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Current time: March 29, 2024, 6:01 am

Poll: Have you lived in fear?
This poll is closed.
I've fear for my life during day-to-day life
15.79%
3 15.79%
I've never feared for my life outside of an extreme circumstance
52.63%
10 52.63%
Something else
21.05%
4 21.05%
I hate polls
10.53%
2 10.53%
Total 19 vote(s) 100%
* You voted for this item. [Show Results]

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Living in Fear
#11
RE: Living in Fear
(July 11, 2022 at 10:53 am)tackattack Wrote: I read a recent article and I wanted to poll everyone and start a discussion that's probably been had elsewhere.

The context was simple. Being African American includes, in part, living in fear of the cops. It was used to explain why innocent people run from the cops. It got me thinking about living in fear. Do you, whatever your demographic, live in fear for your life. What is it and why. This could include the recent topics of .. am I safe in America because of X,Y,Z.. Does anything trigger that fear in your day-to-day routine and does it change your actions?

I have been thinking a good deal about fear lately, not just the physical, tangible fear which seems to be the main topic here.  Pardon me if I go tangential to that.  Specifically, I have been feeling far less fearful, anxious and guilty (among other things) since I finally admitted I found Christianity unconvincing.  I think a big corollary to that was realizing the reason that my mother has seemed so unhappy at many times throughout my life - that she lives in fear.  Corrolation is not causality, but when I trace back the unhappy and fearful thoughts she expresses, they tend to converge on her faith and some element of that which she applies to the situation at hand.  I can't help but think that had she jettisoned all of it earlier in life in favor of getting the counseling she probably needed all along, she would be much happier today.
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#12
RE: Living in Fear
(July 11, 2022 at 1:52 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:
(July 11, 2022 at 1:09 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I remember growing-up in the 80s watching the World News with Peter Jennings, who regularly talked about the violence in North Ireland.  Seems that with the rise of secular atheism in Ireland that fewer and fewer individuals there give a shit about religion.

It was as much a political fight as a religious one. The biggest change was when the Royal Ulster Constabulary became the Northern Ireland Police Force and (mostly) abandoned their policy of shitting on people with Irish surnames.

Boru

Are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?
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#13
RE: Living in Fear
(July 11, 2022 at 2:27 pm)Jehanne Wrote:
(July 11, 2022 at 1:52 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: It was as much a political fight as a religious one. The biggest change was when the Royal Ulster Constabulary became the Northern Ireland Police Force and (mostly) abandoned their policy of shitting on people with Irish surnames.

Boru

Are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?

Catholic atheist.

Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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#14
RE: Living in Fear
(July 11, 2022 at 12:28 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

I do not find death humorous. You never stated why you were in constant fear in NI and I didn't want to assume. I did attempt to feign some levity to provoke an answer though. I apologize if you were offended, it wasn't my intent. To recap when you were in NI you were constantly in fear ethno-political retaliation based on your geographic proximity to a specific conflict. That's very reasonable.



(July 11, 2022 at 2:02 pm)TheJefe817 Wrote:

All civil discussion is good discussion. There has historically been a ton of fear used is religion so it's a very pertinent topic. Did you feel fear of damnation when you were a believer?
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post

always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
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#15
RE: Living in Fear
[quote pid='2108901' dateline='1657573414']
All civil discussion is good discussion. There has historically been a ton of fear used is religion so it's a very pertinent topic. Did you feel fear of damnation when you were a believer?
[/quote]

Not so much.  My particular denomination did not really play up the hellfire too much.  I got a lot of that when I would visit other chiurches with my friends, and my daughter got a lot of it from her grandparents (not my parents).  That part hasn't really changed, but shifted.  My fears were more based on disappointing a god, or really more specifically those who follow him, I think.
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#16
RE: Living in Fear
Since I really just followed along with religion I didn't have any fear based on that.

Overall I have been pretty fearless otherwise. I am just more cautious now with where I go and when. I'm older and people are crazier.

The only fear I lived with on the regular was abuse from mom and dad. The last beating I took from dad was in front of two of my kids. Things in the house where I grew up were a lot more dangerous than anything outside those four walls.
  
“If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” — Confucius
                                      
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#17
RE: Living in Fear
(July 11, 2022 at 5:03 pm)tackattack Wrote:
(July 11, 2022 at 12:28 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

I do not find death humorous. You never stated why you were in constant fear in NI and I didn't want to assume. I did attempt to feign some levity to provoke an answer though. I apologize if you were offended, it wasn't my intent. To recap when you were in NI you were constantly in fear ethno-political retaliation based on your geographic proximity to a specific conflict. That's very reasonable.

I don’t need to be ‘provoked’ into answering you. Since you know to what conflict I was referring, you could have simply said that and not made poor taste jokes about potato farmers and clog dancing.

And you can shove ‘levity’ straight up your arse.

Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
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#18
RE: Living in Fear
Not leaving the house helps.

Seriously though, the most frequent times I experience fear are at certain major light rail stations where ne'er-do-wells and homeless people regularly congregate. I come home from Maplewood twice a week, often transferring at the light-rail station in St. Paul and things can be rather unpredictable there. Luckily I'm not donating Saturdays anymore because every Saturday night, large groups of rowdy people would congregate there, just looking for trouble.
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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#19
RE: Living in Fear
(July 11, 2022 at 11:30 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: When I lived in Northern Ireland, the notion that any time I walked out might be my last was ever-present, but I’m not sure if it counts as being in fear for my life (fatalism runs deep in NI). I got over that feeling after a few years in New Zealand - people here just don’t seem particularly interested in killing each other.

As far as fear of cops goes, that also changed when we emigrated. I was reared in the tradition that cops were to be hated as well as feared. Now, not so much.

Boru

Ummmm...
Dying to live, living to die.
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#20
RE: Living in Fear
(July 11, 2022 at 5:03 pm)tackattack Wrote:
(July 11, 2022 at 12:28 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

I do not find death humorous.

This said right after you made a tasteless "joke" about the Troubles. No wonder I find interacting with you so distasteful.
Urbs Antiqua Fuit Studiisque Asperrima Belli

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