Maybe she just cannot stop to train you (and actually others too)

Fear, jealousy & goat cheese

Arnon, I'm not sure why you suggest jealousy and fear have no rational basis..?

Animals tend to be more rational than most humans; they use fear and sexual jealousy as impulses for self preservation and protection of their gene pools for instance. I know we may not have a very high appreciation for jealousy, and that it can certainly be misguided and pointless, but to say that fear and jealousy are irrational and serve no one seems a touch unfair, even somewhat naive if you don't mind me saying so. But I forgive you, these hospital visits must be difficult.

PS Goat cheese may seem like a good idea when seated in a swanky brasserie after two glasses of Chardonnay, but who on Earth likes chomping on 5 different kinds of goat cheese while laying in a hospital bed, come on! Doesn't your mom have a favourite take away meal?

Philip

Please read carefully.
I didn’t say that all fear was irrational. (I was speaking about my mother’s fear.)
I did say that most jealousy is probably irrational.

As for your Darwinian explanation i.e. fear and jealousy are tools for self-preservation.
You can also argue that they are tools for self-destruction.

Arnon

Your mother sounds like my grandmother.

jealousy

Arnon,

I think herring in a hospitalbed is not the right combination

Arnon

Smelly cheese, herrings - are you trying to make your mother unpopular or ruin her love life?

You could also have written: "the way other people are possessed by passion." Fear, hope, passion, jealousy - perhaps all of these are mostly irrational. But isn't it irrational to expect humans to behave rationally?

Arnon

Next time take the cheese yourself , tell her a story how you queued in the shop to get the finest quality, how you went ,after that, to the best bakery in town to get some bread, how everybody asks you after her health. Take an extra plate for yourself and eat together. A nice little picknick on her bed.

Dee

Yes, but there are degrees of irrationality.

Carlos

I ate some of the cheese, and my godson feasted on my mother’s cheese.

Dee

P.S.
My mother is very discrete about her love life.

Eating because you have to can be agonizing. Hopefully your mother finds something sufficiently nutritious to her taste.

Arnon

First of all, Arnon, let me apologise for my clumsy comment. Particulary the part where I excuse you for a lack of judgement because visiting your mother must be taking its toll...it sounds terribly patronising on second reading, but I was late with my edit, and it was rejected. You're right, you did not say that fear is always irrational. You do seem to stick to your guns on jealousy though, but I wonder if it really is irrational most of the time. Jealousy seems to exist in many different forms of course. Some more irrational and malign than others I would say.

I do find it interesting though that you seem more resolute on jealousy than on fear. You seem to accept the rationality of fear more easily if I have read you correctly. It can certainly be argued that we live in times of fear, if it was ever different that is. Your recent pieces in which you propose getting rid of most airport security measures for instance, seem to dismiss fear of terrorism, as something mostly irrational. (Have you seen the BBC documentary 'The power of nightmares'?) I have to admit that I don't quite know what to think of something like getting rid of airport security. Just because there are less deadly car accidents, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to abolish seat belts. Fear of terrorism, bird flue, mexican flue, financial doom, climatic doom, it is certainly not very uplifting. As instruments to mobilize people they might be dangerous. I suppose there are reasons to mistrust all of these fear driven movements to some degree, but when can mere mortals ever say fear (or jealousy) is indeed irrational? We can not always be sure. Do you think we should reject these sentiments outright?

PS You say you talked about your mother's fear, but it was easy to assume you were thinking of fear in general. You don't say what your mother is so afraid of however. Is this still loosely tied to fear of disappearing laundry pins?

Juliane

I'm afraid it's the attention of Arnon himself his mother desires. What do you think. She has a son who lives abroad and that she hardly ever sees. Instead of a nice Jewish girl and a grandson , her deepest wishes , she is forced into encounters with female friends she thinks aren't good enough for her son. She feels neglected, not without reason, I think. If I were Arnon, I would feed her myself, spoon by spoon and give her a nice foothmassage afterwards. A lot of physical attention can perform miracles. Sometimes.

Mr. Arnon, I would like to meet your mother.

Irrational fear

Maybe your mother is as discreet about her fear life as about her love life.
(as a former interrogator/torturer once told me, “I only have to know what one fears and what one loves, to break a person.”)

Jealousy = insecurity = fear. There's your rational explanation to jealousy. Leaves us still to solve fear (and yes therefore by analogy: jealousy).

Aliefka

Good to see an attempt at explaining jealousy. Do you think every instance of it fits your formula? I wonder what social phenomena could be traced back to jealousy, or are largely based on jealousy, and therefore fear. Would the formula still work though?

Philip

The best medicine against fear may be a placebo.
Most airport security is nothing but a placebo.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not fighting the placebo. I could write a book “In Praise of the Placebo”.

I think jealousy is very understandable and therefore very rational. Emotions are part of thoughts, not a separate entitity. Nevertheless, your mother needs to eat well.

@Philip - Happiness = jealousy = insecurity = fear. Nope. Doesn't work.

Arnon

I love goat's milk cheese too. The Geitenboerderij in the Amsterdamse Bos is a good source and fun for kids too, provided they like goats and chickens of course.

I am not always sure if parents are discreet about their love life, or if the "fruit of their loins" would rather just not know. The combination of the two is probably the most comfortable situation.

I agree there are degrees of irrationality. And it is also entirely rational to recognize that people (including one's self) are often irrational. I have always believed that the truly insane are those that have an absolute belief in their own sanity.

Placebo

I agree that a placebo is often an excellent treatment. The problem arises when there is something genuinely wrong with the patient. A placebo will calm a person's fears of having cancer. But if the person actually has cancer it will just make matters worse, because now any early symptons may well be ignored. (Of course, if the cancer is untreatable, the situation becomes different again.)

The same problem applies to airport security. Because it becomes a ritual that people have faith in, other warning signs are ignored. I think a more "philosophical" approach is needed. As a KLM pilot once told me: "If the plane goes crashing down, you're just having a bad day."