Counterphobia - Deliberately seeking out and exposing oneself to the situation one has fear for.

Lately, I’ve been investigating the ramifications of peak oil, and in the process I’ve been getting pretty anxious about the future, envisioning all of these post-apocalyptic scenarios. When I sat down and thought about it, I realized that for some reason I’ve always been attracted to extreme conditions in which survival is something to be kept only by relentless struggle.

This counterphobia comes out in large and small ways. My interest in primitive skills was partially due to the desire to be able to survive in such extreme situations, as is my interest in martial arts. I have had a morbid interest in prisons and concentration camps, to the extent that I set aside a whole summer to volunteer at the San Francisco County Jail during college (it didn’t work out though). Many of my travels, particularly my trip to India, were chosen because, I think, on some subconscious level I was testing myself to see how far I could go, to see where my limits were.

My aversion to overreliance on electricity has been present to a small degree ever since I was young. I remember deciding that if I ever took up the guitar, it would have to be acoustic — specifically because when civilization collapsed, electric guitars would be out of luck.

My affinity for science fiction and fantasy is also a manifestation of this counterphobia. In elementary school, I remember reading a novel, Singularity by William Sleator, in which the protagonist decides to spend a year in a small shack in which, for every second that passes outside, one day passes inside. The austere discipline of it intrigued me. And in general, post-apocalyptic fantasy always gets my attention — The Matrix movies are among my favorites, and I even liked the Kevin Costner bomb The Postman.

In high school, I even considered entering the military, God help me, because I was interested in gaining some discipline and “toughening up.” I lifted weights regularly for a year or two with the same vague intent.

As I got into more and more extreme experiences in order to feed the counterphobia, I found that, no matter what I did, I consistently hit a wall. I would follow a path to its dead end and found that my interest was drawn elsewhere. After high school, I couldn’t wait to escape Kansas, but found no salvation waiting at Stanford. I got into wing chun kung fu, and studied it intensively, only to burn out.

Things really came to a head when I got into primitive skills: Three months into my yearlong stay at the Teaching Drum primitive camp, I was overwhelmed with depression and restlessness, yet felt that if I left I would be surrendering and admitting profound weakness, which was untenable. I kept going and finished out the year, but it was a pyrrhic victory. A man who finishes a marathon gasping and in intense pain has not demonstrated true fitness, he has only demonstrated his ability to ignore his body long enough to finish the marathon. It’s not sustainable.

The intensity of that particular self-inflicted trauma was the beginning of my awakening; it’s why I frequently refer back to Teaching Drum as a watershed year for me, because it was there that I began to learn that I had to start to accept myself or else I would spend my whole life getting my ass kicked by the experiences I chose.

The compulsive attraction I feel to extreme situations exists, I think, because two different aspects of me are in conflict: a core self that identifies with being small, weak, and ineffectual, who then goes out and tries to make itself into the opposite — strong, self-reliant, independent — the problem being that doing so without accepting the weakness and impotence results in a violently divided self. A divided self is, by definition, far weaker than an integrated one. Thus, without quite realizing it, I forced myself into experience after experience to try to eradicate that “weak” side of me.

So, I come back, as I often do in these posts, to self-acceptance and self-love as the ultimate path to power and strength. I have tried so hard to be strong in all of those ways that are culturally accepted as “strength” (e.g. “manly” things like knowing how to skin, gut, and butcher an animal). But when I finally see myself as I am, I see different “strengths.” I am sensitive. I perceive things clearly and in subtle ways. My mind isn’t as quick as others’, but I have a great memory, I think deeply, and apply myself with consistency and patience. I can’t wrestle a bear to the ground but I can ask why it’s necessary to engage in violence with a bear at all. If I were attacked, I might not be able to defend myself very well; but I would be able to find meaning in the whole event, afterwards. My strengths are not in fighting the good fight but in learning and living harmoniously.

These different definitions of “strength” probably aren’t new to others but they are relatively new to me. I’m starting to gain a deeper sense of what it means to “survive.” The neo-Darwinians are concerned with surface struggles, but surely there is a peace that underlies it all. I think it is important to note that even in extreme survival situations, it’s not the strongest or smartest that tend to survive, but the ones that are the most centered and have the strongest will to live. Gaining that centeredness and strength of will and joy in being alive is the centerpiece and goal of every wisdom tradition. It’s why, again and again, I come back to the spiritual path as my way of life: Because there just isn’t a better way for me.