death due the workings of the inhibitors.
When the natural and necessary inhibitors fail due to various reasons, what results is thanatophobia, a mental disorder and psychiatric problem.

Thanatophobia is an intense fear of death or the dying process.
While it’s natural to feel anxious about death from time to time, thanatophobia is an anxiety disorder that can disrupt every aspect of your life. Don’t be afraid to talk to a healthcare provider about your fears. They can connect you with a mental health professional who can help you find healthy ways to overcome this condition.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/d ... r-of-death

[Peter Kropotkin]

I claim that the inherent primal existential crisis is one of the root cause of all our philosophical issues, re epistemology, morality, logic, metaphysics, theism and others.

Here is a presentation of how the existential crisis emerged within ALL humans [not other animals].

If one were to reflect deeply and widely on the history and evolution of the universe, living things and mankind, one will be able infer evidently the default existential crisis that emerge therefrom within all humans.

Based on evidences, the following is the reality of an existential crisis;

1. It is evident all humans are "programmed" to survive as long as possible to avoid premature death until the inevitable of mortality.

2. All humans [and all living things] are also "programmed" with reproductive features [sexually or asexually] to produce the next generation. This imply the continual and preservation of the species.

3. From history, it is evident the survival of the individual is more likely with collective co-operation; efficient survival of the individual will facilitate the tribe and the species. If there is an existential threat by aliens from outer-space, I am sure, humans [despite all their differences on Earth] will co-operate to get ride of that threat from aliens. Agree?

4. To ensure optimal survival, all humans are "programmed" with an inherent and very strong 'fear of death' at least till the inevitable to facilitate survival. If there is any conscious awareness of a threat of death, these terrible 'fear of death' is triggered, to force humans to fight or flee to ensure survival and avoidance of death.

5. For good reasons, humans are evolved with adaptive of self-consciousness and self-awareness.
Based on very explicit evidence, mortality is 100% certain. Thus, this will automatically trigger the inherent and instinctual 'fear of death' program which manifest fear and terror within the human mind.
While, humans can fight or flee to avoid external threats of death, the self-consciousness of mortality is internal and one cannot fight or flee from it.
This create the inherent cognitive dissonances, i.e. mortality is certain but one cannot escape it while being flooded with terrible primal fears.
This is the inherent Existential Crisis which exists ONLY in ALL humans [not other animals].

6. Fortunately, to avoid paralysis from fears, [that could hinder living and reproduction] all humans are also programmed with with inhibitors [brakes] to suppress this inherent, primal and instinctual fears.
These inhibitors only suppress the impulses of primal fears but do not get rid of the necessary "programmed triggers of fears".
Being human, these inhibitors are not 100% effective and it depend on the psychological state of the individual.
As such, the terrible fears from the cognitive dissonances while being suppressed, also leaked into the conscious mind but only as existential angsts most of the time with exceptions as momentary at times or constantly if the inhibitors are damaged due to various reasons.

7. Since the above is universal in all humans, throughout the history of mankind, humans have been seeking solutions to soothe the leaked primal fears of death [existential angsts] via different methods from the external world. Such methods range from believing in supernatural external entities via primitive religions, shamanism, polytheism, monotheism, various "spiritualities" and also secular methods to soothe the inherent existential angsts.

8. For the belief adopted, the truth of reality is not critical, what is primary is whether the belief can soothe the existential angst or not.
Up the present, theism [personal God] is the most effective method to deal with the inherent existential crisis. This merely need one to surrender, belief in the God and viola one is saved and alleviated from the terrible existential angsts.

8. If one's belief is not theism, then it is one of the many methods of seeking solutions in the external world beyond experience to deal with the inherent existential crisis to soothe its existential angsts.

K: for me personally, I agree with what you wrote.. here is the problem,
for most people, most people, they don't get that deep into it..
people are mostly shallow... the stuff you describe, most people
don't go that deep... they keep their thinking, if they even think,
to very shallow thoughts and beliefs...very few people will even admit
to having thoughts about any sort of existential angst..... for most people,
they worry about what is for dinner and who will pick up bobby from
soccer practice and how to pay for his college education... but frankly,
most people don't get any deeper than that...the average person
dwells in very superficial places and rarely goes that deep into
existence or its meaning... my wife spend time thinking about
whether she recorded the "The real housewives of Beverly Hills"
and that is about as deep as she gets.. and she is not alone.....
most human beings are right there in their thinking and depth...

who you described is a fairly small number of people and that
is a shame... but it is reality....

Kropotkin

[Veritas Aequitas]

K: for me personally, I agree with what you wrote.. here is the problem,
for most people, most people, they don't get that deep into it..
people are mostly shallow... the stuff you describe, most people
don't go that deep... they keep their thinking, if they even think,
to very shallow thoughts and beliefs...very few people will even admit
to having thoughts about any sort of existential angst..... for most people,
they worry about what is for dinner and who will pick up bobby from
soccer practice and how to pay for his college education... but frankly,
most people don't get any deeper than that...the average person
dwells in very superficial places and rarely goes that deep into
existence or its meaning... my wife spend time thinking about
whether she recorded the "The real housewives of Beverly Hills"
and that is about as deep as she gets.. and she is not alone.....
most human beings are right there in their thinking and depth...

who you described is a fairly small number of people and that
is a shame... but it is reality....

Kropotkin

What you wrote is true?

The point is all humans has an inherent "programmed" with neural inhibitors to suppress the terror fear of death from the existential crisis. At times the suppression may leaked but most people can spring back to the status quo.
However, at one get older, the neural inhibitors weakens and those who are not theists are like to turn to theism.
Older People Hold Stronger Belief in God
https://www.livescience.com/19971-belie ... m-age.html

Note that at present >90% of humans are theists [especially those assured of eternal life in heaven], thus they had already embedded theism as with a stronger solution to soothe the existential crisis.

As for the philosophical, one [not the sole] of the purpose of philosophy,

• Philosophy itself is, in fact, a kind of “training for dying” (67e), a purification of the philosopher's soul from its bodily attachment. Thus, Socrates concludes, it would be unreasonable for a philosopher to fear death, since upon dying he is most likely to obtain the wisdom which he has been seeking his whole life.
  https://iep.utm.edu/phaedo/#SH3a

My focus re the OP is how the existential crisis influences one's philosophical ideology, besides theism, especially on philosophical realism [mind independence].

[Janoah]

Is there a concept of holiness in your methodology?

[Peter Kropotkin]

K: for me personally, I agree with what you wrote.. here is the problem,
for most people, most people, they don't get that deep into it..
people are mostly shallow... the stuff you describe, most people
don't go that deep... they keep their thinking, if they even think,
to very shallow thoughts and beliefs...very few people will even admit
to having thoughts about any sort of existential angst..... for most people,
they worry about what is for dinner and who will pick up bobby from
soccer practice and how to pay for his college education... but frankly,
most people don't get any deeper than that...the average person
dwells in very superficial places and rarely goes that deep into
existence or its meaning... my wife spend time thinking about
whether she recorded the "The real housewives of Beverly Hills"
and that is about as deep as she gets.. and she is not alone.....
most human beings are right there in their thinking and depth...

who you described is a fairly small number of people and that
is a shame... but it is reality....

Kropotkin

What you wrote is true?

The point is all humans has an inherent "programmed" with neural inhibitors to suppress the terror fear of death from the existential crisis. At times the suppression may leaked but most people can spring back to the status quo.
However, at one get older, the neural inhibitors weakens and those who are not theists are like to turn to theism.
Older People Hold Stronger Belief in God
https://www.livescience.com/19971-belie ... m-age.html

Note that at present >90% of humans are theists [especially those assured of eternal life in heaven], thus they had already embedded theism as with a stronger solution to soothe the existential crisis.

As for the philosophical, one [not the sole] of the purpose of philosophy,

• Philosophy itself is, in fact, a kind of “training for dying” (67e), a purification of the philosopher's soul from its bodily attachment. Thus, Socrates concludes, it would be unreasonable for a philosopher to fear death, since upon dying he is most likely to obtain the wisdom which he has been seeking his whole life.
  https://iep.utm.edu/phaedo/#SH3a

My focus re the OP is how the existential crisis influences one's philosophical ideology, besides theism, especially on philosophical realism [mind independence].

K: I don't believe that human beings are wired, into thinking about death..
kids have no idea about death... if it were programming, they would
have some notion of death, but they don't.. knowledge of death comes
from the experience of losing others as we grow up....personally,
I don't think I gave death a moment's thought until high school, and
then I lost a couple of classmates to death.. and I became, for the first
time, aware of death... at age 16.... that isn't programming, that
is experiencing it for the first time..

death become a ''existential crisis'' later in life.. after we have experience
it, not before...and our ""neural inhibitors" whatever that is,
don't play a role because I don't think they exists... but experiencing
death, that is actually a thing.. because sooner or later, death is experienced
by everyone..

Kropotkin

[Atla]

The point is all humans has an inherent "programmed" with neural inhibitors to suppress the terror fear of death from the existential crisis. At times the suppression may leaked but most people can spring back to the status quo.
However, at one get older, the neural inhibitors weakens and those who are not theists are like to turn to theism.
Older People Hold Stronger Belief in God
https://www.livescience.com/19971-belie ... m-age.html

Note that at present >90% of humans are theists [especially those assured of eternal life in heaven], thus they had already embedded theism as with a stronger solution to soothe the existential crisis.

As for the philosophical, one [not the sole] of the purpose of philosophy,

• Philosophy itself is, in fact, a kind of “training for dying” (67e), a purification of the philosopher's soul from its bodily attachment. Thus, Socrates concludes, it would be unreasonable for a philosopher to fear death, since upon dying he is most likely to obtain the wisdom which he has been seeking his whole life.
  https://iep.utm.edu/phaedo/#SH3a

My focus re the OP is how the existential crisis influences one's philosophical ideology, besides theism, especially on philosophical realism [mind independence].

I think this is actually quite wrong, quite misguided (probably intentionally since it's VA). Looks like only a few species on Earth have reached* raw self-awareness, and among those few species, only in humans does this raw self-awareness form the ego. And this ego thing only happened during the last few thousand years, maybe a few ten thousand max. (Although all these things are debatable.)

And even so, most people don't seem to have a strong self-awareness. For most people, self-awareness seems to just linger there without really "taking over".

Point is that no, I don't think that this was enough for us to evolutionarily develop these inherent "programmed" neural inhibitors. The actual inhibitors are modern psychological things, either not hardwired into our DNA, or just minimally hardwired.

*Also, I don't think that self-awareness is ever reached, even. It just suddenly happens in some species that have the right characteristics. So it's not like evolution was "building up" towards it and then it got reached. No, evolution may have been "building up" towards other things, and then self-awareness also happened. After that, yes evolution can start to "work with it". But it's not very pronounced. There is no known brain region associated with it even. So I think this also goes against the neural programming idea.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Is there a concept of holiness in your methodology?

Not too sure of your question?

I stated in the OP;
8. For the belief adopted, the truth of reality is not critical, what is primary is whether the belief can soothe the existential angst or not.
Up the present, theism [personal God] is the most effective method to deal with the inherent existential crisis. This merely need one to surrender, belief in the God and viola one is saved and alleviated from the terrible existential angsts immediately and sustained.

I suppose anything related to God is holy?
But this 'holy' balm to soothe the existential angsts has its pros and cons.
The fact is in the present, the trend is the cons of theism is outweighing its pros going toward the future. This is indicated by the increasing % of non-theists since 500 or more years ago.

[Janoah]

Is there a concept of holiness in your methodology?

Not too sure of your question?

I stated in the OP;
8. For the belief adopted, the truth of reality is not critical, what is primary is whether the belief can soothe the existential angst or not.
Up the present, theism [personal God] is the most effective method to deal with the inherent existential crisis. This merely need one to surrender, belief in the God and viola one is saved and alleviated from the terrible existential angsts immediately and sustained.

I suppose anything related to God is holy?
But this 'holy' balm to soothe the existential angsts has its pros and cons.
The fact is in the present, the trend is the cons of theism is outweighing its pros going toward the future. This is indicated by the increasing % of non-theists since 500 or more years ago.

But for you personally, is there anything sacred?

[Self-Lightening]

I agree with the OP that awareness of mortality is the primal existential crisis. However, I think there's something deeply paradoxical about it. I think it's only a crisis insofar as one is still superstitious about death. As soon as it really sinks into your mind that death is most probably just an eternal dreamless sleep (like the one we undergo during every deep, slow-wave sleep), it's no longer a crisis. It's only a crisis insofar as we still believe—even if it's only at a very primitive, childhood or even animal, level—in some kind of afterlife, something obscure and possibly very unpleasant.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Is there a concept of holiness in your methodology?

Not too sure of your question?

I stated in the OP;
8. For the belief adopted, the truth of reality is not critical, what is primary is whether the belief can soothe the existential angst or not.
Up the present, theism [personal God] is the most effective method to deal with the inherent existential crisis. This merely need one to surrender, belief in the God and viola one is saved and alleviated from the terrible existential angsts immediately and sustained.

I suppose anything related to God is holy?
But this 'holy' balm to soothe the existential angsts has its pros and cons.
The fact is in the present, the trend is the cons of theism is outweighing its pros going toward the future. This is indicated by the increasing % of non-theists since 500 or more years ago.

But for you personally, is there anything sacred?

Nope, None.
You?

[Veritas Aequitas]

I agree with the OP that awareness of mortality is the primal existential crisis. However, I think there's something deeply paradoxical about it. I think it's only a crisis insofar as one is still superstitious about death. As soon as it really sinks into your mind that death is most probably just an eternal dreamless sleep (like the one we undergo during every deep, slow-wave sleep), it's no longer a crisis. It's only a crisis insofar as we still believe—even if it's only at a very primitive, childhood or even animal, level—in some kind of afterlife, something obscure and possibly very unpleasant.

My point is the existential crisis is an inherent and unavoidable and subliminal potential.

It is like one keeping one stable and not falling all the time, but that the potential to fall to the ground is an inherent potential due to the physical nature of the human body and the the forces of gravity.

All humans has the potential for an existential crisis because it is inherent and unavoidable as programmed via evolution.
So it is permanently active within the subconscious level.
Because all humans are also programmed with a natural state to suppressed the existential crisis, it will not arise at the conscious level all the time.
But because it is inherent, unavoidable and permanently active within the subconscious level, as times under certain conditions [stress, old age, sickness, death of a close one, etc.], all humans are vulnerable to the existential angsts and thereupon has to take extra effort to rationalize it off or using other methods to deflect it off the conscious thoughts of it.

Thus one cannot be too confident, the 'existential crisis' will no longer be an issue.
Personally I am not highly confident I can manage the existential crisis with 100% certainty, but I am striving [training by brain/mind] to ensure I don't get 'infected' by it.

[Self-Lightening]

I basically agree. I'll never not have my instincts. But it's so much easier now, when those start to kick in, to realize what's happening and what may at worst happen (again, not so much talking about the process of dying, which could still be torture, of course).

'In Greek mythology, as you may well know, Sleep is the twin brother of Death. Well, mere days after I'd finally become a self-aware bodhisattva, I saw a link to this article, ironically in the "Science And Buddhism" Facebook group; and when I woke up the day after that, I immediately knew, felt, I was no longer a Buddhist...'

[Janoah]

But for you personally, is there anything sacred?

Nope, None.
You?

At least the Ten Commandments are sacred to me.
And for you, isn’t respect for your parents sacred?
After all, for atheists too, respect for parents is sacred, for the time being.
After all, a scoundrel, by definition, is someone for whom nothing is sacred.
'You know, we're really re-examining one of Plato’s famous problems, in the Euthephro. Are certain acts impious because the gods say they are, or do the gods say those acts are impious because they are so to begin with? If it's the latter, then we have some concept of the sacred and the impious independently of the gods, and we can make secular sense of impiety, and some things can be sacred anymore.'

[promethean75]

"After all, a scoundrel, by definition, is someone for whom nothing is sacred."

1000000689.jpg

"Before the sacred, people lost all sense of power and all confidence; they occupy a powerless and humble attitude toward it. And yet no thing is sacred of itself, but by declaring it sacred, by my declaration, my judgment, my bending the knee; in short, by my - conscience." - Stirner, Max