They were defined in the other exchanges between Donal and me. I think feeling too much and feeling too little are flips sides of the same thing. For example, going ballistic, or getting hysterical are both overreactions, often by depressed people (which is to say, not feeling people, the Japanese for example erupting into war, or the cartoon riots), or on a very small mundane individual level too; the ubiquitous "he/she knows how to push my buttons", never mentioning that it's *my* buttons that are the operative words and so on and so on. Emotions are like anything else, they need to be practiced if one is to get skillful using them. That's much harder than it sounds, since universally we're so conditioned to not feel. I would say that as bad as we are here in the U.S., we're probably better than in most of the world, which isn't saying much. Unfortunately, we're also going to war because we absolutely can find no other alternative except getting hysterical, but that's another thread. ----- Original Message ----- From: To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: 4/27/2006 2:44:21 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Tune in and turn off I'm getting this urge for you guys to all define "feel" and "emotion" for me........ Julie Krueger feeling either way too much or far too little ========Original Message======== Subj:[lit-ideas] Re: Tune in and turn off Date:4/24/06 6:39:56 A.M. Central Daylight Time From:donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx To:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent on: > Are you saying that people never know what they're 'feeling'? If your > hypothesis is that people are (always?) mistaken about what they're > feeling (they think they're feeling lust but they're really feeling > compassion) what's the criterion for saying they're really feeling > compassion, not lust? Who determines that? If you're saying that nobody > ever knows what he or she is feeling, what does the word 'feeling' mean? Ah - the unmistakeable whiff of Wittgenstein. "Who determines that?" No one. It's guesswork. Donal Btw it seems to me the possibility that we are systematically self-deceiving in our rationalisations of our emotions is meaningful - as is the possibility that such rationalisations do not exhaust what we are actually feeling or what can be known about the feelings we have. It seems to me that nobody ever knows _for certain_ what he or she is feeling - basically because, though we might feel otherwise, we in fact know nothing _for certain_. ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Photos ? NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 7p a photo http://uk.photos.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html