honorentheos wrote:I hope you don't mind if I consolidate your post above and my additional thoughts below?
As a matter of fact, I do mind! (Ha! Just doing a little self-experiment about the OP)
Your first question above is interesting: Does a person’s approach or beliefs "impact/influence (the) emotional responses" themselves?
I don't know if there is a significant difference, but I see it this way and maybe you can tell me if it matches up to how you see it:
Based on the current evidence, I believe these emotional responses are very primitive and survival based. They predate the evolution of our higher cognitive abilities by millennia and are very refined because they've worked very well in helping our ancestors (across the interspecies divide) survive to pass on their genes. If I am angered, feel hate, or feel fear it's natural and expected given there must be something in the environment causing this to happen. BUT, and it's a big but, because I recognize that it's primitive I can try to refocus on using higher levels of thought in order to take control of the primitive, if you will, to try and assess how valid the threat really is. Should I really be angry, should I really be feeling aggressive towards someone? Is there really something to fear here? Or is it (for example) just internet stuff and a push of a button from going away?
So in a sense, I think of this as a "vertical" issue: there are higher and lower ways to respond to stimuli and if I try I can occasionally interrupt the primitive process in order to choose a way I think is better. A “more excellent way”, maybe, to use a term from scripture. Or Bill and Teds. :)
That said, I admit that having a religious past has helped create the narrative for what these higher responses should look like and I still fall back on this today. I'm not sure what that means. Serenity in the midst of conflict, integrity in the midst of pressure, seeking the good or godly in the person I am interacting with even if I am feeling angry with them - all of these still have at least some root in my LDS upbringing, though much augmented by study of other religious traditions now. So that leads to interesting questions that I think you posed above as well. Why DO some people with similar backgrounds respond to the same stimuli in different ways? Perhaps it’s because our backgrounds are more diverse than can be synthesized into tidy explanations that fit into nice little boxes? Despite being more atheist than theist today, I think my response is not grounded in pure atheism (whatever that means. Another topic perhaps). When I do better at elevating my thoughts and subsequent action, I think my response to people is grounded in trying to see something divine or love-worthy in others. When I'm less successful, it's usually when I'm most "me" focused in a survival sense. I've given control to the primitive. Does that require religion? I don’t know because I can’t say based on my own life experience.
Really, really interesting post, honor.
Thoughts?
Still thinking!
For clarity and mutual understand to discuss/share further:
I did not bring the Darwinian Evolutionary Process into this discussion (One reason being that I don't believe it....don't worry about your concern to belittle). I also did not make reference to it because I do not believe (although I am giving it further consideration as we speak) that personal beliefs, no matter what they happen to be, have significant impact/influence on human beings displaying angst, anger, vitriol toward one another (perhaps it does have some impact/influence?).
As far as the part of your contribution concerning how these emotional responses come from our distant ancestors who survived to pass these genes on to us, across the interspecies divide...........................well, I'll simply and only reply by saying that this was something that I never even considered would be in this thread when I wrote the OP.
Peace and thanks for the deep thoughts, friend
Ceeboo
