There arent any other animals with the same depth as humans. No dolphin will paint a mona lisa, not will an elephant compose a symphony. There is more to humans than just hardware.
[PUG] All Emotional Pain Lasts 12 Minutes.
- Thread starter sassafras
- Start date
[MENTION=2259]Kmal[/MENTION]
You assume people have much more control over their lives than many actually do. Our life circumstances are determined largely before we are born, and that includes the capacity to control our own emotion.
You can choose to be healthy enough to not get the flu? Are you serious? Okay, I suppose flu shots do exist that sometimes work, and if you are lucky enough to be able to get one before the flu strikes you area you're good. I got swine flu before the vaccine for it became available. My roommate got it before I did, and that means there is no way to avoid exposure. I tried to make healthy choices to avoid getting it: took vitamins, washed hands, etc. The fact though is there wasn't a choice I could have made that would have prevented me from getting it except maybe going and living in the woods until it passed.
But we were talking about emotion, and lets talk about less ambiguous examples, especially ones pertaining to emotion. Can schizophrenics choose not to be schizophrenic? Can people with bipolar choose not to be bipolar? No, they can't, but they might be able to medicate it. What about if they are born into a poor family without health insurance? What if they are born into a family in a 3rd world country and end up on the streets or in an asylum chained to a bench? What about people with abrasions or tumors on certain lobes of their brain that cause them to become alcohols, compulsive gamblers, abusive, etc?
The problem I had with the original statement too is that it implies that the problem is with the people and not with their condition. You seem to mistakenly believe that people are responsible for their condition, but my whole point is that this is flawed thinking. It is a lesser version of the just world fallacy. It is also extremely privileged thinking. People are not responsible for their condition. Their condition determines their capacity to 'control themselves'. Therefore, we cannot expect people under certain conditions to be able to control themselves.
We can safely assume that people want to get better if they are suffering, that they will want to control themselves and make every effort to do so, but they may or may not have the resources necessary depending on their condition, and if they are unlucky enough, there might not be anything anyone can do to help them period, including themselves.
I think it is fatal to many people to put so much blame on them and additionally to assume that they aren't already doing everything in their power to control themselves. It is fatal because these people need better opportunities and resources to improve their lives (and everyone wants to improve their life), but if you assume people are just choosing not to improve their lives then you wont be motivated to examine their circumstances or to try and improve their circumstances. People aren't homeless because they don't want to work; people are homeless because they don't have a choice and are often suffering from a condition that is beyond their control (as we know many people who are homeless are mentally ill).
This world is not a just world. This world is a terrible world, and it is a world made more terrible by people who do not recognize that fact.
I think in regards to feelings in general, the rule of thumb I always go by is this:
You feel what you feel, and that's okay. Feelings are involuntary. You don't choose what you want to feel, it just happens. What you can choose is how you deal with it and react to it.
I think that what this graphic fails to communicate is the distinction between feelings and your actions. Emotional pain isn't something you have control over, and it's different for everyone. Emotional pain comes in different forms, too. Look at the stages of grief, and how different people react different to the same thing. A lot of the time we can cry about complete strangers dying and then when someone really close to us dies we feel bad because we can't cry--it's shock, and when the shock wears off, our grief does overcome us in one way or another.
I think, maybe this graphic is touching on how sometimes when really shocking things happen we simply react with no brain thought until we have to compose ourselves and can get a grip. Think of how the people who hear their kid was brutally murdered feels, or how they might feel if they met the killer...that emotion, it runs out of control and you can't get back to grip with it right away. Perhaps it's a rough estimate, 12 minutes is how long it takes for you to be able to take being physically overcome and just process things.
But after that point where you regain yourself, it doesn't mean the pain is over. It means the shock is over, and the pains is just starting. I think it's reasonable to expect that if someone has gone through something it might manifest in their behavior and the way they talk or do or think for a while. From as small as having lost their favorite videogame to as big as someone they know being afflicted with a life-altering illness, those things affect people's mood and behavior and it's reasonable for them to kind of have it manifest until they find how to cope. But in no means is being able to control how you demonstrate hurt and pain the LACK of emotional pain; we all have some, somewhere.
Hell, some days I think back on times I'm embarrassed about in the past that were years ago and I still feel that pain. Emotional pain lasts a lifetime- how long you show it outwardly and let it dictate your life, that's the 12 minute metaphor.
You feel what you feel, and that's okay. Feelings are involuntary. You don't choose what you want to feel, it just happens. What you can choose is how you deal with it and react to it.
I think that what this graphic fails to communicate is the distinction between feelings and your actions. Emotional pain isn't something you have control over, and it's different for everyone. Emotional pain comes in different forms, too. Look at the stages of grief, and how different people react different to the same thing. A lot of the time we can cry about complete strangers dying and then when someone really close to us dies we feel bad because we can't cry--it's shock, and when the shock wears off, our grief does overcome us in one way or another.
I think, maybe this graphic is touching on how sometimes when really shocking things happen we simply react with no brain thought until we have to compose ourselves and can get a grip. Think of how the people who hear their kid was brutally murdered feels, or how they might feel if they met the killer...that emotion, it runs out of control and you can't get back to grip with it right away. Perhaps it's a rough estimate, 12 minutes is how long it takes for you to be able to take being physically overcome and just process things.
But after that point where you regain yourself, it doesn't mean the pain is over. It means the shock is over, and the pains is just starting. I think it's reasonable to expect that if someone has gone through something it might manifest in their behavior and the way they talk or do or think for a while. From as small as having lost their favorite videogame to as big as someone they know being afflicted with a life-altering illness, those things affect people's mood and behavior and it's reasonable for them to kind of have it manifest until they find how to cope. But in no means is being able to control how you demonstrate hurt and pain the LACK of emotional pain; we all have some, somewhere.
Hell, some days I think back on times I'm embarrassed about in the past that were years ago and I still feel that pain. Emotional pain lasts a lifetime- how long you show it outwardly and let it dictate your life, that's the 12 minute metaphor.
This fact seems to only be about the hardware though, so in a situation with no outside interference, it takes the brain 12 minutes at most to sort things out (according to this fact). The only way I can see them test this out is through animals because they aren't as aware as humans are and they do not ponder like humans do (if I remember correctly). It might be that true emotional pain is actually distinguishable from self inflicted emotional pain which means that all they had to do was measure it. If not, they need to get rid of all the interference and then measure it -> use animals or people on sedatives.. or something along the lines.
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Pain is pretty subjective, there is no way to measure it. We are all going to react to pain in different ways and most of us learn to deal with it in time in our own ways. When we allow the emotional pain to fuel self-destruction is when it becomes self-inflicted because then its just part of an unhealthy coping mechanism. And I'm not entirely sure that some people can't help but inflict pain upon themselves, whether its their own fault or not.
@Dragon
You can not choose the cards you were delt, but you can most certainly choose what to do with them. This is true in almost all cases; but of course there are exceptions. The bolded is pretty outlandish; it's very foreign to anything I've ever heard. Link me to the source. That tumor on their brain is the sole cause of someone becoming an alcoholic or a compulsive gambler? No, I think not. I think the tumor just got blamed for it, while the person chose to be that way. There are times in which a person makes a decision, like to be an alcoholic, and after a certain point, they don't have control anymore. It's a terribly sad thing to see, and usually death is the only freedom. A person making a choice to be an alcoholic is like someone starting to drink at a young age, and keep going on, before they are addicted. Ignorance from a bad upbringing is sometimes a cause for someone to make these decisions, and that's shit luck. Shit happens.
Yes, we live and we die. Sometimes, death is the only escape. Consolation, and making the misery more bearable (because they cant do anything about it) is the appropriate thing to do in some cases. Making someone aware of things and encouraging them is appropriate behavior in the majority of situations; not all, some things cant be controlled as we know. I'm speaking to whoever will listen, not to those who think it can't be done.
Do you know what Psychological projection is?
There you go. If it happens in regard to physical suffering, it can happen in regard to emotional suffering as well.
Yes, but regardless of what I think or might be projecting, you can't deny that the world is full of suffering.
You have a very low threshold for negative things. It's like saying that the sea can't be regarded as pure anymore because you managed to find one salt particle from it after searching through 99,9% of the whole sea without finding anything until that one salt particle. The fact is that the world is filled with all emotions, and I don't think that suffering is the most frequent one. I also don't think that unjust things happen more frequently than just things.
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