The examples of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Freud point to a common fact: man is separated from the self, that is, from being. As Kafka said, what I say is different from what I think, and what I think is different from what I want to think. The fact of these separations plunged Van Gogh, Picasso, Kafka, Freud and others into deep fear and despair. They can't make themselves the kind of person they want to be. What's more, the cultural situation in which everyone lives seems to be a huge cocoon, imprisoning the self in it. This cocoon causes people not only to be unable to communicate smoothly with others, but also to communicate with themselves. One consequence of the impossibility of communication (not communication in the ordinary sense, but communication between personalities) is that everyone's self becomes a lonely me. Loneliness, real loneliness. I think of Antonioni's film zoomed in, the whole film is full of the sound of the camera shutter, there is almost no dialogue, even the irrational performance scenes of the models, there is no hint of communication, and finally, on the tennis court, a masked man plays tennis alone, without an opponent, at this time, the camera keeps zooming out, and the person in the picture keeps shrinking until there is an empty court left. This film, like Antonioni's other film, Red Desert, fully expresses the loneliness, indifference, and empty scene of modern people without communication and solace. Cinematists of the same period, Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, almost all expressed this theme in order to reveal the universal spiritual dilemma of mankind.

When people appear in the artist's field of vision in such a guise, it must contain the artist's deep fear of the world and of himself. "There is no more distressing emotion than fear," Boswell said; Fear makes us miserable and makes us contemptible in our own eyes. Montaigne said: "Fear is even more abominable and unbearable than death itself." "Here, fear means a loss of dignity. When Kafka wrote in the novel "The Cave" that the little animal pricked up his ears and nervously listened to the movement outside the cave, he had reached the abyss of loneliness and fear. Ingmar Bergman finished her famous film Silence in 1962 and said that he had discovered an important fact: God is no longer there, and there is only silence in the world. Bergman was terrified by this fact. Afterwards, he told reporters that he had finished writing the script "Silence" while listening to Bach's music. I think Bergman was using Bach's music to resist his fears. Let's recall Coppola's famous film "Apocalypse Now", "I" walked on a river that seemed to never end, and became more and more afraid of the facts that I was about to face, when "I" saw the officer (Marlon Brando) who was hiding in the forest and refused to fight, fear drove "I" to raise his knife and slash at the officer, trying to relieve the inner pressure, at this time, the picture only showed the officer rolling in pain in a pool of blood, and his low, desperate cry: "Fear! Fear! "In this, Coppola shows us how much war has hurt humanity.

Fear, it is deeper than fear. Fear is facing a specific object, and fear, like anxiety, may be without a concrete object and boundless. A physical attack (like a tiger pounces on you) will cause fear, but mental damage will lead to fear and eventually despair. Fear is now, and fear can happen for the future and the unknowable. So, how does fear happen? Or rather, why do people fear? A pig is killed at night, and it can still eat happily at noon, but people can't do that because they are worried about what is going to come. In the future, without security, without the happiness of consolation, without the communication between personalities, man will not be able to find a proper place for his existence. Once he stepped out of his existence, anything could pose a threat to him. Without a greater protector and unreliable one, where does solace come from? In the face of the seriousness of human existence, fear is inevitable in the face of the seriousness of human beings who have elevated themselves to the center of the universe but are unable to control their own destiny.

Before exploring the causes of fear, I will first say what the basic form of fear is. Fear has many faces, but it can be summed up in three forms: first, fear of impersonal things; 2. Fear of "non-existence"; 3. Fear of death. We may be able to think of some other forms of fear, but the above three actually cover the vast majority of fear types. The intensity of fear also varies, from weaker to strong enough to cause despair, and some in between. Many modern people have experienced this terrible darkness, and from it have developed a philosophy of despair, and fear, which is said to be characterized by trembling, shows that people have endured more than they can bear, so that the mind has become insecure and has lost its dependence. In the face of existential threats, people need a greater protector.

Why do people have a fear of "impersonal things"? The reason is that since the ego of each person has become a cocoon, closed between himself and others, man can no longer understand existence outside of himself, he ignores divine existence, and no longer imagines the perfection of human existence. In fact, man's own existence is open, and he desires to unite with a higher being in order to make up for his own shortcomings, so there is the idea of "the unity of heaven and man" in the East, and the revelation of "the blending of God and man" in the West. The ancient Chinese emphasized that "man" must be unified, coordinated, consistent and harmonious with "heaven", the so-called "heaven and earth, praise and education", but there is no sacred reality in Chinese thought that corresponds to "heaven", "heaven" seems very empty, and finally understood "the unity of heaven and man" as "the humanization of nature", and the result is "man", not "heaven"; The "heaven" in Western thought is God, Christ, the life-giving Holy Spirit, and the "blending of God and man" refers to the encounter between the divinity of the Triune God and the human nature it redeems in time, but does not produce a third nature, which is the two natures of God and man, represented by the "incarnation" Jesus Christ, whose ultimate unity is unity in "heaven" (God) - "new heavens, new earth, and new Jerusalem". Nowadays, in this blasphemous materialistic age, both the East and the West no longer worship "heaven", but passionately pursue earthly things, and human existence is completely closed to divine existence. This kind of closed-mindedness of existence makes people begin to understand themselves from their standpoint, as if they were wearing an eye patch. As a result, the more modern people understand their own humanity, the more they find it indiscernible and devoid of connotation, and they begin to have a fear of people's "impersonal" things, and their fears are justified. This is the reason why the more modern artists want to get to know people, the less they have a place in their work. In fact, the ancient Greek saying "know thyself" originally meant "Remember: you will die!" However, modern people misunderstand this sentence.

One example might illustrate the problem. Children are often afraid of being left alone in a dark, "impersonal" room, and no amount of comfort can be done, but in Western countries where there is a Christian tradition, parents will say to their children, "Don't be afraid, because God is here." This is a simple and wonderful truth, and because the personal, infinite, present and eternal God is real, the equally human being no longer has to fear the "impersonal" thing. Many psychologists use this method to pragmatically show that they believe in the existence of God, but it can help the sick to some extent. Carl Jung often told his patients that they could deal with psychological fear by living "as if" God existed. Eight days before Jung's death, he spoke in his last interview with a journalist about what he believed to be God; "Anything that cuts into my will from outside me, or that emerges from my collective subconscious." His suggestion was to call it "God" and surrender to "Him", why was Jung able to heal so many in this way? Because the existence of God dispelled the fear of "impersonal things" in the human heart, it was all too real.

The second basic fear is about the fact that "there is no existence." Why are there many people today who are afraid of "non-existence"? Since it doesn't exist, what can be used to arouse fear? Because modern people generally do not know the origin and end of all things, nor do they know where they came from, the vagaries of doctrine and existence itself make them feel at a loss. Moreover, most modern people believe that all things, the world, and people are produced by chance and chance, so they deny necessity and domination, which naturally leads to confusion in understanding. Since everything is made by chance, there are endless possibilities for everything: what exists can become non-existent in one moment, and what does not exist can become existing in another instant, where is there any sense of security? Existence is also meaningless because it lacks an immovable foundation, and people naturally feel afraid of "non-existence".