thoughts, emotions

papananook — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 11:21:53 -0400

I feel you, Susan, and I think you are a very intelligent person.
We all need to get outside more and reconnect with Gaia as living organisms ...to find a balance between our minds and bodies, thoughts and emotions...i recommend a day of body-surfing in a clean ocean...that always restores Harmony to my soul.
But since i live in Alaska now that's impossible, so i just roll around outside with my grandkids...

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

sushil_yadav — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 04:57:13 -0400

Regarding the discussion about gaps between Thinking and gaps between Emotion :

The gap between Days is Night.
The gap between Nights is day.

sushil_yadav

Bottled*Lightning

Rainbow Brain — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 20:33:41 -0400

The speed of Awareness is like lightning in a bottle, one only needs to remove the cork and share its light and energy with others, it is then that its pace and destructive force can heal and slow the aggression of ignorance.

BL*M
Global-Luvolution.blogspot.com

Thoughts and Emotions in the Information Age

Susan Livingston — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 02:25:58 -0400

There is a fundamental linguistic problem in our society, and after I explain it, I am hoping that some of our users who were raised in other linguistic environments will tell us if the same difficulty is found in their language. Until we know that, we don't know if the phenomenon I'm going to describe is a human thing or specific to one language group.

Start with the statement that "emotion is what we experience during gaps in our thinking."

Now turn it around, and see if "thinking is what we experience during gaps in our emotion."

The linguistic problem is that we do not distinguish between the two, and the result is that we use them interchangably - much to our unfortunate confusion. Another problem is that we don't have a good verb to express emotions.

*I am comfortable - a thought in which the subject is defined.

I feel comfortable - a feeling in which a state of being of the subject is described.

In the first assertion, "am" functions as an equal sign in the same way as describing a chosen profession, for example.

I am a teacher - a thought in which the subject is defined.

*I feel a teacher - an action (feel) by an agent (I) on an object (teacher).

That we accept the first pair but not the second pair as equivalent presents a problem. We are not our emotions. The fact that they fade away and we're still here is proof of that. By maintaining constant vigilance about what we identify with, we can create some space between ourselves and our emotions and perhaps begin to identify to ourselves and others what we feel. When we lose that space and become the emotion, we can't get enough perspective to describe it. Then, although we may display emotion, our emotional vocabulary and intelligence remain low. So I'm advocating that we develop the habit of saying what we feel instead of what we are.

We talk a lot in NVC about distinguishing between a feeling and a thought. Although the speaker meant the first two examples to be equivalent, we would argue that the first is a thought and the second is a feeling. Yet consider how often you hear statements that start with "I feel" and are completed with totally cerebral content.

*I feel it would be better to go elsewhere.

I feel angry; I think it would be better to go elsewhere.

I feel like I'm making a mistake.

I feel anxious; I think I'm making a mistake.

This is an interesting set. The first sentence definitely doesn't describe a feeling, so why can we accept the third? We can accept the third if you have made enough of this kind of mistake in the past, and you noticed that you always experienced the same emotion, or if what follows "like" is well-known to produce a consistent emotion across people. Then, the word "like" marks a simile.

I feel like a lost child.

If making mistakes has brought about several feelings in the past, then it is clearer to use number four rather than a lot of qualifiers.

*I feel like when I used the full measure of liquid in that pancake recipe and they came out so flat and hard.

I still have a problem with using the word feel for both of the concepts in the second pair of examples near the top. I like to reserve the verb "to feel" for describing my awareness of sensory input.

I feel a headache coming on.

His beard feels coarse.

We have a perfectly good verb to use when we want to say that an emotion is being expressed: to emote. Yet we save this verb for the non-verbal aspects of communication such as body language and tone of voice.

*I emote strong.

I emote strongly when I'm acting.

Notice that in the second example, it is clear that "strong" is not being used as a feeling word at all.

I have to disagree with Sushil Yadav's contention that emotions are slow. For physiological reasons, they last longer than thoughts, yet they start sooner than thoughts. They are more pervasive than thoughts; thoughts are brain waves - electrical impulses that travel along the neuron and cross the synapse when the impulse causes the release of the neurotransmitter, which is then picked up by the next neuron and sets off a new electrical impulse. Emotions, on the other hand, are chemical cocktails that travel in the blood, a slower mechanism, yet they start faster because the sensory apparatus is more directly connected to the emotional centers of the brain than they are to the cerebral cortex.

In one of the source articles, Sushil Yadav is wanting a way to measure emotion. I maintain that we have several ways to do that. We can measure tiny changes in the amount and salinity of perspiration, tiny changes in the temperature and electrical charges of the skin, tiny changes in the contraction of a muscle, etc., and then correlate these with the subject's self-report to find qualitative differences between emotions. When it's quantitative differences that are being studied, rating scales work just fine when there are no marks on the line and only the extremes are labeled. The subject's mark can then be measured afterward. This technique puts all measures on the same scale and overcomes a great deal of response bias.

I appreciate the loss of self-connection that comes with an urban lifestyle in the information age, but I don't agree that the solution is to return to rural living and slide rule calculation. I haven't yet give up on the human race's ability to adapt and learn how to slow down without regressing to some idealized former state. I think the simple act of becoming aware that we have the problem is already at least half of the solution.

Editor, propeace.net

the propeace community - philosophy - Comments

thoughts, emotions

Industrial Society Destroys Mind and Environment

Bottled*Lightning

Thoughts and Emotions in the Information Age