Intentional Anxiety
Fear, one of the most primal emotional responses in nature. Fear acts when a tangible threat is present, whereas anxiety acts when a plausible but not tangible perceived threat exists. Fear and anxiety are basic survival mechanisms present in nature and can be triggered, conditioned or even influenced without notice. It is not surprising that these kind of responses finds its own way of reflecting itself within complex systems, and therefore within our perceived mind-machine relationship.
There are many levels of anxiety some of them created by the fear of failure at a personal level, fear of embarrassment, or fear of exclusion. As we struggle to avoid failure, anxiety rises. To cope with these emotions we create escape routes, even ways to “negate” the source of anxiety: “am I wrong? No, everyone else is wrong“. At the moment that we become part of the machine, we connect to its network and are part of its system; many of our anxieties disappear in the ocean of possibilities to re-create ourselves taking advantage of the increased layers of personas that this connection offers. It is, also, a false positive: we are part of an constant state of presence not only with the entire world.
If I fail in the machine’s network, I will not only fail in my human consciousness, I will also fail in my own representation of my “self“. In the complex system that this represents all of our fears can be triggered creating even more powerful reactions, including (and most commonly) the fear of exclusion.
We only give part of ourselves to the machine, and despite our efforts we cannot control our created persona within the System. How to gain a sense of security in this networked reality of mirrored “self’s”?
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