What are emotions?
Why did they evolve and what purpose do they serve?
What differentiates a “good” emotion from a “bad” one?
I think of them as special signals influenced by our thoughts designed to show us ourselves. They also influence our thoughts.
Oh wait, a minute, I have it. I’m cheating of course.(back to the other discussion) 
They are tools to advance our survival…which they are capable of doing because they make us more self-aware in the moment if we pay attention to these tools and treat them as the signposts which they are.
Survival of the species, sex, love …procreation…the capacity to follow our bliss…and one you can’t recognize…the dirty word to you, transcendence…I suppose one might even say they serve the purpose of over-population…hatred and rage have the effect of destroying human life.
Nothing if we see something in them that is useful for us. Maybe I’m wrong there. I think the way in which we act on our emotions, allow them to influence us is the differentiating factor.
Emotions are how we experience life. They are, in other words, what make life worth living.
That’s not exactly the whole story is it…? That’s the Mills and Boons version.
Uh, lessee…they’re adaptive problem solving mechanisms. Does reading that make you feel contented? Right? Loved by the universe?
Uh, to solve repetitive problems occurring throughout a species’ evolutionary history?
To establish a rigid hierarchy of superiority between white men and those that are perceived as ‘others’ (e.g., women, people of different ethnic/racial origin, actual goats vs. half-man/half-goats)?
Depends.
Ask a neuroscientist
Ask an evolutionary biologist
Ask a 5-year-old
Ask an evolutionary psychologist
Ask an anthropologist
Ask a 16-year-old (if you dare)
Ask a sociologist
Ask an 80-year-old
Ask a poet
Everybody’s got a different answer to your question, Little One. You get to pick (well, within the bounds of your perceived agency).
Projecting much?
Indifference is power, as it reflects reality. Care signifies weakness, as it reflects an opposition to it.
Look around you, dear…does light, warmth, life require fort (energy) or does darkness, cold and lifelessness?
So power is not absolute…it is a measurement of weakness, need, caring. Yours is evident.
Others does not mean only in reference to your New Age liberalism dear.
Even you “selfless”, “open”, liberal, progressives (a misnomer given that I’ve explained how your version of “progressiveness” is simply a surrender to the status quo and is, in fact the true conservation of what is - “emptiness”, dear, just happens), and so even you open, minded liberalism, I say depends on intolerance, discrimination and walls to think.
You wouldn’t be alive otherwise. If you would be truly open, as you people pretend you are, and not selectively so, then you would be dead.
Your immune system is a method of exclusion, of intolerance, dear.
Follow through with your own principles, dear, and open yourself up to all viruses. Why so afraid? are you not one with them? Are you not fearless and selfless?
Only thing is you are hypocrites about it…or you simply do not see…or refuse to see. You pretend to be “enlightened” because you’ve succumbed to a delusion that frees you from our genetic past…in theory only.
you are not female, human or even alive dear…because you are free from such limiting designations. You are, nothing. It must be pleasing to think of yourself as such, when the alternative opens you up to the suffering of existence.
Your skin, dear, is a wall of exclusion, of exclusivity. It offers you the privilege of choice and of ordering what lies within its boundaries…and it enables you to engage the world selectively, like you are doing now. But you, dear…and your kind, would have us believe that you are “open” and “free” and “loving”…when you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.
Take a hint from your fellow Jew Heisman and follow the logic of your own principles. He shot himself in the head, because he saw this as the logical conclusion of his Judeo-Christian heritage, and your liberal, philosophy.
He had the integrity to do so, and the courage to see his “heritage” for what it was.
Read his Suicide Note if you dare.
You are not different from the Christian, dear…you only have further universalized the same old nihilistic principles.
My God woman…reality isn’t a matter of perspective, otherwise what is truly being selected naturally and what evolves? Reality is what is independent form all perspectives, otherwise we are talking about a Deus.
I know tentantive thinks so and all you liberal naive children agree. It equates all perspectives under the premise that all is illusion and meaningless and so equally nil.
Perspectives are judged by their efficacy, dear.
Every choice, every judgment, every perspective and believe determines your future. Only in your sheltering environments where even retardation is protected from itself does it lose purpose, dear.
Your very protective walls cause you to think that all is equally valid…then you claim to be independent form walls.
This makes you a hypocrite, dear.
A poet might imagine himself immortal…still he dies, dear.
A christian might imagine a deity, still nothing awaits him afterward.
A liberal might imagine himself the same or part of ONE, yet multiplicity abounds and inequality is how life comes about.
Can you show us one static immutable perfect oneness?
No absolute, dear…only variations of a process of probabilities…and your perspective is either superior or inferior within this context of Flux.
Evolution depends on this distinction, dear. It is this diversity manifesting itself as phenomenon.
Sorry, no salvation in emptiness…only the soothing embrace of the nihilistic hope can be found there…and there you stay.
Go and feed a cat.
Meditate.
Just stay away.
Why can’t you just stay away from me, dear?
Did I bother you?
Nonsense. That idea of indifference is a comfort to you, though, isn’t it? You feel that comfort because you cling to that particular construct of reality (when, in fact, reality encompasses everything, including all the stuff you’d really prefer it not to) and this idea makes you believe you’re, er, more right than the rest of the fools who don’t see it your way. You need to believe that and, my little one, this is a weakness of yours. Some of us smell it on you, but we let you proceed with your soliliquies anyway. Why not? We’re nicer than you think and, anyway, you’ll soon enough end up in a boisterous huff and leave again.
Delusion reflects weakness, not caring. Hence, my above observation.
That old habit you have of anthromorphizing (in this case, of a biological system) is, as always, intellectually lacking and doesn’t serve your arguments well. My immune system distinguishes my physical self from that which isn’t my physical self and reacts. It’s not being intolerant, little one. You, however? Yeah, I’d say you got a big streak of that flowin’ through your Greco-Canadian bloodstream.
You’re so funny with how you put together your words sometimes!
How do you know? Seriously, little one, how do you know? Write something intelligent in response to that, if you dare.
Yet again, you’re saying nothing. There is no “superior or inferior within this content of Flux.” You’re making it up! And you’re doing that because it comforts you! And for chrissakes, stop capitalizing it as if it were an actual place.
Hmmm…speaking of staying away…how is it that YOU keep popping up on here? Lemmee guess: you’re just wandering the vaporous planes of ether in your most-likely fruitless quest to find your intellectual and self-realized peers. No doubt you’ve developed a little schedule of web forums within which to periodically touch down, just in case another rare bird has experienced that same difficulty as you in spreading its wings of reason to convince us that reality is this…no it’s that, no, you moron, f-off, it’s what I say it is because, after all, I can tell you that you’re gonna die!!!
I know you’re showing up here again because you want to make sure you’re there for your intellectual brother (christ no, it ain’t no icky dum FEMALE!!) when he needs you in the darkest hour of his despair. Your compassion elevates my generally low opinion of your forum-posting behavior. Well, at least a smidgen. An infinitessimal one, but still measurable given the right equipment.
Oh Sattie, you will (usually) not bore me just by being present on ILP (although, frankly, it wouldn’t hurt to lose some of that awful bloviating on the absent absolute or whatever name it goes by these days), even if I no longer pay attention to you anywhere else. (Yeah, speaking of that, and I don’t mean to hurt your feelings dude, but I don’t visit your blog. Here’s a hint: California is a very, very big state with lots of people. In fact, we got about as many people in this one state as Canada does in its whole big country. How about that! So FYI, just because you get a hit from the state I live in, chances are pretty high it’s not me. Really, they could be considered ridiculously, astronomically high.
So anyway, since you went to all the trouble to come back here, willya just let me play a little bit with you until it gets too boring or one of your peeps shows up? Whichever comes first. Pretty please?*
*[size=50](Faust willing, of course.)[/size]
[size=50](And you promise not to punish me by sending me a pic of your privates.)[/size]
Satyr’s notice edited: I would love to offer my honest and complete opinions in response to your posts, but given that I have spent so many years on so many web forums building my reputation for ignoring any points you and others have made that I’m unable to refute, I will have to instead be as selective in pulling out teensy weensy pieces of your writing which I can change the meaning of to support what I believe as I find the moderators to be selective by expecting me to behave as though I am both intelligent and not burdened by psychological impediments at times truly awesome in scale.
I am now forced to adapt a coping mechanism (and by coping, I mean doing what it takes to get the attention I crave…and please note that I operate by the axiom ‘negative attention is better than NO attention’) by planting minefields of little cut-and-pastes from actual RL philosophers here and there that I can represent as supporting my fear-and-loathing-based views of y’all, then following it up with my own interpretations of those cut-and-pastes that indeed make the connection that you’re all worthless masses of carbon-based garbage who should appreciate (or at least understand) that I gotta act out of frustration since I’ve told you fools that I’m only posting on here to find my equals. Get a clue, willya!!
My participation is ensured only when I’ve flitted about the world wide web, posted voluminously the truth about reality and how only the Greeks (the ancient ones, the new ones with the exception of myself aren’t doing so much in the area of furthering philsophical inquiry and theorizing), and some scattering of other dead white European guys, say anything of value in respect to the heretofore mentioned truth about reality…and then have finally lighted again at ILP where I can enter into my familiar whiny victim mode about how the mods don’t give me my due respect and instead let the rest of you weaklings insult me and revolt me deeply with your incredibly inferior intellectual offerings (aka “trivial banter, gossip, flirting and schoolyard antics”). And be reminded, as I often do, I’ll put you on a time limit and give you repeated warnings when I’ve begun the countdown to my dramatic, disgust-filled exit.
If, however, you wish for a more in-depth and honest exchange with me then follow the link [b]Know Thyself[/b] and repost your commentary so that you can be devoured by myself and the small band of losers, misfits and gory accident lookie-loo’s…in other words, those who are appropriately intimidated by my vast intelligence and can see that I’m a natural leader despite other evidence to the contrary, so don’t you even begin to think you’re gonna get away with calling anybody names on MY site!
if not then all the best to you and good luck. Unless you consider the category of good luck to include ‘Satyr stays away from ILP’, then that’s your problem, you _______ ! (fill in the gender/racial/whatever slur here that best fits you, and then add “You moron!”)
Oh my, little woman. What you smell is most certainly emanating from you.
Did I claim to be indifferent?
Did I claim to be an ideal man?
Dear woman, why do you show such intolerance for your fellow creatures the viruses?
Why not open up to them, merge with them, be one with them?
Why are you so afraid?
Why not fuck the bum down the street?
Why so prejudiced and discriminating with your affections?
Return to the emptiness, dear, give up these illusions…kill yourself.
Have some integrity.
Stop being a hypocrite.
Your every moment alive depends on your selecting, choosing, rejecting, discriminating…yet here you are proposing “openness” and unity and tolerance.
You’re so funny with how you put together your words sometimes!
Ha…did you not choose not to fuck that ugly guy?
Did you not choose the orange without the spots on it?
Did you not choose to hang-out with this eprson but not that one?
What a bigot you are…how intolerant of all living things.
Is your love so intolerant and selective and discriminating?
Did not Jesus teach you to love your neighbor as you do yourself?
What an ego you have to be so prejudiced towards life.
I know dear, and natural selection is selecting by chance.
A crap shoot…spin the wheel and fuck the first one there.
It’s all the same dear…all the same “illusion”.
I’ve answered this about two dozen times: this is where I do my field work and where I come in cotnact with my own kind. No, not you.
Go away, dear.
I see you visiting my blog, dear…but there I don’t have to deal with your womanly interjections and “progressive” nihilism.
I know dear…I am ignored everywhere…except here.
How comforting that delusion must be for ya.
Only some few can truly appreciate the joke.
Now…please…back on-topic.
Are you calling me a douche-bag? did you come here to get rude with us mods…? don’t bother 
Be civil or leave… the choice is yours, dear Satyr
I have been insulted off-topic…will you not save me form the resident femi-nazi or is your moderation prejudiced because you share in the delusion?
I thought you and she had a love/hate relationship… which was more love than hate 
All parties concerned, please be civil in this thread, or else…
About time honey.
How long must a girl insult a man before someone steps in to prevent her form getting hurt?
Yep, that’s the whole kit 'n kaboodle.
What else is there really?
It’s Mags not ‘honey’, thanks - I have asked for all parties present in this thread to be civil… so as you were…
Emotions at their basic purpose is simply for survival and thriving.
OMG, here we go again. I didn’t say anything about your claims regarding personal attitudes. I commented on your statement: “Indifference is power, as it reflects reality,” because it indicates that you think you’ve got reality figured out as having this characteristic. I could care less whether or not you think ‘indifference is power’, IMO that reveals more about you than it does about indifference. My comment arose from my view that you cling to an idea of reality possessing a particular character: ‘indifference’, when reality is just as it is, and could as easily be characterized as both indifferent and interested, and neither indifferent nor interested. You choose the label you prefer because you’re drawn to the idea that this involves some sort of ‘power’. So be it, but quit changing the meaning of what I write.
Gosh, what a surprise that I have to again ask WTF that has to do with anything I wrote. If you had claimed that, I’d be dead. From unstoppable laughter. Nah, it’s my view that you’re a guy who likes to write on forums lots of stuff about what he perceives to be some great Capital-I Ideals, all of which he believes are undeniably correct (and he’ll just revise you if you dare to challenge that) because they’re based on his undeniably correct construct of reality, of course. No different from some others in that respect, although different in other ways, like having lots of time and energy to write and/or copy old stuff voluminously in about 50 web sites at a time.
Why do you confuse me (aka “the Dear woman”) with one of my biological functions? (And you may keep calling me “dear”. Unlike that unfeeling old Magsj, I get all warm and tickled when you use terms of endearment.)
Okay, that’s too many assignments at once. I can multi-task, being a woman and all, but I have my limits and so must make a choice. So you’re gonna need to prioritize. Should I have integrity, return to the emptiness, kill myself, do a bum, give up illusions, or stop being a hypocrite first? Perhaps doing one or two will either accomplish or make unnecessary the others? Help me out here, man!
Yeah? What specifically did I write that led you to believe I’m here proposing that? You’re good at cut-and-paste, so I hereby officially give you permission to do so with whatever my words were that gave you this impression.
So is it that you decided not to follow my instructions or that this really was the best you got?
An “it” in that sense isn’t illusion. It’s your constructed view of it that is. Do you not get that there’s a difference? (P.S. Even with the difference, you still get to have whatever view you want, regardless. You can even continue linking that view with power if you so desire. Does that help?)
Oh, get over yourself. I am too your kind when, in my travels, I stumble upon the bog where the satyrs come to quench their thirst and decide to step down into the murky waters myself for a short swim. And I reserve that right to jump in down there, even though I am quite contented to abide by Ms. Magsj’s request and try not to hurt your fillwings. Although you’re so sensitive that I may slip up now and then. But surely you know my heart is always in the right place regardless. You should really toughen up. Stop being so darned emotional already! After all, I’ve sailed through years of being called “c__t”, “b___h”, and a variety of other epithets you’ve managed to pull out of your Argonaut Unabridged Student’s Dictionary. Does it cause me upset? Nope. Do I carry a grudge? Nope. Moreover, do I complain because of the lack of creativity in your insults? Nope. Do I get all verklempt and whiney when you respond to my points by calling me a femi-nazi (how Ditto-esque of you, btw, is Rush one of your idols?) and a liberal – although that label is perfectly fine with me. Nope again.
(Speaking of nope, do I visit your blog? Sorry, but that’s another nope. However, if it makes you feel really, really special to think that I might be stalking you by furtively clicking on it when I think nobody’s looking, then I will let you continue on with that fantasy and not argue with you over my ((lack of)) interest in it anymore. After all, to follow Magsj’s train of thought, acting out of love, at least virtually, is always better than out of hate, no? And, anyway, you probably owe me something, since maybe you got a blog hit or two from other readers just from the mention of it. So it’s time you womaned up and took it like a female.
Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve visited your “Know Thyself” forum once. But I think I’ll reserve a future spot for that one on my stalking itinerary, if you don’t mind. Just in case detrop comes back and there’s some good battl…er, debates…going on there.)
Only by me. Well, again in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve occasionally noticed that you still get attention of a certain sort on ILO (although last time I looked, you were on a periodic affronted hiatus from there) and surely even more attention is available on your own forum. Nothing more or less than is warranted.
Whew, not any that I wanna know about, lol.
Sattie, you’re such a sweet guy, really, but I do have to hold the line on my view that you should do a better job of addressing my actual points, rather than mischaracterizing them in order to justify your own (which, to clarify, are often different from mine in original form). Nothing personal against you, I just dislike mental sloppiness. It can cause me to wonder whether emotions are getting in the way. There we go, back on topic!!
Read Heidegger on care…and go away.
We care about what we need. We are indifferent towards what we don’t…towards what has no effect no us.
Ergo an omnipotent God, theoretically speaking, would be absolutely carefree and totally indifferent.
Master/Slave dynamic.
Time to grow up princess.
What a bigot you are…how intolerant of all living things.
How dare you judgde them on appearance!!!
Fuck a dog, dear. Prove your openness. Overcome those last bastions of prejudice. Open yourself to universal love…make love to a donkey.
Don’t be such a spiecist. God you bigots sicken me. So afraid.
Afraid to open yourself up to love.
Are we not all illusions?
Are we not all emptiness?
Hypocrite.
Spread your love around…fuck the next guy that says “Spare some change?”…be the whore you truly want to be.
No, become non-existent.
If you wish to return to emptiness, and to avoid suffering and this illusion, then kill yourself.
Why you lie, princess?
Join with he universe, let those viruses in. Don’t hold on to those walls. Don’t fight, don’t reject…open yourself up.
Tear down those walls of fear.
Me so horny.
The Bum come out in two year. Me think.
In between that moment and the next time he drops his pants in public…I figure a year or so…there’s a window of opportunity.
I might not be around though.
Done with stupid people.
Me now play.
Oh sweetie, did ya think I didn’t appreciate your attention?
I’m getting too much of it…go away.
I see you haven’t lost the touch: the ability to spend paragraphs saying nothing but only spreading those …womanly dramatics.
I smells dem pheromones.
You made a point?
Jeez, woman, in all the semantic clouds I must have missed it.
Was it that you know what you were talking about?
I’ll have to meditate on it.