Emotie versus Rede

[proycon]

Ik heb net op internet een verschrikkelijk interessant artikel gevonden wat de moeite waard is om te lezen!! Ik zal het hele artikel hieronder pasten, het is een hele lap tekst en bevat moeilijke psychologische stof wat het voor sommige misschien moeilijk te lezen maakt... Daar komt ook nog bij dat het Engelstalig is..maar je begrijpt dat ik geen zin heb dat allemaal te vertalen!

Het artikel gaat over het omgaan met emoties en welke plaats ze zouden moeten innemen in je leven in relatie tot de rede...

In ieder geval raad ik hier eigenlijk iedereen aan dit artikel HELEMAAL te lezen.. Je zal je probleem vaak beter onder ogen kunnen zien en er beter mee om kunnen gaan:

Ik hoop dat dit artikel op iedereen net zo'n positieve impact heeft als op mij!

Suc6! Hier komt ie:

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The absurdity of the reason-emotion dichotomy

Part One Introduction

Much ado is made about people's feelings, how people respond to things, and to the ideas espoused by myself and a few others in particular. We (these others and I) could go on for quite some time detailing the reasoning behind our ideas, but in the end, they will never be accepted because of one core problem many people have - that of using their emotions as means to discerning truth. They hold their positions as true, not because they can prove it, but because they *feel* it despite reason to the contrary. The point of this email is simply to show why this is wrong.

What I want to show is this: that one's emotional responses to things are, in healthy people at least, determined by the ideas and value standards one holds. With that in place, one's emotions stop being inexplicable demons. I'm not saying everything will thus become rosy, or that you will stop feeling fear or other negative emotions. What I am saying is that such emotions will stop being debilitating. Instead, you can overcome the fear, and not fall into an angry frustration with emotions you don't know how to deal with. In time, you can use the knowledge to put an end to the general fear of the world at large of what might happen to you or the things you care for. There is no need to fear exploration, as I have found for myself.

It's those who don't know about the nature of emotions and how they come about who I find most fear exploration. The nature of the emotional faculty, and how most people tend to use it, tell me that without such understanding, fear and terror grow. This is the outcome of what is called the malevolent universe premise in some circles. Given the origin of emotions, the greater someone's capacity to think, the greater their capacity to feel. Consequently, for thinkers, the sooner and the stronger such fear becomes, if they continue to contemplate the world around them. Many shut down their feelings and thoughts on the matter in the face of this, and there are even some circles which advocate this as a matter of course. With understanding, however, the fear and terror become manageable, and in time the malevolent universe premise unseated from the heart and mind.

Many people can live their lives quite happily with little of this fear of the world, but of those who often think in the abstract, of ethics, politics, and the state of the world around them, I find that they are not amongst the happy. I've always recognised the validity of a quote when I see one, no matter where its from. Credit should go to where it's due - I've quoted Marx before now to the shock of some. The bible also, as I will do again now. Some place in there - I have no care to find the location - it says that he who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Consider also the saying ignorance is bliss. I tend to agree, for the reasons I've begun to explain - but such sorrow only lasts until the origin of emotional responses is accepted for what it is, and action taken accordingly. These are what I want to show. Ignorance is not the answer. Neither is shutting down the heart or the mind's "chatter".

What I'm saying here is going to be very hard to accept. It is not accepted by most of the population, actually, to the extent that in many instances even just to intimate it is to invite violent retribution, even death. In the cases of benign rejection, people consider emotions to be almost causeless and inexplicable, almost like annoying demons. In the more worrisome cases, emotions are treated as links to a realm beyond this one, and/or as means to a truth not ammenable to discovery by reason and thought. In particular, this link is most often seen in ethics, politics, and art. Right and wrong, we are often told in so many different ways, are not for science to contemplate. They link to the places where science is just *not*, I was told once. In the end, the alleged thought-emotion dichotomy, via its ethical and political consequences, always leads to bloodshed eventually. I'll explain that one in a later email, this is long enough as it is, even though that definitely needs explaining.

About this time some may be thinking I'm some sort of heartless Vulcan, seeking to be devoid of emotion. Anyone who knows me knows better than that, but for those who do not, and for those who need reminding, I have NEVER ever disparaged emotion, not in the past, and certainly not now. They are essential to life for many reasons. They are wonderful, motivating, and sources of incredible power. Thinking provides the means by which to live, but it is emotion which provides the reason FOR living. Without emotion, human life is empty and bereft of meaning. What I am saying with this email is quite the opposite of the pseudo-logical trash of the Vulcans from Star Trek - I am saying not that one can learn to eliminate emotions, but that one can understand them and be able to develop them, especially the good ones. They will stop being demons, as I said. They will also stop being means by which others can manipulate you. If you learn what they are and how to handle them, then you realise that one NEVER has to acquiesce in a character flaw, that instead you know that you can deal with it, to learn and grow as a human being, ever improving. It allows you truly to begin to enjoy life in more than just fleeting snatches. You will no longer feel the need to take recourse to hiding in various dark recesses, nor strange needs to do any duty or perform acts of self-sacrificial penitence, nor to placate the powers which you've been tricked into believing to be. With the kind of understanding of which I speak, the fear and paranoia about the world around you and what might happen lifts from your shoulders. You recognise that truth, reason, and reality, are not your enemies. I am not saying that all your problems will be solved with one neat literary pill. Hell no! Despite my own awareness of these facts at hand, I am still a long way off from getting where I want to go. I am not, however, anywhere near where I once was. All I am saying is this: you will have a solid footing, a place to stand, and surety in the ability to find resolution eventually. Another quote from the bible, the admonition not to love this world nor the things that are in it, is a sentiment to which I raise my middle finger with gusto. Plenty of emotion there, and I revel in it. Life too, but that's a later email.

To re-iterate the point to be proven : when you have an emotional response to some object, person, or idea, then it is the product of your evaluation of it according to the ideas and standards you already hold within you. You wont find this mentioned in any psychology or philosophy books I know of, other than a few that tend to get ignored by the establishment (*). Most instead fall into a few groups. One group thinks emotions as ties to another realm or higher truth or whatnot, something beyond science and reason. One group considers emotions to be nothing but meaningless squirts of hormones from various glands - people in this group often pretend to be scientific and objective, and they fool a lot of people. There are a few others which are even less sympathetic. None of them accept the this- worldliness of emotions at the same time as accepting their beauty and relevance to humanity. When science and this world are mentioned by some, emotions tend to get sneered at, and when there is talk of the beautiful and the sublime, science and reason tend to get sneered at. Both of those attitudes are wrong. There is no true dichotomy between fact and value, no intrinsic gulf between thinking and feeling. To be sure, they are not the same thing, but they are not natural enemies. For human beings to act as human beings, both need to be understood for what they are, treated right, and cherished. Their proper state is to walk together, giving each other support as and when necessary. Each has their pride of place, but note they do nevertheless each have a *certain* place, and it is a grevious error and disasterous to both to try to use them outside their places.

(* They are, however, written by people with doctorates in philosophy and psychology, and they do teach and practice. These are educated people who defended their theses in the rigours of doctoral academia - they are not quacks.)

The main thing to be dealt with is the idea that feelings and emotion are avenues to truth and knowledge, ie the belief that we can know if something is true if it feels right, and false if it feels wrong. I once had a minor disagreement with a friend - I said that if there is a dispute between one's thinking and one's feelings on a subject, then one should follow what one thinks while also trying to sort out the dispute. She said to follow the heart instead. What I will show is that such an action misuses the heart and this is an entirely circular process, that one only feels something is true because one already believes it to be so, irrespective of whether it actually is or not. The consequences of that are dire, both internally and externally, both for one's soul and the success or otherwise of one's actions.

Part Two Examples in individuals

Some evidence is in order. Since the main bad consequences are in ethics and politics, I will go for the jugular. Take for example the issue of abortion, an issue which definitely elicits a huge amount of emotion. There are those who feel so strongly about it that they are prepared to murder doctors and nurses in bombing attacks, and even consider the death of passers-by as sad but acceptable losses in the fight against abortion. There are those who feel very strongly for a woman's right to choose, and are prepared to march on the streets and indeed sometimes risk being specifically targetted by the killers. Emotion runs high on both sides. There are also many who are just totally apathetic to the whole issue.

That by itself sweeps the rug out from underneath the idea that the heart can be used as an infallible judge of truth, but by itself it doesn't prove the main point. The issue of whether to choose to follow the heart or the mind in the face of conflicting directions is yet to be addressed. What that should have done however is have given many people's trees a damn good shake. Honest people's trees anyway. Now, consider the following example I got from some one of those doctors I mentioned. It's far more tame, but it gets the point across.

"Let us say six men look at a screen on which a series of medical slides is projected; the slides contain cross- sections of various bodily tissues. One man is a savage fresh from the jungle; to him, the procession of eerie shadows and colours - which is all he can make of it - suggests, say, something undreamed of and inexplicable, some ominous supernatural force; he feels a pang of dread. A second man is civilised but ignorant; he knows that the slides are something safe and scientific, but he has no idea what they mean; he yawns. A third man is a painter of the representational school; he too lacks medical knowledge but, focussing on a certain group of blobs, he thinks: "It reminds me of Kandinsky. How hideous!" - and feels a touch of revulsion. Then we bring in St. Augustine to look at the screen; he understands only that this is a product of the blasphemous science of the pagans, and he feels anger, even outrage, in the presence of such 'lust of the eyes.' Then a physician comes in and feels a stab of sorrow; the screen reveals tissue taken from the body of his close friend and means, he understands, a fatal illness. Finally, an ivory tower researcher looks at the screen. He has spent years looking for a certain type of growth to prove a complex anatomical theory, the culmination of his life's work; he sees the growth before him - and feels a surge of elation.

"The same object has been perceived by members of the same species. Yet depending on their conceptual context - on their knowledge of what the object is and above all on their value-judgements - they feel superstitious dread or yawning indifference or esthetic revulsion or pious condemnation or painful depression or joyous exaltation. What caused these emotional states? The slides? The physical object itself? Clearly not. The cause is the slides, *as identified and evaluated*, the slides as grasped and appraised by a *mind*."

Again, what someone feels in response to something is the product of what they already believe or hold as a standard of value. Here is another example, one of the same person across time. There are many people, myself among them, who used to be religious. Many of us have formerly believed in gods or other sorts of supernatural, and we had strong feelings accordingly. When challenged by a roommate for example, a friend of mine's beliefs could not be sustained, feeling or not, so they went away, and in time the feelings went with them. For myself, my faith was shattered when I actually read the bible and came across homophobia and misogyny. In my case, two sets of feelings could not be reconciled, and it was by use of my mind that I was able, over time, to choose to abandon the bible and its contents I don't believe in gods any more, and I no longer have the feeling that went with that, just the same as for my friend. I'm sure that everyone has stories about beliefs they once held and how strongly they used to feel about it but don't any more.

A humorous example - consider the emotional development of a male. Age 5 - "ewww, girls!" ; age 15 - "ooo, girls!" A change of standards, knowledge, and beliefs, leads to a change in emotional reactions. Amongst other things A child psychologist could also mention hormonal changes, and while to a certain extent that may be right, it still doesn't mean that emotions are links to some other realm beyond the world shown to us by our sense organs and thoughts about derived therefrom.

I could go on with more examples on the scale of the individual, but I guess I should keep this short and just rattle them off for you to think about. For example, mood drugs, habituation, desensitisation, and so on. Another friend wrote that *if you believed* in the power of crystals and held an amethyst to the moon you will feel the power. I agree - you will feel - because you believe. The source of power is neither the moon nor the crystal, but the belief which in one way or another exists within the believer.

All of the evidence at hand shows that different people with different beliefs have different emotional responses to the same thing or idea, and people with the same basic beliefs have the same general emotions as each other. Emotional responses are some kind of evaluation of what is perceived, thought about, or otherwise experienced. Evaluations need a standard of value to base their results on, and all of these examples show that the standard used is the beliefs held and associations formed by people. Change them, and the emotional responses change. This evaluation also appears to be carried out automatically by some part of the mind, so it is not surprising that a great many do not know how they arise, and in turn consider them to have some sort of origin superior to reason and the material world. For a great many people, they don't know how the material got in there. Most accepted things which seemed plausible without knowing what emotional effects it will have later on. Many as children accepted with little or no comment the things that adults they respected have said to them - that is a major part of socialisation. The majority of people have unwittingly accepted ideas into their heads, and in consequence into their hearts. They feel they are true simply because they are there, whether they are true or not.

These examples show that not only is the heart thoroughly suspect when it comes to discerning truth, its contents are determined by what the mind puts into it. The stronger the belief, the stronger the feeling. Now, it may certainly be easy to point out that the mind is also fallible, but that doesn't rescue the "heart's truth hypothesis" from the only conclusion to be drawn from the facts at hand. More detail on the fallibility argument is something I will deal with later, but for now more evidence on a different level is needed.

Part Three Examples in groups

The above are examples on the individual scale, but some believe that society is an entity above and separate to the individuals who comprise it, so what about the social scale? Exactly the same thing is repeated en masse. A culture is essentially an ideology in practice, in addition to other pecularities and subsidiary influences such as available food sources on cuisine or what materials are available for clothing. It is beside the point that not all ideologies are formally expressed in detail - many are just mythologies and attitudes handed down from generation to generation. It is only advanced societies which sit down and thrash out intricate detail. Now, consider the fact that different cultures have different ideas on certain things, and teach certain values and ideas (ie they teach an ideology). The people then have certain emotional responses to things accordingly. One specific example is the highly emotionally charged issue of circumcision, especially regarding girls. Some consider it a legitimate cultural practice, others consider it to be nothing less than child abuse. Again these are moral issues on which feeling offers no worthwhile guidance. I'll raise this issue in particular in a later email, the one on multiculturalism. It's not a simple matter of saying "STOP!". The Renaissance for the west was centuries in the making, so it's naive to think that the rest of the world can be improved in a hurry.

A less emotive example is the work ethic, which is considered by some anthropologists to be the product not of scripture as is commonly held (hence the erroneous title of 'protestant' work ethic), but because the cultures in which it arose themselves came from cold or otherwise inhospitable climates. In such conditions, the people have to work a lot to create their living, giving rise to such proverbs as to make hay while the sun shines. Compare that to tropical climates where food can be picked off trees with ease etc and shelter requirements are considerably less than for areas that are regularly snowed in.

Just as individuals can change, so can cultures. The result is the same for the simple reason that the latter is just a multiplication of the former. As the core ideology held by people changes, so their culture and emotional responses change accordingly. Indeed, the whole point about social change is to bring about such changes in emotional response, which in turn alters people's actions toward whatever issue the agents of social change had in mind. This can be good, as in the case of the advancement of individual rights or ending slavery or genital mutilation, or it can be malevolent as in the case of whipping up war-frenzy or incitement to racial violence or the re-subjugation of women. Another set of examples is religious dietary laws. The ban on the eating of pork for example is considered a divine edict, but I have heard that this has been traced back to a disease called tricanosis. When you remember that people once considered disease and the like to be punishment from the gods, it is little wonder that people thought the gods had dietary laws that had to be obeyed. Most of us no longer hold that belief, and this is one reason why many no longer care about the dietary laws religions prescribe. Once again the conclusion from these examples can only be that feeling and emotions are not sources of knowledge.

Compare the attitudes of the people in the new states of the Americas with that of their kin still in Europe, in the 17th and 18th centuries. In Europe in those days, the ruler could go out, raise a rallying cry and expect to have people flock to the war banners, but try that in the Americas and they'd get nowhere. Why? They are the same sets of people, the same languages, same genes even, yet the responses would be entirely different. In the end, the difference lead to war. It's not blood, it's not divine inspiration, it's not anything inexplicable. It's the simple fact that those who have different beliefs and standards of value will have different emotional reactions to things, and will act differently towards things accordingly.

Alternatively, if you want to consider people within the same country, an example from the 20th century is the two sides taken by Russians from 1917 to 1922. The spread of communism lead to many Russians joining the Red Army. Many however rejected communism and stuck to the old ways, and stayed with or joined the White Army. In both cases, what people believe and think in turns alters how they feel, and soon enough how they act.

Another example, involving a definite emotional point: the northern states of the US in comparison to those of the southern states, on the issue of slavery. There are those who will try to impute purely economic considerations to the issue, but even if that were all that caused the difference of opinion over slavery, that would still demonstrate my point: that emotional reactions are set by things here on earth, not some other realm. What the economic idea does not explain is the plain racism involved in it, of why people felt revulsion at the simple thought of someone of another race being in close physical proximity or of the simple thought of someone of another race having any sort of economic or political power. It was said that there were two kinds of racist - those who didn't care how close the blacks got so long as they didn't get too big, and those who didn't care how big they got so long as they didn't get too close. It is the latter especially which demolishes the idea of an economic basis for racism. Nowadays there is not the clear distinction between north and south USA anymore - there are plenty of southerners who don't mind a bit, and plenty of northerners who do. Time, education, and philosophy, have changed things.

In these examples, the origin of the emotions is simple: not another realm, not callings of the blood or the soil, not divine revelation, but belief. These beliefs may be set by socialisation, by faith in scriptures, by adopting the beliefs of another who is inspirational, or a host of other this-worldly sources of inculcation, *or by the conscious choice to think about the issues at hand for oneself, by oneself.* It is the latter which must be followed if one genuinely wishes to be a thinker. Do so, and the heart will follow.

Part Four Philosophical integration

Observation and consequent thought lead to a small number of inescapable universal facts. These are simply that something exists, we are conscious beings, and that all things which exist are of specific natures and act accordingly. I wont go into more detail here as that is core philosophy, despite the fact that it has incredible far-reaching ethical and political consequences. Those interested may email me for more detail, which itself would take up as much text as this email.

>From those three universal principles governing all knowledge comes the fact that existence is primary, that the task of consciousness is not to create reality, but to observe and contemplate it so as to guide actions within reality. The third of those is also saying that contradictions cannot and do not exist in reality - the most that can happen is that we arrive at contradictory thoughts and statements. That only states that we have made a mistake somewhere, nothing else. Observation is independent of belief and the heart's desire. The facts are what they are. The non-contradictory conclusions to be drawn from those observations are also equally independent of belief and heart's desire. To leave them aside and to prefer the heart is by necessity to state that contradiction is not a problem - but such a move evicts the person who states that from reality. To fall back upon "god moves in mysterious ways" or other statements which try to insulate belief from science and criticism are nothing but cop-outs of cowards who want to indulge in what they know damn fine is contradictory while also not wanting to admit it, either to themselves or others. To do so is to start along a vicious cycle - I'll speak more of that later.

Given the above, the *only* way to know about reality and what to do in it is for consciousness to observe it first- hand. Reason is the faculty of integration of observations, and its method we must discover properly. Emotions are not the answer - the only method is logic, which means to figure out relationships between observations by means of concept formation and induction, and then to apply those to further observations by deduction. Concept formation, induction, and deduction, are the content of logic, and all of it must be done non-contradictorily. Knowledge of the world and what to do in it cannot be obtained by looking inward. To do so is only to discover what is inside, not what is outside. What is inside has been put there not by some higher power, not by genes, but by yourself, whether you were aware of it or not. Your heart is your own to control. To be sure it is not on a day to day basis, but over the long run you *can* alter what you feel. Use your mind to set things right. It takes effort over a long time, but it is worth it in the end.

We are told that the human mind is fallible - but that is not the point. The point about the evidence above, tied in with the preceding, is that the only means of knowledge and justification is the use of reason. To deny this fact is to endorse blatant contradictions, and this leaves someone who expresses such denial (honestly or not) at the mercy of emotion, which in turn means at the mercy of anyone skilled at emotional manipulation, such as politicians, journalists, or clergy. That, dear reader, the abandonment of reason as THE judge of truth and the acceptance of some form of emotionalism as guidance, is at the heart of cults and propaganda campaigns. Those are just cruder and more deliberate forms of socialisation. The only way to protect yourself is to value reason, and understand emotions for what they are and how they arise, and consequently how to change them.

There are *no* means to *any* knowledge other than reason. All attempts otherwise are just so many ways of saying "I *feel* it." There is no way to know, other than to observe facts and then carry out logical processes to link them together. The movements of the heart, in due time, follow from the results of such activity. In any dispute between the heart and the mind in the realm of truth and standards of value, if there is time then sort it out by the use of reason, recognising that the contents of the heart are the result of programming in the past. If there is not the time, then the most prudent course of action, for the same reason, is to put the concerns of the heart aside for the time being and follow the mind's best honest judgement on the matter. When the immediacy of the moment has passed, take the time to sort it out. It may well be that the heart has concerns which should be listened to, since it is after all the output of your past thoughts and may be acting on the basis of ideas you forgot to take into consideration. It may well even be the case that your thoughts of the current moment were wrong and your heart, containing your past thoughts you hold deeply, was right. However, you cannot know any of this *until* you use your mind to examine the contents of your heart and judge them by use of reason according to the only standard available - the facts of reality as shown first by sensory observation and then non-contradictory integration of all these through logic. When time is short, the *only* prudent course of action is to go with the mind.

To use the heart to discern truth is to enter into a circle. Depending on what you allowed to be put in your heart, it leads at best to halt or slow-down in the development of new ideas, or as is more likely, a downward spiral into an intellectual and emotional abyss. Given the ideas prevalent today, printed in newspapers and books and magazines everywhere, touted by politicians of all flavours, by clergy of all kinds, the dispute *is* more likely to lead to that spiral if the heart is used beyond what is its role in life.

It is not enough to trot reason out now and then when convenient, to abandon and betray her at the first sign of serious emotional opposition to her counsel. Reason is not to be used as a handmaiden to any kind of theology. Reason and theology are antithetical - the whole point about theology is it claims for itself access to things which reason can know nothing of, that reason should just gather her skirts and go sit quietly in the back corner while others do the work of judging important truths and values. She is only to be called upon to do the occasional peice of embroidery or other menial stitching-up tasks at the behest of the anti-rational, as it were. She is often only just used to iron out a few little inconsistencies here and there where the basis for the system being ironed out is the creation of the anti-rational, and woe betide reason if she trods upon *that* sacred ground. This, dear reader, is a brazen affront to her majesty and power. Her rightful place is the throne, not a little wooden stool far off to one side.

Almost all people think to some degree about the world, to integrate various observation non-contradictorily. Now, while just about everyone does it to some degree, few do it consistently. The world is independent of our hearts and minds, and if certain conclusions are the result of integration of observations without contradiction, then they are valid cognitions of that world. The problem arises when such conclusions clash with what the heart says, such as the practical results of what was held to be the moral and political ideal, or the physical and mental personal consequences of a religious system. To follow the heart in the realm of ideas and values is to deprive oneself of the means of sorting out the dispute, and so a wedge will be driven between one's heart and mind. Unless this is stopped, it will push deeper, widening the gap. More and more, the mind will be abandoned in favour of the heart, leaving one without the means of properly dealing with stressful situations, and so the fear of the world I mentioned earlier will grow. In response to that, there will be a greater and greater recourse taken to faith for the soul's sustenance.

For so long as reason is eschewed in favour of feeling, even if only occasionally to begin with, one will lurch from one crisis of faith to another, and so a vicious cycle is born. The longer it goes on, the harder it is to break, the more stressful the situation has to be for someone or something to get through. Even if one is no longer with any faith after it is finally shattered by some glaring contradiction (either between a thought and a feeling, or between two feelings) which simply cannot be ignored, then one is still vulnerable to falling either into even more vicious cycles of faith, or a bleak cynicism, emotionally drained, and ultimately callous and indifferent - unless the heart and mind are used they way they are supposed to be, and thus reconciled.

The domain of the mind is anything involving facts, truth, and standards. It is that with which to comprehend the world, and figures out how to act in it. It is that which must be used to discern what the standard of value is and the ethical principles which follow from such a standard. (The standard, as I will show in another email, is life.) In these areas the mind must hold sway. For human life, however, the use of the mind alone is not enough. The mind brings validity to ideas, but it is the heart which brings to them power and immediacy. It is the mind whose task it is to discern truth - it is the heart whose task it is to bring out in full the importance of truth. it is the task of the mind to discover moral standards and principles, and to apply them to specific situations, but it is the task of the heart to choose between two or more options which are both equally moral and practical. In that regard, the mind acts like the taste-testers of old, allowing the heart to open up and boldly display its beauty without fear of attack through emotional poison. It is the task of the mind to examine existents, concepts, and definitions, but it is the task of the heart to remind the mind of all the other characteristics of existents beyond the definitional.

Emotions are no indulgence, nor just a luxury afforded by affluence. It is the heart which provides motive power to the soul which allows it to follow the path set by the counsel of the mind. It is the heart, and in the end, the attainment of personal happiness, which brings meaning to human life. We are nothing but cold computers without out our hearts. We would not respond quickly or strongly enough to threats without our hearts to scream out warnings. Note also that while the heart screams out such warnings, only the mind can determine whether such warnings were justified, and only the mind can properly determine what to do about the threat.

We would run out of steam for our souls rather quickly without the heart to give us appreciation of the beautiful, to give us reason to go on struggling, to furnish us with the emotional rewards of our reason-based action. The domain of the mind is truth, but the domain of the heart is importance. Don't misuse either, or you will lose sight of the truth and the heart will become more and more just a source of irrational self-criticism for the inability to live up to impractical moral standards not consonant with the nature of this world.

A proper union of heart and mind (which I am still in the process of bringing about in myself) is an unbeatable combination. There is no need, and no justification for the demand, to choose between one or the other (the call for the rejection of both may be treated with due contempt). I am not going to go further on the issue of how to use the heart. The object of this email was simply to demonstrate the fact that the standards used by the heart to form its evaluations and responses are provided to it by the mind, be that by the choice to think and accept only what the mind judges for itself without reference to what conclusions the heart finds congenial or not, or by taking on board others' ideas and attitudes unwittingly with later acceptances only based on what is emotionally consonant with what was entered before. For now, simply recognise the role of each, and *within their rightful domains*, let each reign supreme. By all means, certainly question what you think - but also, *QUESTION WHAT YOU FEEL*. The only means to finding the answers to the questions is reason. For the love of live THINK - then feel.

L.

[Lucky Duck]

Als 't nou nog Nederlands was had ik het nog wel gelezen, maar Engels?!

[proycon]

Als je engels kan, lees het dan..ook al kost het misschien iets meer moeite... wie weer wat voor boeiende informatie je anders mist?

[P.J]

Goed stukje text, Genoeg basics, vooral voor de wat beginnende in de psychologie zeker een aanrader!

Persoonlijk vond ik dat het iets meer strait to the point mocht zijn, en voor de beginnende wat meer relatie's mocht leggen tussen lichaam en geest.

Wel ff een vraagje aan proycon, is dit een mailtje uit een mailing list?

[AtHell]

mja wel boeient t is wel iets wat lang dus misschien neemt niet iedereen de moeite om het goed door te lezen, maar er staan wel wat zinnige dingen in.

[proycon]

P.J: Nee...het komt van een australische website af...misschien dat het oorspronkelijk deel is geweest van een maillinglist aangezien de auteur vaak naar emails verwijst.. Maar helaas zou ik dus ook niet weten welke mailinglist dat dan is...