How emotion affects our political views

[miketx]

What is emotion? Have you ever heard a definitive answer to this question? Chemical reactions... well, yes, but what purpose does it serve? Fight or flight, human bonding for procreation... ok, but obviously it's more nuanced and influential than that.

I'd like to submit an idea for your review: Emotion is personal guidance. It exists as means for evaluating the merit of our thought.

Emotion is intrinsically linked to thought; it is a reaction to thought. You may be watching TV, feeling emotionally neutral, until you remember the big test, interview, or presentation tomorrow morning. Immediately upon having that thought, a flood of anxiety fills your body.

And thought need not always be overtly conscious. Sometimes there are lingering thoughts just behind our conscious awareness; thoughts that have not undergone the formality of being mentally vocalized, but are present nonetheless. In this case, the emotion will get our attention, even when the thought doesn't. We call this experience a "nagging feeling". Emotion is serving its purpose - cluing us in to the nature of our thoughts.

Humans are motivated by emotion. All human action is an effort to move to a more pleasing emotional state. Our political views are rooted in this effort as well. We perceive that if this massive construct affecting our lives called "government" operated in a way more in line with our desires, we would feel happier, safer, have more pride in our country, etc.

Here I will provide a chart that outlines the "Emotional Guidance Scale" (courtesy of Abraham Hicks). Items higher on the scale denote better-feeling emotions, while items lower on the scale denote worse emotional states:

Sometimes this phenomenon is not so obvious, like in the case of the person who abuses themselves. But upon closer inspection, we can see that the person is trying to move from feelings of guilt, for instance, to the relief experienced by the feelings of revenge against themselves. Even moving from one negative emotion to another negative emotion is motivated by the desire for improvement.

Unfortunately, much of our political views are born of a fear. Fear of what the opposing party will subject us to; fear of what foreign powers will unleash upon our country; etc. This is a very low emotional state, and though improvements sought through rage and resentment may serve to ease our pain temporarily, they are hardly the most desirable emotional states to reside within on an ongoing basis. We can get trapped in a negative loop without a concerted effort to move higher on the scale.

Since emotional improvement is the motivation for all action, and all emotion is a reaction to thought, we can see that thought is the realm of causality. This means that we purposefully defer action (verbal or physical) and remain in the realm of thought, progressing upward along the scale via self-talk before taking action. In other words, we can wait until we're in a better place before expressing ourselves through actions which have the power to shape our world.

And since emotion clues us in to the merit of our thought, the better feeling emotions reflect thoughts that are more in alignment with ultimate truth in some way. In this way, knowledge and understanding lead to better-feeling emotions, and ultimately wisdom, or right action. This can be difficult to discern. But when we feel rage against the opposing party, something about our thought is misaligned with truth. Maybe it's because we are seeing these people as evil, when in reality, they are only trying to seek higher states of emotion just like us. Their motivations are good in this sense, and so our perception of them as evil enemies with vastly different goals is inaccurate on a deeper level.

There is so much more to say, but I will not impose upon your patience any longer in this post. Use this scale to assess what you are feeling, and what emotional state you are trying to achieve by your actions. Use it to evaluate others. See if the described phenomenon accurately corresponds with your own experience and observation.

Thank you for considering these ideas, I hope they offer some preliminary insight into how this "thought --> emotion --> action" dynamic plays out in the political landscape.

BS. The Left are motivated by hate, they bask in it. The only time they are happy is when they know someone else is suffering.

It is why the left rarely meaningfully give to charity time or money.

True dat. And they are the most prolific shameless liars ever.

 

[Brian Blackwell]

BS. The Left are motivated by hate, they bask in it. The only time they are happy is when they know someone else is suffering.

It is why the left rarely meaningfully give to charity time or money.

True dat. And they are the most prolific shameless liars ever.

The biggest lie is believing there is a fundamental difference between the left and the right. Both are collectivist authoritarian positions. The details hardly matter in light of this mutual insanity.

 

[miketx]

BS. The Left are motivated by hate, they bask in it. The only time they are happy is when they know someone else is suffering.

It is why the left rarely meaningfully give to charity time or money.

True dat. And they are the most prolific shameless liars ever.

The biggest lie is believing there is a fundamental difference between the left and the right. Both are collectivist authoritarian positions. The details hardly matter in light of this mutual insanity.

Classic lib spin.

 

[Brian Blackwell]

BS. The Left are motivated by hate, they bask in it. The only time they are happy is when they know someone else is suffering.

It is why the left rarely meaningfully give to charity time or money.

True dat. And they are the most prolific shameless liars ever.

The biggest lie is believing there is a fundamental difference between the left and the right. Both are collectivist authoritarian positions. The details hardly matter in light of this mutual insanity.

Classic lib spin.

Yeah, that adequately addresses what was said...

Talk about fucking blinders... Not everyone who challenges you is a liberal.

 

[miketx]

BS. The Left are motivated by hate, they bask in it. The only time they are happy is when they know someone else is suffering.

It is why the left rarely meaningfully give to charity time or money.

True dat. And they are the most prolific shameless liars ever.

The biggest lie is believing there is a fundamental difference between the left and the right. Both are collectivist authoritarian positions. The details hardly matter in light of this mutual insanity.

Classic lib spin.

Yeah, that adequately addresses what was said...

Talk about fucking blinders. Not everyone who challenges you is a liberal.

Well just try harder.

 

[Correll]

Sorry, if the situation does not warrant "positive" emotions, then moving "upwards" towards them is simply living in denial of reality.
And "positive" emotions are just as much emotions as "negative" ones.

Ok, but there's a misunderstanding of the premise here. Yes, emotions are emotions, but they are not all identical, any more than an apple and orange are identical simply because they are both fruit. The nature of the emotion matters because it indicates the merit of our thoughts. You seem reluctant to acknowledge that remaining in fear is not a worthwhile approach. It has negative (undesirable) consequences.

How does the nature of an emotion indicate the merit of a thought?

The emotion is not a response to the situation itself, but rather our thoughts about it, our perspective. To say the situation does not warrant positive emotions is to say that it would be more appropriate to remain in a negative thought pattern about it. By this logic, if an angry lion entered your child's bedroom, outright panic would be appropriate to the situation, and thus should be maintained. This is simply not so. The best case scenario would not be to curl up into a ball screaming, but rather to quickly cast aside debilitating fear and shift into a more empowering perspective; grabbing a gun, sword, knife, spoon, anything, and actually trying to do something about it. Go down fighting, at the very least.

Your assumption that the fear would be "debilitating" is unsupported. IN both scenarios, in a ball or fighting with a gun, the man is afraid.

To fully understand this, you must understand natural law, the cause-and-effect of human thought, emotion, and action:

The leftmost (blue) column describes the categories of function; the way internal experience expresses as external experience. Moving across the rows shows the positive or negative expressions of each function. The middle (green) column shows the positive chain of events (going downward), the rightmost (red) column shows the negative chain of events. All columns describe a step-wise process, whereby items higher in the column lead to items lower in the column, via a step-wise process (there's no skipping steps, one thing leads to the next necessarily if the chain is not broken).

One cannot shift between the columns without first returning to the top. You can't go from fear to knowledge without first passing through LOVE (which, in this context, means heightened consciousness; an open-minded receptivity which permits one to accurately perceive truth (remember in the OP that we said positive emotion indicates alignment with truth on increasingly deeper levels as we move higher).

An open minded receptivity, in a time of danger, is not a good thing.


Being too trusting, is a good way to get killed. Better to stay on your toes and close to home. Keep your powder dry.

So one cannot be in a state of fear and think with total clarity, such that optimal decisions can be made. The initial fear was in response to an unwanted, dangerous circumstance. When we move upward, we do not forget that the circumstance exists; there is no denial of reality. We are simply adopting a more poised, lucid perspective from which to deal with it. We're thinking from a position that makes better solutions possible.

I see a lot of people living in denial of dangerous reality.


You ever see a fat woman you know has diabetes stuffing her face with unhealthy food, actively shortening her life by many years?


I have. For one limited example.

The nature of an emotion - positive or negative, to varying degrees - indicates the degree of alignment with, or divergence from, the most true (and thus most beneficial) thoughts. This is what I’ve termed “merit”. “Most true” describes how these thoughts are inclusive of additional relevant and accurate information.

The best way to model this is as a “vibratory frequency” of consciousness. The white center line in the image below indicates truth (the full spectrum of reality perceptively available). The higher the vibratory rate of consciousness, the more “touch points” between our awareness, and ultimate truth. This higher frequency is know to us by positive-feeling emotions. Such guidance is the very role of emotions.

View attachment 192948

Differing thoughts can come in rapid-fire succession, and so the resulting feedback of emotions can vary so quickly that it feels as though we’re experiencing multiple emotions at once. The man in a fire-fight may be only afraid, partially afraid, or not afraid at all.

If he is only afraid, he is wholly focused on the danger - his low vibrational state of consciousness makes him only aware of one aspect of the truth of his circumstances. This is why it can be debilitating (think fetal position, crying for Mama). Had he been in a higher state of consciousness, he would be aware of more information, which would make him more capable of handling the situation.

If he is utterly fearless, being in an extremely high state of consciousness, he is not unaware of the danger; it’s just that he is aware of the danger, and a hundred other pieces of relevant information that render the danger a fractional aspect of his total awareness. This is the mindstate of the courageous hero of lore (think Conan).

Open-minded receptivity does not equate to “too trusting” and is always a good thing, as it makes one more aware (“on their toes”), not less.

So you can see how low states of consciousness - or depressed awareness - can make one less attentive to relevant information, including dangers. Self-loathing, for example, can make one overeat despite being diabetic. The “denial of reality” relative to their health can be seen as insufficient awareness of that relevant danger.

A lot of your claims, really maybe all of them about emotions are unsupported and not intuitive.


This one especially.


"Open-minded receptivity does not equate to “too trusting” and is always a good thing, as it makes one more aware (“on their toes”), not less."


I have an old friend, who's daughters wanted to play with some children down the street.

The family had a somewhat "Ghetto" vibe and he was uncomfortable with the idea, but he had no real data to support it.


So, he suppressed his healthy suspicion of the unknown, and let his kids play with those kids but just on the front porch area.


Cutting to the finish, using information that he got LATER, the older brother was involved in something illegal and was murdered.



SO, every time that he allowed his "open minded receptivity" to let his kids play at that families, home, he was unknowingly putting his children in mortal danger.


We have to make life and death decisions, without full information, ALL THE TIME.


Our instincts are designed to err on the side of safety.


The monkeys in our evolutionary past who did not, got themselves killed.


Strangers and the unknown, can be dangerous. Being open minded can get you killed.

You're misinterpreting the concept of "open-mindedness" by equating it with a decision being made. To be open-minded simply means to take in information and subject it to your critical process, as opposed to bouncing ideas at the door via pre-conceived notions. Intuition could be part of the information we admit into our decision-making process.

Being open-minded is not to simply believe something on faith. It has nothing to do with conclusions, only receptivity of information. If I tell you I saw a Yeti, you have two choices - to admit the claim into your thought process and evaluate it as best you can, or to say "Yeti's don't exist, you idiot!" and discontinue any thought about it. The former is open-mindedness, and may or may not yield a conclusive determination; the latter is close-mindedness and yields a conclusion in the absence of adequate information and due consideration.

Yes, sometimes we must make decisions in the absence of sufficient information. But this has nothing to do with open-mindedness. Your friend came to a decision before having adequate information (not placing blame, he simply didn't know). He felt his hand was forced; he had to decide now. And though this is often the case, we will always have the best chance at making a good decision when we take in information openly. Even if that means only having 15% of the relevant information at the time of our decision, it's better than the 7% we would have if we were operating at a less receptive state of consciousness.

I will copy and paste another post here, explaining this idea in a holistic fashion:

The following is a basic primer on the ancient Trivium method of education. It forms the basis for how to think critically and apply sound knowledge in practice. It is comprised of three subjects, each representing a step in this all-important process:

KNOWLEDGE: Also known as "grammar", this step is raw data collection; the input stage. Success in this area is what we call "having on open mind". Contrary to common misconception, an open mind does not mean accepting all opinions as equally valid. It merely means that all information is permitted to pass into the next stage of the process without gaining automatic admittance into our belief system, or being blocked at the door due to preconceived notions.

UNDERSTANDING: Also known as "logic", this is the step of evaluation; the processing stage. Building associations, recognizing patterns, determining validity through reason and logical consistency... This is where we separate wheat from chaff, and decide which ideas are worthy of admitting into our worldview or belief system. It is the process of establishing principles which will guide our behavior.

WISDOM: Also known as "rhetoric", this step is the application of valid conclusions; the output stage. Though many equate the word "wisdom" with deep understanding, it is actually the implementation of that understanding through behavior. This step requires the commitment and courage to act in accordance with our experience and understanding gained in the previous two steps.

Nothing in this post convinces me that this is the way people think, or even should think.


My friend's problem was caused by a bad idea, ie that he should be "open minded" to people and idea, not to reject them due to "preconceived notions".


You will rarely if ever have complete information. You will rarely if ever have time to gather it all, nor to carefully analysis it all.


HIs intuition, which you say, maybe we can include, is the opposite of what you are really looking for, and what you really want to get rid of.


He really needed to be more afraid of the other. THe Other was different in a bad way, a way that made association with them dangerous. Though this was not known until far too late.


You are really being careful to keep this abstract. I understand why you would say you are doing this.


But in reality, that makes it impossible to check your theory.

 

[Brian Blackwell]

Ok, but there's a misunderstanding of the premise here. Yes, emotions are emotions, but they are not all identical, any more than an apple and orange are identical simply because they are both fruit. The nature of the emotion matters because it indicates the merit of our thoughts. You seem reluctant to acknowledge that remaining in fear is not a worthwhile approach. It has negative (undesirable) consequences.

How does the nature of an emotion indicate the merit of a thought?

The emotion is not a response to the situation itself, but rather our thoughts about it, our perspective. To say the situation does not warrant positive emotions is to say that it would be more appropriate to remain in a negative thought pattern about it. By this logic, if an angry lion entered your child's bedroom, outright panic would be appropriate to the situation, and thus should be maintained. This is simply not so. The best case scenario would not be to curl up into a ball screaming, but rather to quickly cast aside debilitating fear and shift into a more empowering perspective; grabbing a gun, sword, knife, spoon, anything, and actually trying to do something about it. Go down fighting, at the very least.

Your assumption that the fear would be "debilitating" is unsupported. IN both scenarios, in a ball or fighting with a gun, the man is afraid.

To fully understand this, you must understand natural law, the cause-and-effect of human thought, emotion, and action:

The leftmost (blue) column describes the categories of function; the way internal experience expresses as external experience. Moving across the rows shows the positive or negative expressions of each function. The middle (green) column shows the positive chain of events (going downward), the rightmost (red) column shows the negative chain of events. All columns describe a step-wise process, whereby items higher in the column lead to items lower in the column, via a step-wise process (there's no skipping steps, one thing leads to the next necessarily if the chain is not broken).

One cannot shift between the columns without first returning to the top. You can't go from fear to knowledge without first passing through LOVE (which, in this context, means heightened consciousness; an open-minded receptivity which permits one to accurately perceive truth (remember in the OP that we said positive emotion indicates alignment with truth on increasingly deeper levels as we move higher).

An open minded receptivity, in a time of danger, is not a good thing.


Being too trusting, is a good way to get killed. Better to stay on your toes and close to home. Keep your powder dry.

So one cannot be in a state of fear and think with total clarity, such that optimal decisions can be made. The initial fear was in response to an unwanted, dangerous circumstance. When we move upward, we do not forget that the circumstance exists; there is no denial of reality. We are simply adopting a more poised, lucid perspective from which to deal with it. We're thinking from a position that makes better solutions possible.

I see a lot of people living in denial of dangerous reality.


You ever see a fat woman you know has diabetes stuffing her face with unhealthy food, actively shortening her life by many years?


I have. For one limited example.

The nature of an emotion - positive or negative, to varying degrees - indicates the degree of alignment with, or divergence from, the most true (and thus most beneficial) thoughts. This is what I’ve termed “merit”. “Most true” describes how these thoughts are inclusive of additional relevant and accurate information.

The best way to model this is as a “vibratory frequency” of consciousness. The white center line in the image below indicates truth (the full spectrum of reality perceptively available). The higher the vibratory rate of consciousness, the more “touch points” between our awareness, and ultimate truth. This higher frequency is know to us by positive-feeling emotions. Such guidance is the very role of emotions.

View attachment 192948

Differing thoughts can come in rapid-fire succession, and so the resulting feedback of emotions can vary so quickly that it feels as though we’re experiencing multiple emotions at once. The man in a fire-fight may be only afraid, partially afraid, or not afraid at all.

If he is only afraid, he is wholly focused on the danger - his low vibrational state of consciousness makes him only aware of one aspect of the truth of his circumstances. This is why it can be debilitating (think fetal position, crying for Mama). Had he been in a higher state of consciousness, he would be aware of more information, which would make him more capable of handling the situation.

If he is utterly fearless, being in an extremely high state of consciousness, he is not unaware of the danger; it’s just that he is aware of the danger, and a hundred other pieces of relevant information that render the danger a fractional aspect of his total awareness. This is the mindstate of the courageous hero of lore (think Conan).

Open-minded receptivity does not equate to “too trusting” and is always a good thing, as it makes one more aware (“on their toes”), not less.

So you can see how low states of consciousness - or depressed awareness - can make one less attentive to relevant information, including dangers. Self-loathing, for example, can make one overeat despite being diabetic. The “denial of reality” relative to their health can be seen as insufficient awareness of that relevant danger.

A lot of your claims, really maybe all of them about emotions are unsupported and not intuitive.


This one especially.


"Open-minded receptivity does not equate to “too trusting” and is always a good thing, as it makes one more aware (“on their toes”), not less."


I have an old friend, who's daughters wanted to play with some children down the street.

The family had a somewhat "Ghetto" vibe and he was uncomfortable with the idea, but he had no real data to support it.


So, he suppressed his healthy suspicion of the unknown, and let his kids play with those kids but just on the front porch area.


Cutting to the finish, using information that he got LATER, the older brother was involved in something illegal and was murdered.



SO, every time that he allowed his "open minded receptivity" to let his kids play at that families, home, he was unknowingly putting his children in mortal danger.


We have to make life and death decisions, without full information, ALL THE TIME.


Our instincts are designed to err on the side of safety.


The monkeys in our evolutionary past who did not, got themselves killed.


Strangers and the unknown, can be dangerous. Being open minded can get you killed.

You're misinterpreting the concept of "open-mindedness" by equating it with a decision being made. To be open-minded simply means to take in information and subject it to your critical process, as opposed to bouncing ideas at the door via pre-conceived notions. Intuition could be part of the information we admit into our decision-making process.

Being open-minded is not to simply believe something on faith. It has nothing to do with conclusions, only receptivity of information. If I tell you I saw a Yeti, you have two choices - to admit the claim into your thought process and evaluate it as best you can, or to say "Yeti's don't exist, you idiot!" and discontinue any thought about it. The former is open-mindedness, and may or may not yield a conclusive determination; the latter is close-mindedness and yields a conclusion in the absence of adequate information and due consideration.

Yes, sometimes we must make decisions in the absence of sufficient information. But this has nothing to do with open-mindedness. Your friend came to a decision before having adequate information (not placing blame, he simply didn't know). He felt his hand was forced; he had to decide now. And though this is often the case, we will always have the best chance at making a good decision when we take in information openly. Even if that means only having 15% of the relevant information at the time of our decision, it's better than the 7% we would have if we were operating at a less receptive state of consciousness.

I will copy and paste another post here, explaining this idea in a holistic fashion:

The following is a basic primer on the ancient Trivium method of education. It forms the basis for how to think critically and apply sound knowledge in practice. It is comprised of three subjects, each representing a step in this all-important process:

KNOWLEDGE: Also known as "grammar", this step is raw data collection; the input stage. Success in this area is what we call "having on open mind". Contrary to common misconception, an open mind does not mean accepting all opinions as equally valid. It merely means that all information is permitted to pass into the next stage of the process without gaining automatic admittance into our belief system, or being blocked at the door due to preconceived notions.

UNDERSTANDING: Also known as "logic", this is the step of evaluation; the processing stage. Building associations, recognizing patterns, determining validity through reason and logical consistency... This is where we separate wheat from chaff, and decide which ideas are worthy of admitting into our worldview or belief system. It is the process of establishing principles which will guide our behavior.

WISDOM: Also known as "rhetoric", this step is the application of valid conclusions; the output stage. Though many equate the word "wisdom" with deep understanding, it is actually the implementation of that understanding through behavior. This step requires the commitment and courage to act in accordance with our experience and understanding gained in the previous two steps.

Nothing in this post convinces me that this is the way people think, or even should think.


My friend's problem was caused by a bad idea, ie that he should be "open minded" to people and idea, not to reject them due to "preconceived notions".


You will rarely if ever have complete information. You will rarely if ever have time to gather it all, nor to carefully analysis it all.


HIs intuition, which you say, maybe we can include, is the opposite of what you are really looking for, and what you really want to get rid of.


He really needed to be more afraid of the other. THe Other was different in a bad way, a way that made association with them dangerous. Though this was not known until far too late.


You are really being careful to keep this abstract. I understand why you would say you are doing this.


But in reality, that makes it impossible to check your theory.

Well, you can check the validity of the emotional scale by spending some time with it and thinking through some experiences in your own life, the behavioral responses of others, or even hypothetical scenarios; keeping in mind that all human action is motivated by the desire to move from one emotional state to another that is higher. This latter point is fairly obvious with just a little contemplation.

I’m surprised that you would continue to challenge the notion that fear is a mindstate that leads to inhibited decision-making. Survivalists and rescue workers always start with the advice “don’t panic”, “keep your wits about you” and the like. Tyrants have used fear to make people condone behaviors that no rational person would ever allow. In our country we’ve seen power-grabs rooted in fear propaganda and the people let it pass because they fear for their security. It’s a well-known technique of dominators and social engineers.

I’ve tried to explain the nuances as best I can, but it’s difficult to make it all understood when there are so many factors at play, and many areas of investigation that support that understanding. It’s really something you must earnestly investigate for yourself. I’ve just submitted the idea for your review.

The colloquial usage of “open-mindedness” is what you’re talking about in your friend’s case, but I’ve explained the difference between that and what I’m talking about here. To say that having an open mind is dangerous, in this context, means that it’s better to have less information than more. How can this ever be the case?

You’re implying that waiting until you have more information could be dangerous, but the timing of the decision is not addressed in the notion of an open mind. That’s a separate consideration. Intuition is information, and just how heavily it should be weighted is something the individual must decide, perhaps based on past track record. Preconceived notions can be valuable, but should not prohibit one from taking in new information on a particular topic entirely. They are just another piece of information to be added into the mix during the new evaluation of an old topic.