[Dru]

actors act. fabricate emotions. or do you suppose in every intimate love scene the actors have actually fallen in love with each other?

emotions are chemical reactions. they are the result of biological processes which can be even measured. obviously they're not flipping magical, nobody said they were. i don't believe you or much of anyone can exert such a level of control over their own emotions as to simply stop feeling it. i think it's an illusion of control. you simply repress the emotion and your acknowledgement of it.

that is how it's done.

[Purgatid]

Originally Posted by Dru To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

actors act. fabricate emotions. or do you suppose in every intimate love scene the actors have actually fallen in love with each other? emotions are chemical reactions. they are the result of biological processes which can be even measured. obviously they're not flipping magical, nobody said they were. i don't believe you or much of anyone can exert such a level of control over their own emotions as to simply stop feeling it. i think it's an illusion of control. you simply repress the emotion and your acknowledgement of it. that is how it's done.

I'm sorry you're unable to create or extinguish emotions. A lot of other people are not.

[Dru]

there's an air of superficiality about willing your emotions into an out of existence, i feel.

there is self-control, comparable to self-discipline, when it comes to your emotions - realizing when they make sense to experience and when they don't, and choosing when or whether to act on them - but that is not what you're talking about.

what you're talking about borders on sociopathy, which i would not consider to be an experience of real emotion.

[thod]

	I'm sorry you're unable to create or extinguish emotions. A lot of other people are not.

I can think of at least one drug that I have tried that leaves me totally flat whilst intellectually racing. It's subtle but I know something is wrong. In enhancing one aspect of my mind I am losing another.

I don't agree you can extinguish emotions. If you are so angry with someone that you cannot look at them, it is difficult to force yourself. Perhaps it would be better to say you 'channel' emotions to a place where they are harmless. Perhaps you have a found a core personality of logic to which you retreat when emotions are swirling all around.

	what you're talking about borders on sociopathy, which i would not consider to be an experience of real emotion.

I tend to think emotions developed for very good evolutionary reasons. It was wise for our ancestors to be fearful when they heard a rustling in the bushes. Thus the idea is listen to them but not be mastered by them. Otherwise we would punch the nose of everyone who offended us.

[Huruma]

Originally Posted by Antares To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Say you were a parent (with the normal parental biological imperative to love offspring), and your child is utterly depraved and unloveable in every sense of the word. Can you conceive ceasing to love it? Or you could turn the example around and say your mother was Rosemary West, an insane, abusive and sociopathic serial killer. Would you stop loving her, or does the fact that you're her offspring mean there is still some sort of love for her?

If I had children, I would love them unconditionally. If I didn't literally feel love for them, I would force myself to behave as though I did. If you don't want depraved, unlovable children, you should have thought about the kind of people they might have developed into before you had them (whether through procreation or adoption, you voluntarily took on that responsibility). In my opinion, most people seem to have this fucked up sense of entitlement to create other people without seriously considering the moral implications of actually creating sentient life. Nobody asks to be born, your children don't owe you anything. Since (biological) parents take it upon themselves to decide that other people should exist, they are indirectly responsible for any unwanted lives they may have produced and all of the distress that their children feel or cause others.

[Purgatid]

Originally Posted by Dru To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

there's an air of superficiality about willing your emotions into an out of existence, i feel. there is self-control, comparable to self-discipline, when it comes to your emotions - realizing when they make sense to experience and when they don't, and choosing when or whether to act on them - but that is not what you're talking about. what you're talking about borders on sociopathy, which i would not consider to be an experience of real emotion.

If you have no experience of what I'm talking about, how can you then possibly make a judgment about the validity of them? Your argument is basically that it's only real emotions if you lack control over them. That's like saying a cra crash is only a crash if you lose control over the vehicle. Deliberatly crashing into someone is then not a car crash. It's silly. Emotions are emotions, no matter where they stem from.

	Originally Posted by thod
	I don't agree you can extinguish emotions. If you are so angry with someone that you cannot look at them, it is difficult to force yourself. Perhaps it would be better to say you 'channel' emotions to a place where they are harmless. Perhaps you have a found a core personality of logic to which you retreat when emotions are swirling all around.

Perhaps. Channeling them seem to be what I'm doing, indeed. I wouldn't consider myself a being of logic. I have very vivid emotions of a very varied spectrum, and in tests I score about 50/50 on T and F. But I tend to spend a lot of time at self reflection. Let's say I would find my SO in bed with another dude. My immidiate reaction would be to get fucking angry at her face and the dude she's with. What happens next would be that I know that my anger regarding such situations comes from the (assumed) inadequency of myself and the breech of social contract. The anger stems from my own ego. I know this, and thinking this mid anger would make the anger melt away right away. I would probably still feel rejected, sad and betrayed - which I am and thus the emotions stays, because it's valid. I could probably think that away to, but I don't since they're valid. These processes takes me less than a second to go through, mostly because I've gone through them before. It's the same with insults towards my person. I don't get upset from them, because I understand where the anger comes from, so it's maintained and controlled. This is likley the reason why I don't get sad when people die. There's no victim involved besides my own ego - that I don't get to see the person anymore.