My wish is to show people the way to control fear. You control fear by learning the technique called self-observation. Once we begin to observe our thoughts we realize that most of what we think during our day is nonsense. Useless mental chatter.
That is not surprising.
You see the brain does not work in a linear manner like a computer. The brain operates on a biological neural network. The brain works incredibly fast and it spews out a flood of “thoughts” based on external stimuli. Some of them are quite useless and the brain filters these out.
Many of these thoughts are fear-inducing because the brain is trying to keep us alive. We sort through these rapid-fire thoughts and select the ones which ring true. Often, however, we attach importance to the wrong thoughts.
Mental discipline will allow us to better reject fear-inducing thoughts which are not grounded in reality. We become clearer. Calmer. More rational. Our neural net allows us to be creative by generating ideas which contain a degree of randomness to them. It is similar to the way random mutation adds variety to the evolution of organisms.
Yep. If we listen, actually listen,, to the chatter in our heads, we will see that the vast majority of what passes for thoughts are disposable. They are just fleeting words and images which are without profound meaning or importance.
Many thoughts are “housekeeping” thoughts e.g. what are we going to have for dinner or errands that need running. Some are “daydreams” about a crush or sex although sexual thoughts are far less common than is generally believed.
Still, others are “emotional artifacts”. These are old recurring thoughts. These thoughts are “packets” of thoughts which are associated with the same emotions. We dredge them up almost at random to feel a certain way even though very often these feelings are unpleasant.
Our psyches want to “feel” no matter what. We choose to feel bad feelings just as often, or even more often than pleasant reminiscences.
As someone not involved in the development of pillowfort but am a web developer, I think you should lower your expectations, but not for the reason you think.
Pillowfort is a baby. A newborn. A smol bab. If you were here during the early days of Tumblr, think of that.
Pillowfort simply cannot be the immediate solution to your woes. It needs to be nurtured and cared for to become a mature and happy adult.
If you want Pillowfort to work, they’ll need feedback, advice, bug reports, etc. This is a chance to make Pillowfort the Ao3 of Fanfiction.net. It’s not gonna happen overnight, you need to give it time and love and it’ll get there.
If you don’t want to pay money to get into the beta, that’s ok. It will be open to the public soon enough and you won’t have to pay a dime. Their financial model moving forward sounds good (a subscription fee for super extra features), but even an Ao3 model would work swell for them probably.
We’re living in an interesting time on the internet. Governments across the world are cracking down on content and yet community run websites are starting to thrive more and more.
Tumblr once upon a time was what Pillowfort is today, but this time, let’s make sure Pillowfort can stay independent from mega corporations.
Well put! I am planning on making a Pillowfort account and helping to provide feedback for sure.
