Feelings

Feeling Versus Thought

How we feel about something has nothing to do with how to accomplish/fix/help

How we feel about something does help to motivate us to respond

Our response has the best possibility of success if:

A   We feel something when exposed to it

B   We suppress our own feelings (personal prejudice) and rationalize the issue

C   We then meld the reality of the issue with how we feel about it

D   Decide the best action plan that is rational to the point you can live with it

People are subject to nature.  Nature can help or hinder us in many ways.  Our “human” nature is no exception.

The truth is a concept we have lost touch with.  Here are some trends that contribute to this:

1 We “feel” so intensely and instantaneously when reading or hearing any voice, headline or sound bite.  This blocks the rational thought that MUST temper our feelings.  Truth is NOT a feeling!

2 Why are we so reactive to stimulus in this era?  We have been conditioned.  Probably not intentionally at first anyway.  Smart people can see things ahead of and differently than the masses.  There are smart people!  We need to learn what they know!

3 The Information Age.  The wondrous cataloguing of knowledge and art has been overshadowed by the incredible masses who are losing the drive for “real” experiences. 

4 Playing physical games like “tag” outside has been replaced with watching others do it online.

5 The imagination required to bring the pages of a book alive or fill in the missing parts to an older cheesy movie is waning.

6 Money.  Power.  Pretty much have gone hand in hand for as long as man has walked the planet.

For us to have a chance to begin our journey to thinking correctly we need to understand how money and power influence our world and the sensory input we are fed 24 hours a day 7 days a week!

OK.  We have all heard this kind of lead before.  It usually signifies the beginning of an attempt to control our feelings (notice I didn’t say thoughts or minds).  This is the exact opposite.

Remember that wherever you get your “facts” from has to stay in operation, so they need to make money.

Businesses of all types, including government and religious groups must have money or they cease to exist.

We are so easily controlled by our emotions that every top notch sales guru has the same message:

Teaching will get you a teacher’s salary…

Entertaining will get you paid like an entertainer…

People buy things because the WANT to…not because of the product necessarily…

If you want to earn a teacher’s pay…TEACH…

If you want to earn like an entertainer…ENTERTAIN!!!!

We have become so accustomed to following our feelings that we believe we THINK what we feel.

The Information Age is not bad.

People are not bad.

We have lost (if we ever had it in the first place) the ability to think correctly.

Balance is key…in just about all things…well all things I can think of anyway!

What is the answer?

Thinking Correctly! 

Truth

Truth

Humans have pondered seemingly unanswerable questions for a long while.  A healthy mind is curious about our surroundings and really wants to know what the heck we are here for?  The “meaning of life” kind of stuff we ponder.  There are a myriad of things we struggle to fully grasp.  Why?  Why do we have  to know?  Equally puzzling is why we seem to never be quite sure of our conclusions!  Probably have some of you questioning that statement.  How many times does a person seek an answer and, failing to fully come to a rational conclusion, accept an explanation they do not fully agree with?  Usually the explanation that makes us feel best for the moment or fits into the box we create to feel safe.  What percentage of what we “know” falls into this category?  Before we start with the well we really don’t “know” anything for sure.  After all we are only human!  Let’s set some ground rules.  Truth and “is” are relative to our understanding of our universe at this point in our personal and our species evolution.  Although science and physics play an integral part, we are focusing on a useful guide for our life, a practical application of organized thought.  The ability to separate our rationality from emotion is essential to the process.  Both are necessary in order for us to come to the best decision taking both our thoughts and feelings into account.  But we can’t deal with both at once!  Although both rational thought and feelings are integral to our humanity, they cloud each other if not adequately separated during the process of coming to any conclusion.  The process is simple.  Completing it is difficult at first.  The formula should be like this.  We are faced with a problem or decision.  Everyone gets an emotional rush when first confronted with most any issue.  Normal enough.  We feel one way or another about it right out of the gate.  Our brain kicks in and we now attempt to rationalize.  What is the most efficient, easiest, best path?  If we have the emotional response still swirling as most do, the thought clouds the feelings and the feelings cloud the thought.  We are left with neither of our tools working at full power.  Actually this problem gets worse as time allows the clouds to obscure the best path for us.  Rationality and emotion continue to struggle for superiority and we are left more and more confused.  This is what we refer to as a “circle of insanity”!  Simply we feel, think, feel and become blinded until we spiral away from the truth.  The answer lies in how we deal with the two biggest advantages humans have over all other creatures.  These are the ability to think logically and check those thoughts against our feelings or code.  We can learn to modify the process a bit in order to avoid the confusion? 

If you want cutting edge science this isn’t it.  Even cutting edge science changes as information is updated.  Thus humans need the update as we learn about ourselves.

In our lives ideally we grow as we age and understand a bit more about our surroundings while defining for ourselves our mission or purpose.  How many folks do you know who have actually followed that formula into their later years?  We certainly were designed to be inquisitive.  The inefficient melding of our thoughts and feelings often results in so much confusion that we retreat into our box.  Many things we would have liked to explore are now just too threatening to the integrity of the box we have trapped ourselves in.  We become fearful of changes to our routine.  We are resistant to modify our beliefs when we have moved on rationally.  This is stifling.  How many truly curious people do you know?  I don’t mean “who sang that song” or “starred in that movie” curious.  The people who want to know how the signal is broadcast and sound comes to our radio when we are driving across the country kind of curious.  When we search for answers we are fulfilled.  This is our instinct.  There are many reasons that we have slowly lost the drive to do this as individuals.  This is a generalization so if you happen to be one of the naturally curious minds, you are part of the great hope for our species.  This is our nature and everyone can rekindle the instinct.  The reasons we struggle to grow in this way lead us down some roads which are uncomfortable to the point most will either run screaming when confronted with the answers or simply not start down them at all. 

We have had certain ideas presented to us in ways meant to help us better understand our world and our place in it.  Schools, Religion, Parents, Government, Corporations, Self-Help Gurus, Scientists and many others have been around in many forms.  Each group has a set of truths they present to people as fact.  One of the first issues we face at a very young age is when we have two or more of these facts contradict each other.  Worse yet is when a “fact” makes no sense to us and we hold in questions we may have. 

Politics

Politics and Religion

Talking about politics or religion.  Here we go.  The two subjects we are taught to avoid in conversation.  Danger lurks so better to leave it alone.   Why?  I can remember my mom handing out this advice regularly to my sister and me.  “When anyone brings up politics or religion, be polite and excuse yourself from the conversation” she would tell us. My dad would nod his head or say something like “listen to your mother that is great advice”.  When I would ask mom for a reason she would tell me that people get very upset and even angry when these subjects are brought up.  Folks get “set in their ways”.  These are subjects most people feel very strongly about and they will protect their feelings fiercely if challenged.  I never understood this explanation but no matter how many times I asked it, or who I asked the answer was always the same.  Everyone I asked knew not to discuss these subjects.  I was as confused as a child can be.  How do you know, grow or learn when discussion and sharing of ideas and perspectives is off the table?  Kids see things literally and this made less than no sense to me.  The simplicity of a child’s mind had the issue solved immediately.  Just don’t get angry!  Talk.  Listen. To me at this point in my young life politics was simply electing people we chose to jobs that kept our country safe and running smoothly.  Religion was how we give thanks to God for the blessings in our life according to my young mind’s impression of what I had been taught.  Atheism and agnostic beliefs were dismissed as views held by short sighted or selfish people who don’t want to adhere to rules.    I hadn’t been exposed to opposing views much if at all.  My parents political and religious views were the only ones I was exposed to so for my young brain they were fact.  Most of us have undoubtedly had similar experiences.   But there was a problem even within this controlled environment.  My parents didn’t share the same religion or beliefs.  Huh?  Ok now I was really confused.  They never discussed or argued about details of religious faith.  They argued about everything it seemed, just not the two taboo subjects.  My dad just was simply not into religion it at all.  My sister and I attended services regularly with mom and even went to private religious schools.  This confused me.  I thought my parents should discuss this issue and come to some sort of adult compromise like we were always being lectured about.  Talk things out don’t fight.  Count to ten.  So many clichés leading to the same conclusion.  Use your brain and don’t let your emotions control you.  Be the bigger person.  All of these pieces of advice could fill a book on their own, but only added to my confusion.

As I grew I always looked back and remembered the advice my mom gave as the inevitable argument ensued when people discussed these issues.  Friendships become strained or lost over the emotional reaction these discussions can evoke.   I remembered but it made just as little sense to me now as it did when I was very young.  This did lead to truths that are the basis for much of the philosophy we are learning today. 

We are born and learn from our experiences.  Not much debate with that premise until we try to quantify how we learn.  Just like the two main views on knowledge, whether the existence of intelligent design (god), or just physics is responsible for our view of the world.  This leads the discussion as to how much our experiences shape us as opposed to our DNA or the knowledge we bring forth as a newborn.  The study of Philosophy hinges on just such a debate.   The age old nature versus nurture debate.  Are we born as essentially a blank slate to be filled by our experiences?  Surely these experiences influence us on many levels.  The real question lies in how much if any influence we bring with us when we leave the embrace of the womb.  Philosophers call this “a priori”!  The definition refers to knowledge derived from theoretical deduction rather than observation and experience.  This would be the sum of what is brought forth without physical experience.  There is an exercise taught in basic Philosophy class regarding this issue.  It is explained that this is simply a mental exercise due to the inhumane nature of actually trying it.  The student is instructed to imagine a person born in the darkest cave with no light whatsoever.  The ambient temperature and all other environmental factors are controlled to provide as little sensory input as possible.  If this human were to be kept in this place apart from learning from their senses for years, what would they know or believe when removed from this environment and placed in the outside world?   Think of someone who came out as a five year old or ten or twenty five.  What would they “think”?  Would their mind be relatively blank or filled with the fruits of an active imagination?  Is imagination learned and sparked by the constant input we receive through our senses or it simply a function of the complexity of our intellect?   Interesting to think of but troubling when we are searching for truth.  It has to make us wonder how to define this truth we say we are searching for if we are not even sure how we come to our feelings about things.  There is only one formula to define our own path to truth.  What it is we need to define, is a singular destination.  What ‘is’ must be established.  Now for the first step.  Truth is what “is”.  What does that even mean?

Meanings of the word truth tend to break the cardinal rule of defining a word.  Most contain the word itself, truth.  The one we will use for the duration of this discussion is “being in accord with fact or reality”.  Perceived facts and versions of reality abound and we will define how to establish guidelines for our purpose.  If our defined objective is to learn to think correctly we need defined parameters.  So the definition of truth needs a bit of additional explanation.  We need to realize that we have progressed as a species in what we understand in our now.  In other words, our studies have uncovered many things unknown to a person living say 500 years ago.  It is amazing how much more we know  in our now that someone living 10 years, 1 year, even one month before this moment.  New discoveries shed light on alternative ways of seeing our world.  So we need to agree that our accepted truth for the physical world anyway, is based on what we know in our now. 

Establishing what we know in this moment is critical in our process.  Equally important is that we accept that this truth may be fluid or open to modification as we learn.  Time to reflect a bit.  We know that many factors must be organized rationally if we hope to follow a clear path to any objective.  Like any skill worth practicing our path is loaded with danger and distraction.  Staying focused on our objective while following the formula of using rational thought, then adding our feelings as checks and balances is the only way to avoid them.  It is common to use self-induced confusion as a smoke screen allowing us to follow urges and chase instant gratification.  The pursuit of this quick fix style of appeasing our emotions must be controlled or our goals pale and fade.

Back to the newborn.  Whether or not you are a spiritual person or not, the question as to knowledge being brought with us as we enter this world as a conscious being is crucial.  Knowledge “a priori” meaning in our case what we “know” at birth, is called by some philosophers the “original” sin spoken of by some religions.  Others call it our consciousness or chi.  Regardless of your spiritual beliefs it is absolutely necessary to understand this in a way that is useful.  Animals are born with instincts.  Humans are too.  Somewhere along the line we have lost the ability to be conscious of these.  We aren’t talking about knowing them.  Being conscious and knowing are not always the same thing.

When I was a young boy I remember being faced with simple choices and wondering what to do.  We all have this experience daily many times.  Children seem to have a streamlined view of their circumstances making their choices considerably easier for them the younger they are.  The small child will weigh all of the options.  Pee or poop, got to go so let it fly.  Hungry, scream as loud as possible until someone puts food in my mouth.  Both of these reactions are natural and are instinctual to the newborn.  Most mammals have similar instincts.  So why do other mammals retain the instincts intact while we seem to complicate the most basic of ours?  A great example of this is peeing.  We all have to do it, all mammals.  As we grow older even this simple task becomes more complex.  Our social consciousness dictates that we use incorporate modesty, hygiene and other rules specific to a location or group when relieving ourselves.  Issues can arise from this