Shannon's Journal Discussion

[Shannon]

[snip]

I get your point about being able to think for yourself without fear but fear isn't completely irrelevant yet. What you are talking about is valid and I don't want to be controlled by fear, but I think there are still cases where fear is relevant. If a gun is pointed to your head, fear wont help that situation.

Sure it will. Fear keeps people from pointing guns to their head, right? Fear keeps people from allowing others to casually point guns at them, right? (Or at least moving away).

But if you are going to get hit by a train or you step on a snake fear jerks you out of harms way before you even have time to think. Thats the point.

Fear has nothing to do with that. That's an automatic response of your nervous system designed to keep you from harm, but fear is not involved. You don't have time to fear. That response, fear, comes from the brain, but if memory serves, the response you're talking about actually never comes from the brain. If memory serves, it comes from the spinal cord, which triggers reaction faster than what the brain could. The brain then receives the message a split second later, but that split second later does not take into account the time it takes for your brain to propagate the message to the proper parts, process it, and send a response. Fear is a reaction of consciousness of some threat; I'm pretty sure the response you're referring to is a nervous reaction without thought.

In situations where you don't have time to think fear will save your life. I forget the quote but its something like "only fools don't feel fear". Also thinking can't motivate you like an emotion can. Sure you can know logically that the tiger is going to eat you, but even if you decide to run you aren't throwing every fiber of your being into it because you are not motivated by fear.

I can make up quotes to fit my argument all day long. Here's an example. "Only fools feel fear when they have better options." - Me. That doesn't make the argument more valid.

As for thinking motivating you like emotion, it's a matter of desire and decision. Whether it comes from emotion or logic is generally irrelevant; the desire and decision is what matters. It just happens that the subconscious mind tends to rule that matter, and the subconscious mind is generally emotional in nature. So if I know a tiger is going to eat me unless I run like the wind, but I have no fear, will I run less fast? Hardly. I'll run just as fast, because my desire to stay alive is still the same. It's not a matter of logic being an insufficient motivator.

Also I also think guilt and shame are definitely relevant too. At unhealthy levels and inappropriate times these emotions are bad, but they are important emotions. I took this off of a website: healthy shame describes the feeling of: “I have done something that goes against my core values and beliefs, and I feel badly about that,” while toxic shame describes the feeling of: “I am inherently flawed and defective and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” MASSIVE difference. Taking completely away negative emotions is a bad thing.

The difference between having to rely on shame, guilt and fear to make the right choices and do the right things in life, versus thinking and logic, is generally going to boil down to the maturity of the individual. This is easily observed with children. A child does not yet have a logical understanding that if they touch a hot stove, it will hurt. Fear is useful in that situation, because their ability to think and their brain are not yet fully developed. But once they can think and that brain is developed sufficiently, does it matter if they fear the pain, as long as they are aware what pain is, and know that burning flesh causes them pain?

Doing something that goes against your core values and beliefs means that some part of you did not hold those "core values and beliefs" and acted without them. The solution is not guilt, shame and fear; the solution is having the maturity to fully accept that set of beliefs and LIVE BY IT.

It's just like honesty. Most guys have a real hard time being honest to women, because they know that in the short term, they can potentially gain sex from lying. But the backlash is that the women they encounter learn to distrust them and males in general, and thus that benefit is neutralized by the additional challenge she presents to compensate. Then you just have people lying to each other, when being honest would save everyone a lot of problems. I have a friend who has marveled at the life I live because I am honest, and she commented once that she wished she could have the same. I asked her why she couldn't, and she told me that it wouldn't be possible to be as honest as I am. The fact of the matter is, being honest forces you to live correctly, in ways that allow for honesty to be painless, and makes you a better person all around. But she was too afraid to be honest because she couldn't handle that, so saying one thing and doing another was the only option she could see.

Guilt, shame and fear are useful for the unintelligent and the immature, but we are outgrowing those times and those things that made them useful. Now they will become increasingly useless shackles that simply hold us back from achieving our true potential because we can think, and we do have the capacity for making mature and intelligent choices and decisions. Relying on guilt, shame and fear to make things right is just a cop-out.

Taking away all negative emotions leaves us with only positive emotions, like happiness, love, gratitude and peacefulness. And there is no way that could be a bad thing.