A Rather Trite Question...

[keith99]

I think hate burns a bit too strong to last. Fear can last a lifetime...fear of being dead, old, ugly, alone...and on and on.

You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who hates for long...let alone a lifetime. Even without any change, it fades all on it's own.

I was thinking rather the opposite. Fear fades when the thing to be feared is not present. Hate will keep burning even if the thing hated is exterminated.

 

[TheyCallMeDavid]

What is the most powerful human emotion and why? Please think this over and don't give me an answer that appeals to your particular viewpoint of mankind....

I'm going with fear. Few emotions have such immediacy and crippling effects. We love stories where it's overcome for similar reasons. When properly applied, I can't think of another emotion capable of pushing so many in the same direction.

I personally dont think fear is it since that can be managed even at the time it may be occuring. Sometimes a profound fear occuring causes ordinary people to launch into incredible feats of strength, resolve, and to do something against all odds and danger.

My answer to the question is : Ongoing deep hatred. This is something that just keeps on getting more n more profound often until an extremely irrational/dangerous outburst occurs whether verbally or by action. When the cork blows...it is completely unpredicatable what might occur --- even the Perp. going into a Grade School and fatally shooting the most defenseless and innocent of human beings.

 

[Gottservant]

That's why hatred is dangerous.

It is powerful, you cannot trust someone not to abuse that.

But even the most hateful person, still needs to be reminded they are powerful.

 

[Ana the Ist]

That's because it's powerful, which is the question.

You are asking which is the longest lasting emotion.

I think we need to define what we mean by power.

Well even on the individual level...in terms of immediacy...I don't think hate comes close to fear.

There are expressions like "paralyzed by fear" which is actually something that can happen. I've never heard of being "paralyzed by hate".

 

[Gottservant]

Well even on the individual level...in terms of immediacy...I don't think hate comes close to fear.

There are expressions like "paralyzed by fear" which is actually something that can happen. I've never heard of being "paralyzed by hate".

Darn! I tried to find this video of a guy with schizophrenia who was basically paralyzed by hate, but I couldn't find it (after ten pages). You could move his limbs around and he would stay completely still, then, if you stopped moving his limbs, he would just stay completely still. Total ignorance about his own self-control, that's the power of hate.

A person paralyzed by fear is gradually getting sick with the fear until they panic and run, but someone paralyzed by hate could just stay that way forever.

 

[bhsmte]

I've seen love overcome fear, for example a parent risking their life to rescue a child. So I'm going to have to say love.

The driving emotion could also have been; fear of losing the child.

 

[Gottservant]

The driving emotion could also have been; fear of losing the child.

See now this is why this question is interesting.

Which is the correct emotion for rescuing a child?

Does fear mean you rescue them sooner, or that you overreact?
Does love mean that you try immediately, or that you try just enough?

In my opinion if you hate the child, there is room to like different things about them, by using your hate to create control over your emotions. So when the child is in danger, you immediately respond with fear, but then you respond to what you like about the child, so as to keep from overreacting. The child may never feel love, but they will always be disciplined and safe.

 

[bhsmte]

See now this is why this question is interesting.

Which is the correct emotion for rescuing a child?

Does fear mean you rescue them sooner, or that you overreact?
Does love mean that you try immediately, or that you try just enough?

In my opinion if you hate the child, there is room to like different things about them, by using your hate to create control over your emotions. So when the child is in danger, you immediately respond with fear, but then you respond to what you like about the child, so as to keep from overreacting. The child may never feel love, but they will always be disciplined and safe.

From a physiological standpoint, extreme fear releases powerful hormones that can enable a person to perform physical capabilities they would otherwise not be capable of.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Darn! I tried to find this video of a guy with schizophrenia who was basically paralyzed by hate, but I couldn't find it (after ten pages). You could move his limbs around and he would stay completely still, then, if you stopped moving his limbs, he would just stay completely still. Total ignorance about his own self-control, that's the power of hate.

A person paralyzed by fear is gradually getting sick with the fear until they panic and run, but someone paralyzed by hate could just stay that way forever.

Sorry...if someone needs to be mentally ill to have a similar physiological effect as someone healthy...then we can hardly call the emotion of the mentally ill more powerful. Besides, what you're describing sounds more like catatonic schizophrenia, which to my knowledge has nothing to do with hate at all.

 

[shawnavery]

What is the most powerful human emotion and why? Please think this over and don't give me an answer that appeals to your particular viewpoint of mankind....

I'm going with fear. Few emotions have such immediacy and crippling effects. We love stories where it's overcome for similar reasons. When properly applied, I can't think of another emotion capable of pushing so many in the same direction.

Rather trite indeed

John 3:16

 

[Ana the Ist]

From a physiological standpoint, extreme fear releases powerful hormones that can enable a person to perform physical capabilities they would otherwise not be capable of.

Also tunnel vision, auditory exclusion...among other things.

 

[bhsmte]

Also tunnel vision, auditory exclusion...among other things.

Yep, you are in the "zone".

 

[juvenissun]

That's so true.

"One may fear all the time, but is able to live a normal life"

Is that possibly because a life is inherently directed by fear? A child afraid of the dark. A child learning from fear of a scolding. A teenager afraid to ask out a girl. A man afraid to ask for a raise. A woman afraid of being alone. Etc etc etc.

A life of fear can certainly be "normal" in all appearances...

How many times have you truly loved?

This must mean emotional love.

If so, I try not to do it. I don't like emotion. Because I know emotion is powerful and it usually makes you to do something not right. As a result, I can not answer your question in the OP. All emotions are equally powerful.

 

[xTx]

What is the most powerful human emotion and why? Please think this over and don't give me an answer that appeals to your particular viewpoint of mankind....

I'm going with fear. Few emotions have such immediacy and crippling effects. We love stories where it's overcome for similar reasons. When properly applied, I can't think of another emotion capable of pushing so many in the same direction.

Hunger & tired. We get hungry & tired. Therefore we must make sure we work to fill our hungry bellies and work to have a decent place to rest in.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Hunger & tired. We get hungry & tired. Therefore we must make sure we work to fill our hungry bellies and work to have a decent place to rest in.

To my knowledge...hunger and tiredness are purely physiological responses

 

[GodsGirlToday61]

I don't want to read any other posts because I'll fall into someone else's thought stream on this...

You said, 'human emotion' linking a 'powerful feeling' that, as I understand this question, has to stand either separate or above other animal responses, i.e. what we understand--limited, to be sure--that animals feel as emotion; or put another way, if an animal can feel it, do I rule out those which I can as well--thinking as I go along--that if my cat, Zooker feels, for instance, 'fear' and reacts... and so do I--feel fear, and react, then I cross that off my list as either being 'animal instinct', a part of the human makeup that is animal in nature, or as involving thought--to separate me (in my own mind, as a human?) from lower animals, and therefore no longer simply what you asked:

What is the most powerful human emotion?

I'm going to cross off all those that animals and my animal self--the lower self--feel (fear is out); need in an animal we often call love or lust or some other name to indicate our superiority, but I don't see it that way, and I'm answering 'as' one human being about what I take to be 'human emotion', so...

Demote
emote

Human not animal or only animal:

Highest has to be:

Compassion: It is deeper, it is higher, it comes from what I think of as spiritual evolution; when we lose it, we are temporarily or permanently (if that is possible) devolved, back to animal 'only'; back to pure reaction and instinct (for those who see animals as incapable of reasoning):

Compassion, for me, is the most powerful 'human' emotion.

No other animal that I am aware of--and I don't play 'Let's Google it and use a lot of razzle-dazzle verbiage to 'cite')--is capable of feeling (always presupposes, this 'compassion' does) that I have reasoned to some extent about whoever (solo person) or those (entire group) I feel sorry for (not pity, not 'looking down upon') going through a certain experience, having a particular rough stretch:

The examples don't matter as much as this:

Genuine compassion must be rooted in self-love.

I can only love another (I am talking about something other than 'attraction'; other than lust; other than 'need' of a child, at a child level...); I can only feel compassion, which is a component of, or a particular feeling that grows out of the kind of awareness of my own self as mattering in a divine sense, and by divine, I mean:

Not utilitarian; not 'what is in it for me'; not some abstract programming I can spit out to enhance a false sense of my own worth as something like 'a good person...', you know, 'a good person feels compassion; I can't bear not to be seen as a good person, so I feel compassion, I say I do!.'

No: Actual compassion means I have to have an honest sense, to the extent possible, of when I am not; how I am not feeling compassionate:

I may or I may not have the 'authority' in a particular situation to alleviate someone's suffering 'based on the compassion I feel' but whether I do or do not have this authority, I feel a kinship, a caring likened to what I feel for myself...

It isn't something most human beings feel often, deeply--or perhaps even recognize as having a divine source, that 'being made in God's image' aspect, and again, to be clear, I am not talking 'religion' in the debased sense, you know, I go to church; I sing hymns with 'love lyrics' in them, et cetera.

No.

I see someone suffering = I care and as it was written of Jesus (and I'm sure there are other examples, similar enough), 'He groaned in his spirit.'

In his spirit.

Not an animal aspect to this compassion as I am defining, working out what that word means to me, and it is most powerful of all precisely because it comes from The Ground of Being that links us all, and to the extent that I feel that, I am in touch, for no matter how short a time, with that Ground; with my own and other's Being (not doing); with Being.

~ Carolyn

 

[Ana the Ist]

I don't want to read any other posts because I'll fall into someone else's thought stream on this...

You said, 'human emotion' linking a 'powerful feeling' that, as I understand this question, has to stand either separate or above other animal responses, i.e. what we understand--limited, to be sure--that animals feel as emotion; or put another way, if an animal can feel it, do I rule out those which I can as well--thinking as I go along--that if my cat, Zooker feels, for instance, 'fear' and reacts... and so do I--feel fear, and react, then I cross that off my list as either being 'animal instinct', a part of the human makeup that is animal in nature, or as involving thought--to separate me (in my own mind, as a human?) from lower animals, and therefore no longer simply what you asked:

What is the most powerful human emotion?

I'm going to cross off all those that animals and my animal self--the lower self--feel (fear is out); need in an animal we often call love or lust or some other name to indicate our superiority, but I don't see it that way, and I'm answering 'as' one human being about what I take to be 'human emotion', so...

Demote
emote

Human not animal or only animal:

Highest has to be:

Compassion: It is deeper, it is higher, it comes from what I think of as spiritual evolution; when we lose it, we are temporarily or permanently (if that is possible) devolved, back to animal 'only'; back to pure reaction and instinct (for those who see animals as incapable of reasoning):

Compassion, for me, is the most powerful 'human' emotion.

No other animal that I am aware of--and I don't play 'Let's Google it and use a lot of razzle-dazzle verbiage to 'cite')--is capable of feeling (always presupposes, this 'compassion' does) that I have reasoned to some extent about whoever (solo person) or those (entire group) I feel sorry for (not pity, not 'looking down upon') going through a certain experience, having a particular rough stretch:

The examples don't matter as much as this:

Genuine compassion must be rooted in self-love.

I can only love another (I am talking about something other than 'attraction'; other than lust; other than 'need' of a child, at a child level...); I can only feel compassion, which is a component of, or a particular feeling that grows out of the kind of awareness of my own self as mattering in a divine sense, and by divine, I mean:

Not utilitarian; not 'what is in it for me'; not some abstract programming I can spit out to enhance a false sense of my own worth as something like 'a good person...', you know, 'a good person feels compassion; I can't bear not to be seen as a good person, so I feel compassion, I say I do!.'

No: Actual compassion means I have to have an honest sense, to the extent possible, of when I am not; how I am not feeling compassionate:

I may or I may not have the 'authority' in a particular situation to alleviate someone's suffering 'based on the compassion I feel' but whether I do or do not have this authority, I feel a kinship, a caring likened to what I feel for myself...

It isn't something most human beings feel often, deeply--or perhaps even recognize as having a divine source, that 'being made in God's image' aspect, and again, to be clear, I am not talking 'religion' in the debased sense, you know, I go to church; I sing hymns with 'love lyrics' in them, et cetera.

No.

I see someone suffering = I care and as it was written of Jesus (and I'm sure there are other examples, similar enough), 'He groaned in his spirit.'

In his spirit.

Not an animal aspect to this compassion as I am defining, working out what that word means to me, and it is most powerful of all precisely because it comes from The Ground of Being that links us all, and to the extent that I feel that, I am in touch, for no matter how short a time, with that Ground; with my own and other's Being (not doing); with Being.

~ Carolyn

While I appreciate the thought you've put into it, all I meant by human emotion is emotions that humans feel. I don't really understand how you could rule out emotions animals feel, or are capable of feeling, since that is an unknown. I mean certainly, even if you had never seen an animal act out of compassion...how could you know they don't feel it? For example, one animal observing another in pain.

Btw, I'm fairly certain that if you were to watch orangutans for any length of time you'd abandon the notion that they don't feel compassion. Their range of emotion seems remarkably human-like.

 

[GodsGirlToday61]

You'd have to reread what I wrote, 'closely' because I didn't write what you think you read into it. And I've found that when someone comes prepared to 'debate', and not go back and reread, look for the meaning of parens, commas, ellipses, and so much more... plus 'assumes' that I have never closely watched animals; that I think this or that about them that, again, you read into the post--it isn't there... There is no point in my trying to further 'discussion' because debate? That's where it's at these days--on this forum and elsewhere, plus 'atta-boys' for those whose icons match (doesn't matter what gets asserted, it's way to go--my cohort):

But there are always one or two (they even write to me), once in a while, to say, 'I understood you to mean... Did you?' and 'I thought you meant such and such', and it turns out they did read what I actually wrote, and asked me, rather than told me, what I have experienced through observation and so on.

I had a story to share, real one of course, about a male cat that let a female nurse him--no milk but it soothed her...

And I made observations, and have experience, and can make an educated guess on some of what was going on in that arrangement, but you know what?

I'll save it for the right thread, and it isn't this one.

~ Carolyn

P.S. I have watched orangs, for hours upon hours... and you have no idea what I think about any orang's capacity for compassion--let alone, say, a particular one I observed--as I never mentioned orangs in my post, so I couldn't have shared in detail... my experience and 'powerful emotional response' as I watched, remembered, wrote and otherwise shared about it. (It was clear, if you read what I wrote without getting ready for debate, dismissal, that within what I wrote, I had to 'choose', and based on that choice, I wrote as I did, but someone not spoiling for 'dismissal' of a post would not assume that going in one direction, in one post, meant that person was incapable of heading in another direction, in a different post--based, in part--on the OP, which had the word 'trite' in it, so a treatise; no, I didn't write one of those, here--especially not one as though I were skating in a room full of cognitive ball-bearings; maneuvering with that kind of skill wasn't expected, nor executed...

 

[Ana the Ist]

You'd have to reread what I wrote, 'closely' because I didn't write what you think you read into it. And I've found that when someone comes prepared to 'debate', and not go back and reread, look for the meaning of parens, commas, ellipses, and so much more... plus 'assumes' that I have never closely watched animals; that I think this or that about them that, again, you read into the post--it isn't there... There is no point in my trying to further 'discussion' because debate? That's where it's at these days--on this forum and elsewhere, plus 'atta-boys' for those whose icons match (doesn't matter what gets asserted, it's way to go--my cohort):

But there are always one or two (they even write to me), once in a while, to say, 'I understood you to mean... Did you?' and 'I thought you meant such and such', and it turns out they did read what I actually wrote, and asked me, rather than told me, what I have experienced through observation and so on.

I had a story to share, real one of course, about a male cat that let a female nurse him--no milk but it soothed her...

And I made observations, and have experience, and can make an educated guess on some of what was going on in that arrangement, but you know what?

I'll save it for the right thread, and it isn't this one.

~ Carolyn

P.S. I have watched orangs, for hours upon hours... and you have no idea what I think about any orang's capacity for compassion--let alone, say, a particular one I observed--as I never mentioned orangs in my post, so I couldn't have shared in detail... my experience and 'powerful emotional response' as I watched, remembered, wrote and otherwise shared about it. (It was clear, if you read what I wrote without getting ready for debate, dismissal, that within what I wrote, I had to 'choose', and based on that choice, I wrote as I did, but someone not spoiling for 'dismissal' of a post would not assume that going in one direction, in one post, meant that person was incapable of heading in another direction, in a different post--based, in part--on the OP, which had the word 'trite' in it, so a treatise; no, I didn't write one of those, here--especially not one as though I were skating in a room full of cognitive ball-bearings; maneuvering with that kind of skill wasn't expected, nor executed...

You know what??? You're right....I didn't read the entire thing. In fact, I started skimming through your post at about this point...

"No other animal that I am aware of--and I don't play 'Let's Google it and use a lot of razzle-dazzle verbiage to 'cite')--is capable of feeling (always presupposes, this 'compassion' does) that I have reasoned to some extent about whoever (solo person) or those (entire group) I feel sorry for (not pity, not 'looking down upon') going through a certain experience, having a particular rough stretch:"

Go ahead and take a second look at it and see if you can guess why. It has nothing to do with content...everything to do with the way you write. I understand the desire to write as you think, I'm certainly guilty of that, but what you posted there is some sort of incomprehensible grammatical mish-mash to me. I really have no idea what you're saying there.

Still, I don't think I entirely missed your point. You think "true" compassion derives from something spiritual, which to an atheist is entirely insulting. The underlying tone there, whether intended or not, is that "I" being entirely without anything spiritual, am somehow less than "you" the spirit-filled being capable of compassion.

Considering this, you should be grateful all I really did was point out that you didn't answer my question.

 

[GodsGirlToday61]

Ana the 1st:

I'm quoting a passage from a book; a brief quote:

Rules For Talking Back

When we talk back, we want to do more than just "share our feelings" or opinions. That is childish; that is just "getting it out", "getting it off our chest." We want not just to get something out but to get something in: the truth. We want not just to "express our opinion but to be impressed by the truth. We want not just to externalize what is inside but to internalize what is outside; to learn the truth, to find out [insert X, what one wants to find out]. That is, if we are honest.

There are only three ways to refute any argument. This is not negotiable, conventional, or changeable, not the man-made roles of a man-made game. This situation is inherent in the structure of reason itself. Aristotle did not invent it; God did.

An argument--any argument--has three ingredients, and any of of these three ingredients can be defective. But there are only these three. An argument is composed of propositions, statements, sentences. These in turn are composed of terms (words or phrases). An argument is built of these building blocks, just like a physical building. Its propositions are like sto[ry]s, just like a physical building. Its propositions are like storys, and its terms are like rooms.

Each argument is a three-story building (if it is a syllogism, the natural and most usual form of argument and the form we find in Ecclesiastes).

The storys are called two "premises" and "one conclusion". The conclusion is like the top story; it is where the building goes. Each story has two rooms, called the "subject term" and the "predicate term". Thus a syllogistic argument looks like this... (I'll represent the author's diagram as best I can):

Subject = Predicate
Conclusion

Subject = Predicate
The Second Premise

Subject = Predicate
The First Premise

***

There are three things that must go right with any argument:

1. The terms must be unambiguous.
2. The premises must be true.
3. The argument must be logical.

Thus there are three things that can go wrong with any argument:

1. The terms may be ambiguous
2. The premises may be false.
3. The argument may be illogical.

***

I'll stop there with the quote, which is from Three Philosophies of Life by Peter Kreeft (professor of philosophy at Boston College. He is the author of ... )

***

Now, for my first mistake?

Continuing to move 'forward', into the Thread, after reading its title.

The thread title indicated 'loose and broad' question; no argument, so I made a second mistake and went inside and read the OP (post, not poster); again, so loose/broad, no argument, and I made my third mistake by trying to 'create' a 'more snug, narrower' and therefore 'answer to an argument never made'.

I did not expect, however foolish my attempt to answer a non-argument; I did not expect to have a poster, any poster, i.e. person make assumptions about what I've done in my entire life or failed to do concerning an animal the OP didn't 'present an argument concerning'; I did not expect a poster, i.e. a person, of any religious or non-religious affiliation to project his/her mental activity concerning what s/he couldn't know about me, into my own.

As I don't attack CF members (go read an adequate sampling of m posts on this forum; heck, read 'em all, every line--find an 'attack' of mine? I'll claim it).

I didn't insult 'atheists' as I wasn't writing about my personal experience 'to' any, let alone 'all' atheists, as I would, as the individual that I am, be guilty of demeaning myself and therefore the 'any' or 'all' I judged and condemned to the cookie-cutter-bureau drawer.

I don't write for 'any' or 'all' Christians. I write as one among many, and I have read numerous posts on CF in which a Christian broadcasts, tars-n-feathers, and otherwise demeans his own denom; another's sect; attacks an atheist, agnostic (keep going...), and by my moral standards; by the Christian code I try to live by?

It's unacceptable for 'me' to demean another human being, and the Authority I look to for what 'demean' means is GOD.

I've known numerous atheists through the years. I even spent a few years trying to shoe-horn my mind into that bureau drawer, using 'atheist' as defined, far as I could make out, by Christians... though once I became better educated, I realized that one can never pinpoint the exact moment, or give credit/blame (depending on whether one feels the need for one or the either) for a particular label making its way through popular culture, gaining currency, its value being raised and lowered by this group or that, during a particular point in history vs. another, and so on...

Compare the point in the last paragraph to the word, Christian: I recently read a so-called reliable source which claims that pagans, i.e. Greeks, approximately 50 years after Jesus of Nazareth's death, began referring to followers of him as followers of Krestos, and the term Christian grew from there.

***

Ana the 1st?

I don't know you. In person? We might get along; on paper, clearly not so well, at least not in this thread, and only in part because of how each of us responded to the loose and broadly phrased thread heading...

I want to say two things more, and only two things:

1) I'm sorry I came in (I already explained the errors in logic/logistics); I'm sorry I came in to the Philosophy area at all, because I had a sense--since reinforced, that some who fly under the atheist banner feel that this area of the CF is one of the few in which they can post with 'some' freedom as they define it, and so I should have, from a position of fair play, stayed away.

2) I'm sorry I came in because I was so exhausted, and as it turned out, so irritable because of physical pain, that I was bound to post sub-par (by my standards) and in unfamiliar territory (a sub-forum frequented by those who are strangers to me), I felt too vulnerable, defensive, childish.

3) I'm sorry I 'acted on' while exhausted and referred to the thread title, to a particular word, 'trite' as being a red flag (gist of what I said, as I recall) because that word wasn't 'the' word that tipped me off I should back out, and go do some yoga; lie with my legs up the wall, take a hot bath--do anything soothing... rather than thoughtlessly shoot off a reaction, not a response, while needing to quiet, not excite an already over-excited nervous system

I'm sorry because I am capable of better; and you, as a fellow human being, deserving of the best I can share--and the post before this one was surely not in the ballpark of what I aim as a disciple of Jesus Christ, to offer to other persons--on or off CF.

***

I am unsubscribing from this thread as soon as I hit Submit Reply; I'll work on increasing--especially 'late night'--self-discipline, in part by staying away from an General Philosophy.

~ Carolyn

P.S. Well-intentioned PMs, or dropping by for a visit, are welcome via my Home Page or whatever it's called. But hey? Let's be smart and make any contact before, say, 4:00P.M. I'm humble enough to say I'm sorry--and getting better at it with practice, but if necessity is the mother of invention, she needs the balance of father time...