Defensiveness

I think we are all defensive people, in one way or another.

Defensive against what? 

Against pain? Perhaps.

More likely: defensive against disintegration, which is a kind of pain, but one that is rarely encountered because we tend to be very good at defending ourselves against it.

I steal an example from Nietzsche: the ascetic. Who wants to bar his or herself from pleasures, whether they be sexual, sensual, or communal? Only someone who has found that the somewhat turbulent waters that lead to these shores are not worth the rafting. 

But this declamation "not worth" is a very peculiar style of thinking. Very rarely do we get the chance to cooly weigh two options and decide which path we shall take by an examination of the pros and cons of each. You know as well as I with what haste we generally make decisions in our hearts, after which we give words to explain the 'reasons' behind the decision, though no real 'reasoning' had been done on the matter.

One who resolves against involving oneself in any pleasure of life has made this decision not because she reasons that she will be 'better off' without taking the risks that are involved, but because she has a primal psychic defense working in her that fears possible dissolution. 

Dissolution of what? Of her 'self'. 

But what is this 'self', that she should be so afeard of expressing her love for someone or allowing herself to become vulnerable and open to scrutiny in a public situation? 

Nobody quite knows why one's 'self' becomes so important during adolescence and thereafter. Children seem to have no problem making a fool of themselves in public, but what is curious - they are almost always regarded with adoration for it. 

Have you ever had a child say hello to you in public that you have been too shy to say something back to? I have.

Was it because I feared looking like a child? Not consciously... but perhaps somewhere deep in my psyche I felt that it would have compromised this vague 'self' that I am thinking on now. How could it have? Eyes would have regarded me differently than if I had remained quiet, nobody noticing that I had interacted with this child, and the child's attention itself being soon turned away to something new. Why would I have been reluctant to share in the communal experience offered, here and in so many other instances?

This is a little embarrassing - to think that I tried to write something that would apply to people generally, but which quickly digressed into something purely autobiographical. I think it was inspired by Jane's post on something similar. 

There are very little realistic grounds for fear in most social situations. Why, then, are they so difficult to overcome? Standards of maturity seem to have stifled us. Is maturity always had be the relinquishing of freedoms we had as a child, freedom to say, do, or think certain questionable things? Is there a kind of maturity that can be well blended with the vivacity, freedom, and trust that we find in children?

Am I thinking about the question all wrong?