For many people thoughts of violence are a useful way of dealing with unpleasant emotions or desires, freeing them to act more positively. Do you think that’s a bad thing?
There are two levels on which to answer that question.
First the societal level. I think there a good chance that a society with 2200 AD levels of technology will collapse when it has a significant level of those people around.
Secondly the personal level. I rather spend 20 minutes meditating and let a unpleasant emotion process itself than act it out in violence.
I think that there are cases where it might be preferable for an individual to act out his anger when the alternative is apathy. Allowing anger to manifest itself might be a step upwards from suppressing all of your emotions.
On the other hand a person who resonates at a level of love and kindness is more happy than a person who’s driven by anger.
I do think that it’s useful to do the mental practice that allows you to stay at a level of love and kindness regardless of what life throws at you.
As far as my own level of functioning goes, there are cases where I have automatic reactions towards pressure that put me in a state of apathy that produces akrasia. Those resolve mostly about situations that are unclear.
If anger comes up in such a situation I might go with it because it causes me to take action with might break akrasia.
If I do have concrete emotions that I don’t consider useful and which are not behind some ugh-field that prevents me from accessing them, I don’t have any trouble with just releasing those emotions. I don’t need act them out to free myself from them.
To go back to the society level, it would be good if we could teach sensible strategies for emotional management on the school level that don’t require people to act out in violence when the want to free themselves from some emotion that they find unpleasant.
On that note I like the CFAR post of Julia Galef where she makes the point that dealing with emotions is an important topic for CFAR.
I’m not talking about acting violently, except in a very rarefied sense. I’m talking about thinking about it, playing games or the like. It seemed like you were objecting not just to violent actions but also to violent thoughts.
If you spend your time playing games because of your anger you aren’t even using it as a resource to get in the direction of moving in a productive direction. Playing games is often a form of escapism. You could spent elsewhere more efficiently.
On the other hand if you can’t motivate yourself do to sport but find that if you go into your anger you can funnel that into playing American football, that might be a step in the right direction.
For many people thoughts of violence are a useful way of dealing with unpleasant emotions or desires, freeing them to act more positively. Do you think that’s a bad thing?
There are two levels on which to answer that question.
First the societal level. I think there a good chance that a society with 2200 AD levels of technology will collapse when it has a significant level of those people around.
Secondly the personal level. I rather spend 20 minutes meditating and let a unpleasant emotion process itself than act it out in violence.
I think that there are cases where it might be preferable for an individual to act out his anger when the alternative is apathy. Allowing anger to manifest itself might be a step upwards from suppressing all of your emotions. On the other hand a person who resonates at a level of love and kindness is more happy than a person who’s driven by anger.
I do think that it’s useful to do the mental practice that allows you to stay at a level of love and kindness regardless of what life throws at you.
As far as my own level of functioning goes, there are cases where I have automatic reactions towards pressure that put me in a state of apathy that produces akrasia. Those resolve mostly about situations that are unclear. If anger comes up in such a situation I might go with it because it causes me to take action with might break akrasia.
If I do have concrete emotions that I don’t consider useful and which are not behind some ugh-field that prevents me from accessing them, I don’t have any trouble with just releasing those emotions. I don’t need act them out to free myself from them.
To go back to the society level, it would be good if we could teach sensible strategies for emotional management on the school level that don’t require people to act out in violence when the want to free themselves from some emotion that they find unpleasant.
On that note I like the CFAR post of Julia Galef where she makes the point that dealing with emotions is an important topic for CFAR.
I’m not talking about acting violently, except in a very rarefied sense. I’m talking about thinking about it, playing games or the like. It seemed like you were objecting not just to violent actions but also to violent thoughts.
If you spend your time playing games because of your anger you aren’t even using it as a resource to get in the direction of moving in a productive direction. Playing games is often a form of escapism. You could spent elsewhere more efficiently.
On the other hand if you can’t motivate yourself do to sport but find that if you go into your anger you can funnel that into playing American football, that might be a step in the right direction.