Recent stuff involving Islam on the forum

[Hakurei Reimu]

Even if you're "done with me," (Boy, haven't I heard that line before) I still believe I deserve a rebuttal.

Oh... so because other animals have emotions that means it cant be a key component of being human. Got it. So I guess thinking isn't a key component of being human either since animals can think to a lesser degree. Nor is living because animals can live as well.

Perfect sense. I got it now. My bad.

Again, don't try to gloss over the overall point you tried to make: "our society unfortunately does not value emotions (especially for men) as much as it does intellect and ultimately that is holding us back as a species." You know full well that statement is bullshit. From the moment you typed it.

Yes, strictly speaking, emotion is "a key component" to being human, but it's one that is trivially satisfied by even infants. Nobody called upon you to be Captain Obvious.

Yeah never implied that. I gave examples. No shit emotion is a cause; have I not posted about how crime is often a crime of passion rather than a thought out processes? Didn't I just ask for you to stop with the strawman bullshit?

There may be a bit of hyperbole, but the essense of the argument remains. For instance, what enables us to develop all that "caring about our fellow man" you laud? It isn't emotions. It's SYMPATHY. That's a separate phenomenon from emotions. Feeling your own pain is just a basic survival tools. Feeling someone else's pain as your own is the seed of compassion and conscience.

Yet your "our society unfortunately does not value emotions (especially for men) as much as it does intellect and ultimately that is holding us back as a species," belies your confusion between sympathy and emotion. You characterized sociopathy (psychopathy) as a lack of emotion â€" nope! That's a lack of social connection, of sympathy, not emotions. Lack of distinct emotions is alexithymia, and one of its results is lack of the drive to do much of anything. They don't do evil because it doesn't lead to any more emotional payoff than doing good does. They are the true robots in this world, and in practice they are essentially harmless.

People do things, for good or for ill, because it leads to an emotional payoff. Without emotion, you don't do much of anything but be a complete drone, but such creatures are actually rare. What's not rare is people who do what they do to get an emotional payoff immediately, without thinking about what might happen down the line, or without consideration of how other people may be affected by that. I don't see how this happens without reason or knowledge, even with sympathy and empathy.

Okay. I'm done you are just intentionally talking out your ass now. Not particularly in the mood for strawmen and "arguments" of this caliber out the ass.

This is rich coming from someone who has and will soon strawman me.

Protip; People can value something without valuing it "enough".

No shit sherlock. Here's another protip; your actions attempting to bring about something of value can come to shit if you do it stupidly, even if you value it very highly indeed.

People claim to want peace and love but then fight with their spouses.

No, most people sincerely want peace and love, but often don't know how to go about it, even with their spouses. Or they were a bad match in the first place. This can happen if you have bad empathy, for instance (which is a separate phenomenon from emotions, by the way).

Your argument is "Nah don't worry he loves her... he buys her flowers and cares about her from time to time!" about a man beating his wife... because people show some signs of valuing emotion/valuing their relationship they must fully value their emotions/relationships and it's bullshit if you say "yeah but he still beats her...".

And now you're strawmanning me! Brilliant! No chain of reason leads you from 'man beats his wife' to 'nah don't worry he loves her' because buying one flowers or caring about them "from time to time" does not make up for the beating, and lack of effort to try to stop beating their wife (someone who ostensibly they don't want to see hurt) speaks to their lack of commitment. These are not the actions of a man who is in love with his wife more than he is in love with the idea of being in love with his wife.

No fucking shit I don't have an argument against that BECAUSE I AGREE WITH IT AND THAT'S WHY I BELIEVE CULTIVATING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IS JUST AS IMPORTANT (MORESO EVEN) THAN JUST CULTIVATING AN INTELLECTUAL INTELLIGENCE.

"Emotional intelligence" is still a form of intelligence. It's still a form of discernment and problem solving. "Emotional intelligence (EI) or emotional quotient (EQ) is the ability of individuals to recognize their own and other people's emotions, to discriminate between different feelings and label them appropriately, and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior." â€" in short, it's going about emotions in a reasonable way.

Check and mate, bub!

[Shiranu]

Edit: Whatever you want to interpret it as, this is my position. Quote it right or wrong again, I am done arguing about it. Have fun.

And that's exactly what I am saying (after the first sentence anyways). I just don't believe that human beings... healthy or not... are born with a perfect understanding of their emotions, how to control them or even really what they always mean.

We can see failure to understand our emotions in how we treat others; we crave their attention and shove them away, we hurt the people we love, we want to live a peaceful life but let hatred dictate our actions. If we are in understanding of our emotions then we can learn to avoid these situations... but so often people do the opposite because they misinterpret what they feel as what they want to feel and act out on it.

Likewise control... even the healthiest and most logical of human loses control of themselves; as Hakurei said we are not at risk of becoming Vulcans any time soon (who lost control of their emotions from time to time as well [which was a key plot point and lesson]). Even the nicest of people can snap. Control of one's emotions is not just a matter of "rational thought" though... otherwise it would never break. People have to learn to control their desire and that is more "basic" of instinct than what takes place in the intellectual part of the brain.

And then there is what emotions even mean or when they should be felt... and this frankly varies from culture to culture. There are times that I am happy that someone in another culture would find insulting and inappropriate. There are things that I might find sad and crippling that other people find joyful in or beneficial motivation. I think almost all humans can agree at the base level what an emotion "means"... but we cant agree as much on what should be done with that meaning or when that meaning is appropriate.

It's understanding these things above that I believe is just as important as being intellectually intelligent; I feel like he maybe thinks I am implying that we should forgo intellectual education and replace it with emotional education and reflection but I am not... no more than saying learning to read and critically interpret literature is as important or moreso than learning mathematics means that I therefor think mathematics shouldn't be taught.

And he/you/everyone may disagree with this, but this is something I feel our society greatly suffers from it's sexism in; men are not encouraged to be emotional (outside of "manly" emotions), and to a smaller extent women should only feel "womanly" emotions. The fact that we have categories of what emotion "belongs" to which sex means that we don't have the slightest of emotional intelligence in our culture. You (he) is mistaking acting and living for emotions as being the same as understanding or cultivating emotions and having a high emotional intelligence.

If there is anything so controversial about these statement that it warranted the shitfest... let me know. But otherwise I am done arguing over this subject if we are not actually going to be addressing what I have said (not aimed at quote). I just don't believe that rational and logical thought are the end all-be all of controlling who we are and making us into "better" people. They are tools to make you a better person; or perhaps they are the legs of a "better person" to stand on... but they are not the better person themselves.

[SGOS]

I often hang out in fields of daisies while meeting interesting women.

[Solomon Zorn]

Most questions are multifaceted. Some aspects are best answered through reason, and other aspects of the same question can only be answered by emotion. The human thought process is almost always a dance between the two (except when it's a wrestling match between the two). Although I think reasoning is the skill we're most inadequate about as individuals, and as a civilization, I feel that emotional values are valid as well. Otherwise how could I use something like the golden rule as a guideline for my behavior? I need to be able to empathize emotionally, in order to decide reasonably, what is the best way to treat any particular individual, under whatever specific circumstances I am dealing with at the moment.

But my emotional responses are built on values I was taught as a child. Like anyone, I value myself, and my own pleasure, naturally. But from my parents, and my environment in general, I have learned to value life, liberty, happiness, health, equality, fairness, peacemaking, honesty, creativity, discovery, intelligence, beauty, and love. I can reason that equality is valuable, perhaps, but I will only assign value to it if I care about it. And caring is an emotional response. So my decision may be reasoned, but the working parts of my reasoning are often emotional values. In fact, the whole process can sometimes be just the prioritizing of emotional responses, deeming one more important than the other.

Many emotional responses can be trained, especially in the young. It's very important to help them develop a mature set of mental associations, as well as learn not to confuse their feelings with facts.

[Hakurei Reimu]

Quote it right or wrong again, I am done arguing about it.

I have to say that I never altered any of your text in my quotations â€" at best cutting for brevity, and as such, I find the implication that I will quote it "wrong" rather bizzare and insulting. This is why I'm responding dispite your promise that you are "done with it."

And that's exactly what I am saying (after the first sentence anyways). I just don't believe that human beings... healthy or not... are born with a perfect understanding of their emotions, how to control them or even really what they always mean.

We can see failure to understand our emotions in how we treat others; we crave their attention and shove them away, we hurt the people we love, we want to live a peaceful life but let hatred dictate our actions. If we are in understanding of our emotions then we can learn to avoid these situations... but so often people do the opposite because they misinterpret what they feel as what they want to feel and act out on it.

With you so far. However, I don't see how this is at odds with my position of we needing more rationality. What you are talking about is knowledge about our emotions, not emotions in and of themselves. As such, a good stiff dose of rationality will absolutely help, because "rationality" here does not mean to deny emotion, it means to figure out what is going on with our emotions and then fix what needs to be fixed. That includes figuring out how your emotions work in your relationships with other people.

So far, I don't see a difference between your position and mine. I also still don't see how this is supposed to be valuing emotions above intellect, or how that's holding us back. Quite the contrary, it is lack of intellectual, mature, and ultimately rational management of emotions that is holding us back.

(And before you misunderstand, Shinaru, we do value emotions in our society, but that doesn't mean we know anything about handling it. We value the envoronment too, but that doesn't mean we know how to fix it or manage it properly.)

Likewise control... even the healthiest and most logical of human loses control of themselves; as Hakurei said we are not at risk of becoming Vulcans any time soon (who lost control of their emotions from time to time as well [which was a key plot point and lesson]). Even the nicest of people can snap. Control of one's emotions is not just a matter of "rational thought" though... otherwise it would never break. People have to learn to control their desire and that is more "basic" of instinct than what takes place in the intellectual part of the brain.

If you think that emotional control consists of rational thought keeping a lid on things, then you've already lost control. We're not talking about keeping control of emotions through force of will. What we're talking about here is effective management of those emotions: manage the environment where those emotions can manifest; recognizing when your emotions are spiraling out of control; channeling emotions towards good ends (if possible), or at least non-destructive ends (if necessary); head off situations that may result in you snapping; if necessary, remove yourself from situations which might cause you to snap until you calm down. To think that you can always keep a lid on your emotions through force of will is irrational; we've seen before that everyone has their limit, and it's stupid to think that you don't have a limit. The rational response to an intense urge to kill your spouse is to remove yourself from said spouse's presence and go somewhere else so you can calm down.

So again, I find that it's more rationality that is called for in this situation, not less.

And then there is what emotions even mean or when they should be felt... and this frankly varies from culture to culture. There are times that I am happy that someone in another culture would find insulting and inappropriate. There are things that I might find sad and crippling that other people find joyful in or beneficial motivation. I think almost all humans can agree at the base level what an emotion "means"... but we cant agree as much on what should be done with that meaning or when that meaning is appropriate.

Dispite cultural relativism nonsense displayed here, there are some universals to how emotions manifest. What is relative here is what each culture finds offensive or joyful, not whether or not they feel offense or joy, and even then there will be some constants (people find their children to be a joy, because any culture that finds them repugnant will not be long for this world). Their response will depend on any number of factors, as varied as you would find in our own culture (you would think that shit would be found universally repulsive, but some people are turned on by scatological imagry). These differences can be rationally investigated and rationally handled, if only we would do so.

It's understanding these things above that I believe is just as important as being intellectually intelligent; I feel like he maybe thinks I am implying that we should forgo intellectual education and replace it with emotional education and reflection but I am not... no more than saying learning to read and critically interpret literature is as important or moreso than learning mathematics means that I therefor think mathematics shouldn't be taught.

I think the problem here is that you have very poorly communicated what you mean. It may be the fact that you don't have a clear idea yourself. You do seem to not recognize that what you employ here in all the above is rationality. Your solution is not to slather on more emotion like a magic balm, or to value it more which implies nothing about having a good handle on it, but to handle emotions rationally â€" to recognize that they are powerful and need to be understood and managed.

You seem to agree with my basic thesis that emotions need to be well-modulated, where well-modulated does not mean "repressed like a Vulcan" â€" that interpretation was never articulated, nor implied.

And he/you/everyone may disagree with this, but this is something I feel our society greatly suffers from it's sexism in; men are not encouraged to be emotional (outside of "manly" emotions), and to a smaller extent women should only feel "womanly" emotions. The fact that we have categories of what emotion "belongs" to which sex means that we don't have the slightest of emotional intelligence in our culture.

I challenge you to find a describable emotion that is either "manly" or "womanly," that there is any such emotion our society truly frowns upon that sex feeling regardless of the circumstances. And no, "motherly" is not an emotion.

You (he) is mistaking acting and living for emotions as being the same as understanding or cultivating emotions and having a high emotional intelligence.

When you argue against a position that advocates exactly that "understanding" and "cultivating emotions" you seem to be singing now, and describe emotions like you would a magic curative balm, it's hard to take it any other way. You did not mention emotional understanding or emotional control or emotional management, but emotion, full stop.

If there is anything so controversial about these statement that it warranted the shitfest... let me know. But otherwise I am done arguing over this subject if we are not actually going to be addressing what I have said (not aimed at quote). I just don't believe that rational and logical thought are the end all-be all of controlling who we are and making us into "better" people. They are tools to make you a better person; or perhaps they are the legs of a "better person" to stand on... but they are not the better person themselves.

Of course not. I even mentioned a group of people who are exactly the logical people you think aren't better people, alexithymia suffers, and indeed they aren't anything to write home about. However, my (and our) calls for more rationality in everything must be taken in the context in which it is made, where we have many infantalized adults running around letting their base, uneducated emotions guide them, and revel in that fact â€" this is the context that saying that we have plenty of emotion and emotion valuation already and it's time to start caring about rationality, which includes the emotional intelligence you laud.

I had the sense that we were loudly agreeing with each other, and now I find in your most recent replies that I was right. You, in essense, don't hold a different position to us. Maybe we can chalk this down to someone poorly articulating their position.

(But let's face it, it's you. )