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Without My Feelings

Posted by bsmith51 8 years ago to Humor
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I just had to share this:


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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 8 years ago
    Funny +1, but it does open a discussion on the role of emotions as explained by Objectivist psychology.

    Do not ignore your emotions. They tell you about yourself. Follow them to their source. Your emotions are the automatic summation of your ideas. If your ideas are generally rational, then your emotions will be reliable guides to evaluating your experiences.

    But if you just "follow" them in the sense of acting on them without reflection, then you can make serious errors in your life.

    Barbara Branden once spoke of a man whom she "liked" socially. He was a nice guy, intelligent and all that. But after several interactions, she had to admit that what she was responding to in him was a surface presentation only and that other actions revealed a different nature, and she cut off the relationship.

    But her initial response to his (projected) positive qualities was the right one.

    When a man responds emotionally to a physically attractive woman, he is validating very rational ideas about reality. Responding emotionally to the soliloquy of an intelligent woman validates other ideas about reality. Both responses identify his own nature. Acting without examining the roots of those emotions would be to "follow" them in the sense of the cartoon.

    It is also interesting that Ayn Rand recommended writing from the subconscious mind. You do your research. You lay out your plan, make your outlines, etc. But when it comes time to put words on paper, she implicitly agreed with the time-honored advice given to all writers: "find a clean sheet of paper and open a vein." You can critically analyze it later, but you cannot write and analyze at the same time. That is what causes writer's block. Rand wrote about that in "The Simplest Thing in the World."

    Leonard Peikoff gave an example of his wife expressing disapproval, if not shock, at a "rational" discussion that he and the boys were having about whether to what extent it would be immoral to disassemble a sentient robot. Her emotions were properly aligned; they were detached from theirs.
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    • Posted by 8 years ago
      One who does not control his emotions can not have true control and use of his mind.

      For a human to turn that thought into consistent action is sometimes, as Spock would say, "a difficult concept."
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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 8 years ago
    My brother in law, who has a PhD in solid state physics, is one of the bleedingist of bleeding heart liberals. He used to willingly engage me in political discussions, which he instigated, and lost the argument every time. He finally stopped goading me, and when I asked why, what he said was priceless: "You don't argue fairly, because you keep using logic and facts."
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  • Posted by $ SarahMontalbano 8 years ago
    I love that meme, and I agree with what MikeMarotta said- emotions are programmed by your rational values, and reflect those values, for better or for worse.
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    • Posted by lrshultis 8 years ago
      But there is no distinction between rational and irrational values in emotions. It is the job of the mind to determine whether the emotions are rational or not and to correct inconsistencies with respect to objective reality. That can be an extremely difficult process, that in many cases will need a lifetime to correct.
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  • Posted by $ jdg 8 years ago
    The human mind is not a single, monolithic entity. Emotions show you what your hindbrain and other non-surface parts of you are doing.

    You (the rational mind at the top) can't necessarily always be in control of those under-parts any more than a person riding a horse can always control what the horse does. It's an art. This is why psychology and psychiatry exist. They're about getting and keeping that control.
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  • Posted by term2 8 years ago
    I would feel lost without my emotions. People have asked me how I come up with new ideas and inventions. I tell them that the new ideas come through me from somewhere else. I challenge the practicality of the ideas later, because new ideas dont come through fully tested.

    Somehow I grew up to use my emotions as guideposts to help my thinking. I dont know how that happened, but it would be great if it happened to at least a majority of people in this country.
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    • Posted by lrshultis 8 years ago
      Are you saying that your subconsciously produced thoughts that you become aware of are emotions also? there is a difference between some of those and feelings and emotions. A feeling is a physically felt sensation that can be like a confirmation that the thought is somehow right but does not have the value judgement element of for me or against me with a sensation that one must take action, that an emotion has.
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