Dread

Don't let it scare you.

8-21-22

Last week I reported that in The Brothers Karamazov, the Grand Inquisitor -- a sort of prosecuting attorney, judge, and jury during the Spanish Inquisition -- believed that above all except food and comfort, people desire: simple answers to hard questions; and entertainment. A most likely reason for these desires is because simple answers and entertainment relieve us of the need to think.

Soren Kierkegaard, often regarded as one of the wisest philosophers ever, explains that people fear thinking and that the reason for this seemingly irrational fear is that the process can force them to acknowledge and contend with a mental and emotional condition he refers to as dread.

From The Concept of Dread, (139) "No Grand Inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has dread, and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest, nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared, as dread knows how, and no sharp-witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused, as dread does, and never lets him escape . . ."

Dread shouldn't be confused with guilt. Churches commonly maintain, preach, and praise in song that when we turn to Christ, all our sins and guilt are forgiven or "washed away". Kierkegaard might point out that washing can cleanse us of blood but it won't heal the wound. Dread resurfaces, often when some new trouble or failure confronts us. And dread does it's best to convince us that our reprieve, by spiritual or any other means, was nothing but a happy illusion; that the charges against us were valid after all, no matter the earlier verdict. Maybe I didn't shoot the fellow, but I hated him enough to do so. Maybe I didn't push her off the tenth floor balcony, but neither did I hold her back from jumping. Maybe my actions didn't emotionally damage my kids, but my inattention did the job.

Dread is determined to convince me I was, and still am, a rat.

Dread appears to be part of human nature that will surface not only when we are vulnerable on account of a trouble or failure but also when we attempt to delight in something or to bask in contentment or joy. Dread often interrupts even our successes to possess us with a vague yet debilitating sensation Bob Dylan takes a stab at expressing in "Highlands": 

He sings, "I'm lost somewhere. I must've made a few bad turns."

But no matter the agony it serves up, Kierkegaard maintains that dread is a gift. Though it can deliver terror and misery or cause us to live in fear or quiet desperation, dread can also become a blessing, a most valuable guide.

"He who . . . remains with dread, does not allow himself to be deceived by its countless counterfeits, recalls the past precisely; then at last the attacks of dread, though they are fearful, are not such that he flees from them. For him dread becomes a serviceable spirit which against its will leads him whither he would go. Then when it announces itself, when it craftily insinuates that it has invented a new instrument of torture far more terrible than anything employed before, he does not recoil; still less does he attempt to hold it off with clamor and noise but he bids it welcome, he hails it solemnly. As Socrates solemnly flourished the poisoned goblet, he shuts himself up with it; he says, as a patient says to the surgeon when a painful operation is about to begin, 'Now I am ready.'"  (142)

In short -- to the degree we refuse to flee from or repress dread's accusations and instead accept that they may hold some truth . . . well, according to St. John, we will know the truth, and the truth will set us free.