Lockwood Post

Ander- Red
Mary Katherine- Blue 


In The Infested Mind by Jeffrey Lockwood he mentions how humans react to insect in four ways: fear, disgust, love or fascination. After reading through the book and after handling insects I think I am fascinated by insects. At first, I was fearful of them because let's be honest who isn't? I was scared to hold or touch them. In chapter five Lockwood explains that fear and disgust "entangled together" but they are different as well (Lockwood, 70). He uses an example of having a spider crawl across your cookies and tea. If you have a fear of insects more than likely you would just eat the cookies and not think twice about it. If insects disgust you then more than likely you would not touch the cookie and either throw them our or get someone else to dispose of them for you. I would not consider insects to disgust me but I may have had a fear of them. As of now, I think my fear turned into fascination because now I will pick them up and touch them. At the beginning of the class I would not have picked them up in a million years. After learning about them and being around them I honestly think they are cool. 

In chapter eight Lockwood discusses how to overcome your fear or disgust of insects. He talks about how you can decrease your anxiety about insects by focusing on the "task itself rather than the larger context (Lockwood,127). He uses an example of the fire fighter checking all four corners of a bedroom for a child rather than worrying that it is smokey and he could die. Another example he talks about is practicing your fears so that it becomes second nature to you and you do not have anxiety when something fearful really does happen to you. He also discusses fascinations in this chapter as well. He talked about a male named Dick who loved bees since he was a young boy. He was fascinated with them and instead of being scared of them he wanted to get close and study their nest and characteristics. I would like to say i am fascinated with insects but not to the point where i would go and study a bee's nest. I am still fearful of most insects but i am gradually changing my perspective from fear to fascination. 

I read an article about a man who was fearful of cockroaches because of an experience he had or saw when he was four years old. He goes on to talk about his fear of them and how they invade our house and other examples of cockroaches and why he has this fear of them. Then he starts to explain that his fear has lead him to be fascinated and interested in them. He started researching and reading information about cockroaches. He talks about how it does not make sense to fear cockroaches when we should fear other things that can harm us or hurt us. Lockwood talks about this concept as well in his book. He talks about how cockroaches could hurt us worst by giving us food poison where as you could walk through a park and get malaria yet we are not scared of mosquitos. It is a weird concept but both Lockwood and the man who wrote this article both discuss and explain it. His article is rather long and goes into great detail but he mentions Lockwood in his article and discuss the same types of discussion topics as Lockwood does, which was cool. At the end he sums his article up by talking about how people need to research and find information on their phobias to overcome them because more than likely they should be scared of something else. 

The book The Infested Mind by Jeffery A. Lockwood discusses how humans react to bugs. Lockwood writes that their are 4 ways. These are fear, love. disgust, and fascination. Prior to this class I had a fear of bugs. I did not like them at all. When I saw a spider I would freak out and look for a shoe to kill it (usually not my shoe because I like my shoes to be clean). I really just hated the thought of bugs. I had a fear of bugs rather then disgust because I was not disgusted about bugs. For example Lockwood talks about a bug walking over a cookie and how for some people that may be disgusting (Lockwood,70). If I were in this predicament I would not be disgusted by the bug. I would be scared of what the bug could have done to the cookie and because of this I would not eat it. However after finding out more information on bugs I have grown to like them and become fascinated with them. Although I am fascinated with them to an extent I still do have fears about them. At this point I like learning more about bugs, but not to a point where I would like to have a job on bugs. I am fascinated with how they can adapt to their environment and many other things about bugs everyday life. Similar to the cockroach story when I was growing up I was extremely scared of wasp. This was because my brother is allergic to them and so he and the rest of my family would always freak out when they saw a wasp. For example one time a wasp stung my brother and he was rushed to the hospital. This was a very scary experience for me and since then I have been scared of wasp even if they were already dead. Earlier today I overcame that fear by touching a dead wasp.    

Sources:
The Infested Mind, Jeffrey Lockwood 
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140918-the-reality-about-roaches