A Treatise on Emotion

Many people are addicted to emotions.  Many people are controlled by their emotions instead of controlling their emotions.  This is the difference between an animal and a human.  Humans control their emotions.  Some animals are wiser than men.

Emotions function like a carnival mirror.  They distort, shade, and color how we see things around us.  They distract us, they obsess us, they lie to us.  Science is done analytically not emotionally.  If you are doing science emotionally you are doing bad science.  A peer reviewed paper was recently published which blamed the penis for global warming.  The only problem is that article was written as a hoax in order to expose a bias in the scientific community. (the Sokal Hoax)

The Ataraxia of the ancient Greeks, Zen, and Nirvana are all the same thing.  They aren’t some deluded fruity spiritualism, they are a coming to rest in the faculty of Reason and a willing submission of the emotion to that Authority.  The “peace of god that excels all thought” is the Christian version of this altered state.  We are not born human, we attain to being human.  We are born an animal and we only procure a soul when we are capable of rising above our animal nature.  This doesn’t mean radical pacifism because that is irrational and unsustainable.  Every group that depended on others being guided by Reason throughout history and didn’t protect themselves with physical violence was eventually wiped out by a group of psychopaths.  The Jews in NAZI Germany, he Buddhists in China, and many others that we no longer even remember.

If you are in a negative emotional state, don’t do anything.  Never move from a negative emotional state. The Negative Emotion will become your Motivation and the fruit that it produces will be bad. 

Instead have a controlled, conscious, and willful sensation of positive emotion.  The Taoists referred to this as the “Inner Smile”.