This.
That because of the reactionary elements of our culture, and our combined hubris and greed etc., I worry that our civilization won’t survive (well survive enough to matter) this century. The 5 billion year old experiment will be over. My little dramas pale into insignificance compared to that.
I’m unsure how “existential fear” is being defined for this discussion, but I suppose I have a annoyingly deep fear of zombies. The shambling, Romero kind, anyway, that endlessly patient sort who would unflinchingly crawl through fire and broken glass to get near enough to devour me. I don’t know why it bothers me so much. Is it because they’re dead and yet walking around, mindless, decomposing but without release? Their relentlessness? The mere thought of having my flesh ripped from my body and eaten while I watch?
I dunno. It’s kind of an empty fear, since the probability of being eaten by zombies is essentially zero. But when I’m out alone at night, taking the trash to the curb, I can’t help but think to myself “What would I do if a zombie crawled out from the side of the house there?” I can’t count the number of nightmares I’ve had about them.
That and spiders. By all rights I should love spiders, they eat genuinely annoying bugs and the overwhelming majority of them neither pose nor mean me any harm. Yet those disjointed legs, the fur, the jumble of eyes … the thought of (say) death by being eaten alive by spiders makes me physically a bit ill.
Hm. So maybe I do have some hangup regarding being eaten alive.
Marxism.
Solipsism.
Drowning is numero uno. Nearly did as a kid off the jersey shore (caught in a riptide and here today pretty much because of a lifeguard who risked his neck for me), and then had another scare a few years ago while scuba diving in the Bahamas.
Oddly enough the problem was on the surface and not below, the result of a stupid rookie mistake that could have been fatal if not for the Divemaster’s clear and experienced head.
I forgot to calibrate my dive computer ABOVE the water. Among other things this version did was monitor how much air you have to breathe under pressure. This version had to be preset above the water in order to get an accurate read.
So, at 50 feet down, I looked – and saw a blank screen where my psi read should have been. No choice. I probably had a perfectly-fine, full tank of air, but you can’t take the risk. Not at 50 under water.
We surfaced and had to fight high waves while waiting for the dive boat to come get us - which it hadn’t expected to have to do. Somehow the Divemaster kept me from panicking and possibly killing us both. I don’t know how he managed and I don’t remember much of what happened. Apparently I tried to climb him at least twice.
Ever seen the film ‘Open Water’? Yeah. Kinda like that without the sharks, I’m told. I don’t know. Never seen it and likely never will.
Needless to say, the Divemaster immediately switched my dive computer for a version that didn’t need calibration above the water. To this day, I still use that kind of dive computer.
The other fear is immolation. During my career as a print reporter, I saw two people who burned to death. Hopefully the smoke will get me first. :eek:
My deepest, most existential fear? Telling someone my deepest, most existential fear. AAAAAAAHHHHH!!! [runs away screaming]
Insanity. I feel like I’ve been perilously close, and the feeling was like watching a rock fall down the face of a huge precipice.
Not being able to breathe. I just found this out recently through a midnight visit to the ER. It was the most afraid I have ever been for myself.
That being said, I think I worry more about something happening to my kids.
Being the little old lady who was across the hall from my mother in the hospital - calling for everyone who passed by her door to help her. (shudder).
I was going to say “losing my kids or my husband” but now the V-shaped crevasse thing really has me worried.
Definitely this one. As well as becoming significantly mentally ill… and things in the basement after dark (thanks to my idiot brother for that one).
My greatest fear is outliving my children. Or as someone said earlier, having one go missing and not knowing.
As for myself personally. Having alzheimers or something where I’m slowly losing my mental faculties and am aware of it.
Quadraplegia comes in high on the list as well.
I’m a caver so crevases and I are already intimate. Not even a ping on the meter.
This one, exactly. I’d want to kill myself, but I’d be too scared to because, what if she turned up and needed me? Ugh.
I have that dream all the time! What can it mean?
My greatest fear is what someone wrote above. I was raised Baptist and “born again,” but now I discard that idea. However . . . what if I find out they were right all along? :eek:
Joining in the chorus of ‘outliving my kid’, or fundamentally failing her in some way.
And I gave up smoking 8 years ago this month (stealth brag) so you can keep the ciggy.
I already lost a child and that definitely changed my outlook on things permanently and not always in a good way. My biggest fear used to be death but now it is almost the opposite of that. I am deeply worried that we are caught in some kind of Groundhog Day time loop except it is infinite and you can’t ever get out. The life we are living now may be the one of the best ones and the others are mostly true hell. The universe or multi-verses just keep going through infinite creation cycles producing an endless iteration of whatever it is makes us conscious.
This is different than reincarnation taught be some religions in that you don’t learn anything free the previous existences. They just disappear when you die and there is no way to work towards better existences or get out of new ones no matter how bad they are.
Based on all the traditional religious teaching that suggests God is some sort of omnipotent sadist Whose glory human misery only serves to increase, I can easily imagine Him perpetrating such a scenario.
My parents outliving me is pretty high up there. I don’t want that.
That human beings will not improve the way they treat each other and that corporations will encourage that maltreatment because there are profits to be made from misery.
A few years ago I went to visit an underground cavern. It was very touristy and quite large and well lit so looked cool!.
I decided to take a more specialised excursion along some very narrow, low head room natural passageways off the main chamber lit only by a helmet lamp.
I walked/crawled maybe about 20 metres when the realization that I was in a confined space far underground hit some claustrophobic nerve I didn’t know I had.
It took all my power not to give in to becoming totally overwhelmed with panic.
I made my way out and slowly exited the cave while every sinew just wanted to run like hell.
When I got out into the daylight I felt really stupid but when I glanced back at the entrance a wave of fear creeped over me again!
I had never been claustrophobic before that. Hell part of my job even now involves climbing into process vessels and pipelins to carry out internal inspections. It seems the underground element is the clincher.
Even now typing this gives me a lump in my throat and knot in my chest