Terror
Terror
From Old French terreur (“‘terror, fear, dread’”) < Latin accusative terrorem (“‘fright, fear, terror’”) < terrere (“‘to frighten, terrify’”) < Proto-Indo-European *tre- (“‘to shake’”), Proto-Indo-European *tres- (“‘to tremble’”).
And/or from terreō (“‘frighten, terrify’”).
Italian Adjective: terreo m (f terrea, m plural terrei, f plural terree)
1. sallow, ashen, wan
Latin Verb: present active terreō, present infinitive terrēre, perfect active terruī, supine territum.
1. frighten
2. deter by terror
Terror is anticipation.
The awe-full, awful panic. The death anxiety.
Entropy, time, silence, violins, high-pitched, pain-neurotic, denial of object of obsession.
The terror of remove, terror of the abyss, of nothing, fear of dissolution, of no-thing.
The appeal of death. The what-if. The ultimate negative: Just say NO to life, around the other corner, lurking.
Truest terror is unimaginable.
Terror is the major fear. The fear of dissolution. Merger with the infinite.
Terror—life/death anxiety, “intellectual” horror, the mind’s pain as it holds its guts in realization of its dissolution—preemptive, for the mind’s job is to anticipate and create reality, to fill in its gaps.
Terror, the strategy, asks us to fill in the gaps before an event with the worst thing we can imagine.
Then with something worse than that—something we can’t imagine.
Terror is also the future. Terror of time, age, decay, death—madness.
Terror will drive you crazy, because a totally future-oriented mindset is not healthy. No awareness of the now.
Terror-as-awe.
Terror causes fear. True. But terror also inspires awe, meaning reverence, shut-the-fuck-up-in-front-of-ness (a messy construction, but you get it).
Monsters and Gods always awe us as they scare us. (Even God God is supposed to scare us, according to many religious people.)
Awe is the key to the ur-monster.
