Your Feelings, and Why They do not Matter.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Just trying to keep on topic.

a reply to: InTheLight

Just trying to keep on topic.

"Your Feelings, and Why They do not Matter."

not

"My Feelings, and Why They do not Matter."

Simple evasion of a simple question it seems.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Thank you for saying so it is appreciated

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: TzarChasm

And you believe your emotions should answer to your will as your body does?

Is this an interview? I thought we were not making each other the topic of conversation.

how do we talk about your philosophy regarding feelings without talking about your feelings? is there a problem with the question i asked?

lets look at this, for example:

We can only ever feel as if our feelings matter, just like we can only ever think our thoughts matter. We cannot refer to anything in the world or anything other than our feelings to show us our feelings matter, so all we can do is continue feeling as if they do. But this is assuming the initial point, like saying the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true.

clearly you have never bought a child an ice cream cone, seen their smile and felt your heart glow in response. that feeling matters to me, every single time. how about you?

You know, I spent a large part of my life convinced that people were awesome and that they led awesome lives - I believed this because they'd convinced me of it. A lot of my youth was spent idealizing people whom I was led to believe were superior to me. They had money, they threw cool parties, they went home and did awesome stuff on the weekend because they were awesome people. They truly had me convinced.... for a while.

And then I grew up. I started to see these people for what they were- a bunch of disgusting little chimps puffing their chests out at me. Their aim, their purpose, was convincing poor saps like me that they were somehow superior, that they somehow took precendence by virtue of material one-upmanship. What a stark epiphany it was, upon realizing all that was a lie. None of these people are awesome. None of these people lead awesome lives. None of them have any precendence or importance beyond what they give themselves. They go home and sit in front of the TV and pick their noses just like I do.

Nowadays I can scarcely look at a person without simply seeing a chimp with it's chest pumped out.

I understand where the OP is coming from, totally. I'm not sure what he sees when he looks at the responses here, but I know what I see: a bunch of chimps with zero precedence over anything else on this earth.

F*ck your feelings. I spit on them.

I'd also just like to add that this chimpishness seems far more pronounced among westerners and the "privileged" sections of society. Basically, the people who populate this website. It must be why I generally prefer to hang out in an apartment complex or a ghetto over going to the mall or some college dorm-room party.

The third-worlders and the downtrodden pump their chests out because they have to; they do it to survive. Anything less, and they are opening themselves up to mistreatment by their fellows. I've been there, and I've seen it. I've seen poor black guys that are just a bit too meek, too nice, and they get eaten alive. They get stepped on. It's the law of the jungle.

But these rich people, the privileged class, even average middle-class white people- they do it for self-gratification. They indulge their emotions and their egos. They do it because they're weak and they need the mental support it provides.

Speaking of Buddha. The Buddha was a good example of a man who used his material "precedence" to a noble end. In fact, he didn't use it, he shunned it. Why? Because he wanted to transcend what he saw as essentially worthless, nothing, transient.

Too bad westerners aren't like him. They are content to indulge their material appetites, like the chimps that they are. You all may as well go and seek your true calling: go back to the jungle, pick fruit, laze around, pump your chests, and fling your feces. That's all you'll ever be good for.

a reply to: Talorc

...well, speaking of superior attitudes...

a reply to: Talorc

Friend, beware your misanthropy. It becomes a trap, and one becomes an animal worse than a chimp. It is a dangerous form of self-deception, and ugly. I too once felt duped by my optimism, and he who is duped deserves the name "dupe", but you might find that the reason it hurts to see human nature in its more disgusting states, and to watch them avoid the beauty a human is capable of, is because we love them too much. Besides, to despise humanity is to despise oneself, which seems an even greater stupidity.

Yes we are inundated with mediocrity, but if everyone was a genius or a saint, that too would become mediocre. So instead let’s praise mediocrity for its necessity, and providing the material upon which great art stands.

A little travel will tell you that at core humans are not that different, westerner or otherwise. Though I'm quite domesticated now, I've actually had the pleasure of living in a few jungles. Though the technology is drastically different, the people are great hosts. Very little pumping of chests that I could see.

As for the blind contempt for westerners, I’m reminded of what Iago says of Cassio in Othello “He hath a daily beauty in his life that makes me ugly.”

Cheers.

a reply to: TzarChasm

clearly you have never bought a child an ice cream cone, seen their smile and felt your heart glow in response. that feeling matters to me, every single time. how about you?

I love children, but I do not gratify their wants and desires to please mine. I suppose its more a matter of giving them what they need rather than what they want. Trust me, they'll be more thankful in the long run

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: InTheLight

Just trying to keep on topic.

"Your Feelings, and Why They do not Matter."

not

"My Feelings, and Why They do not Matter."

Simple evasion of a simple question it seems.

Yet, you want to explore my feelings? Why, do you care, when feelings do not matter?

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

I love children, but I do not gratify their wants and desires to please mine. I suppose its more a matter of giving them what they need rather than what they want. Trust me, they'll be more thankful in the long run

why do you give them what they need instead of what they want?

why does it matter if they are more thankful in the long run?

a reply to: TzarChasm

why do you give them what they need instead of what they want?

why does it matter if they are more thankful in the long run?

It doesn't matter if they are thankful or not. What might matter is that they forgo the unhealthy option for a healthier one; that they have not succumbed to the beckoning calls of their insatiable desires; that they learn the value of restraint and reservation; and that value is placed on the reality of themselves as opposed to their fleeting feelings, which, like the satisfaction of receiving and ice cream cone, would likely disappear before they knew it.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

It doesn't matter if they are thankful or not. What might matter is that they forgo the unhealthy option for a healthier one; that they have not succumbed to the beckoning calls of their insatiable desires; that they learn the value of restraint and reservation; and that value is placed on the reality of themselves as opposed to their fleeting feelings, which, like the satisfaction of receiving and ice cream cone, would likely disappear before they knew it.

if i may ask, what do you do for fun?

a reply to: TzarChasm

Because something is fun is not a reason to do it. I never do anything for fun. I play for other reasons—health, learning, self-betterment etc.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: TzarChasm

Because something is fun is not a reason to do it. I never do anything for fun. I play for other reasons—health, learning, self-betterment etc.

All those results can be had through fun activities...including happiness, social bonding and connection, etc.

a reply to: InTheLight

All those results can be had through fun activities...including happiness, social bonding and connection, etc.

It can be had through not-so-fun activities as well.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: TzarChasm

Because something is fun is not a reason to do it. I never do anything for fun. I play for other reasons—health, learning, self-betterment etc.

You never do anything purely for the enjoyment of it?

a reply to: Isurrender73

I like this thought. But in the end, when you say the feelings matter to the child, and not necessarily those around them, which one is real? Do we accept a feeling of some one and allow it to make a change in 2, 5, 50 other people, simply because this one persons perspective says it is reality? Or do we say the actions are what is "real"?

Why is this thread even going?

This obnoxious conservatism about what science shows to be real shouldn't be allowed. If your claims rest on nothing more than pure fancy - and not on biological principles basic to physics - and developing physical systems - than your views are largely irrelevant.

If you and I could peer beneath the cartesian divide, you would understand how perverted the mind-brain of modern Humans are.

Cooperation - respecting feelings, recognizing needs, sympathizing with the emotions of others - is a fundamentally "enlivening process".

Problem is - people like you grew up in a traumatized culture with a conservative ethos - an ethos that constricts and constrains what it allows itself to feel, basically due to a fundamental shame phobia that is covered over by an idealization of self - "ubermensch" - to which the person is too unsupported in his living to overcome.

All of this is emergent - built up internalized knowledge that began before you could even read: when you were just a feeling, needing infant, and your reflexive "need for the other" was met with whatever sort of stern or unresponsive face, body or voice that taught your brain-mind (amygdala) to avoid those sort of actions i.e. needs.

It just isn't possible anymore. Science trumps atavistic fantasies about reality. The "relativism" of "it doesn't matter" is simply not possible - inasmuch as the very brain you possess was built up over an evolutionary process that entailed love and kindness as essential feelings.

It's complicated, and given I understand how the mind-brain works, I also understand how your brain will register this post as "dissonant" with the stories and narratives you tell yourself i.e. "feelings don't matter". You say this because YOU YOURSELF NEED THIS. Such is how our brain-mind works LesMiserables: it is conscious of things which are good for it (enlivening) and afraid of things which hurt it (disenlivening). The default state - or path of least resistance in social relating - is sensitivity to and respect for the experience of other Humans. That is just what is - it's the way matter moves.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

And your positive responsivity is not something they need?

This is the problem. You dissociate your own actions from the genetic constraints that govern and bias Human perception and action. We do not have non-emotional needs: the very basis of our being in the world is a sensitivity to "saliences". You see this, probably, as random or somehow essential. In reality, they emerge as a function of developmental "canalization". Your feelings convey knowledge relevant to your experience as a Human i.e. prefigures the acting of your ego self, which, as neurosciences have shown again and again, is prone to confabulation.

Its quite simple: if you are prone to ignoring your feelings, and not recognizing that feelings already constitute a direction, knowledge and expression of need of the organism; in short, if you speak reflexively or think reflexively before assessing the nature of your motivation - and the network of connections that underlie it - you'll be deluding yourself.