A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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RCSaunders
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 11:46 am RC Saunders wrote:
Does not the American liking for gun ownership by private citizens indicate favouring personal independence over state control?
I would not agree that there is a prevailing view of anything in the United States today. Some, "gun rights," activists no doubt fit your description, but most American gun owners just want to have them to hunt and for self-protection, like most people want automobiles for transportation. Automobiles are much more dangerous than guns, yet almost no one objects to just anyone being able to have one. It is not a matter of favoring personal independence, but simply favoring not having someone else decide what is good for them.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 11:46 am About a role model for women: does evangelical Protestantism present the ideal wife as subservient to her husband and as someone with lower power status than men ?
Many evangelicals, especially those who consider themselves fundamentalists, (of which there are very few in America today) have quite specific beliefs about the relationship between men and women, but I think to characterize it as female subservience or women having a lower status is untrue. From their point of view (which I certainly do not agree with) it as a woman's value and importance that requires men to relieve women of the responsibilities of practical work and decisions and having to defend themselves to free them for the more important work of making a life for a family worth living, and for raising the next generation, which men would fail at. Whatever one thinks of Christian teaching, it has been one of the most important influences in freeing women from being treated like chattel and slaves as they have been throughout most of history, and still are in much of the world.

As you know I regard all religion as dangerous superstitious nonsense, but religions are a fact of this world. If religions are rated on the basis of the harm they do, I would say the Christian religion has been one of the least harmful, considering that the enlightenment, scientific revolution, industrial revolution, and the greatest levels of individual freedom have been established in those parts of the world where it had the most influence. I do not attribute those human achievements to religion, but to the fact that it's influence did not prevent those things, as other religions have in other parts of the world.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Nick_A wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 12:39 am What does an alcoholic believe? He wakes up in the morning and swears off alcohol. He believes he is a slave to what he doesn't want so decides to give up drinking. Yet later in the day he believes that alcohol is necessary for him so begins the drinking cycle again.

What does the alcoholic believe? He believes he shouldn't drink and his behavior proves he believes in drinking. So what does he believe?
When discussing questions of what individuals believe and how they make their choices, why would you choose someone with an impaired mind as the basis of that discussion?

If you want to know what a drunk thinks he believes, ask a drunk. Don't ask me, I do not travel in those circles.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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RCSaunders wrote: Fri Aug 02, 2019 1:27 pm
Nick_A wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 12:39 am What does an alcoholic believe? He wakes up in the morning and swears off alcohol. He believes he is a slave to what he doesn't want so decides to give up drinking. Yet later in the day he believes that alcohol is necessary for him so begins the drinking cycle again.

What does the alcoholic believe? He believes he shouldn't drink and his behavior proves he believes in drinking. So what does he believe?
When discussing questions of what individuals believe and how they make their choices, why would you choose someone with an impaired mind as the basis of that discussion?

If you want to know what a drunk thinks he believes, ask a drunk. Don't ask me, I do not travel in those circles.
OK so you don't want to discuss the question from the perspective of the alcoholic deplorables so lets try it from the Oprah perspective which is gentle and non threatening.

Some woman with tears in her eyes approaches Oprah and asks for help. It seems she made a new years resolution to lose twenty pounds and is having difficulty. Oprah looks sympathetic and concerned. She asks her to elaborate. The woman started with great intentions and the sincere belief in the value of losing twenty pounds but was soon confronted by the power of the demonic box of chocolate chip cookies. She gave in and ate the whole damn thing. The woman asked Oprah how can she know what she believes in. She believes in the value of losing twenty pounds but at the same time believes in the sensual delights of these cookies. Can she believe in both? Oprah doesn't know. Who does?
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Nick_A wrote: Fri Aug 02, 2019 5:29 pm Some woman with tears in her eyes approaches Oprah and asks for help. It seems she made a new years resolution to lose twenty pounds and is having difficulty. Oprah looks sympathetic and concerned. She asks her to elaborate. The woman started with great intentions and the sincere belief in the value of losing twenty pounds but was soon confronted by the power of the demonic box of chocolate chip cookies. She gave in and ate the whole damn thing. The woman asked Oprah how can she know what she believes in. She believes in the value of losing twenty pounds but at the same time believes in the sensual delights of these cookies. Can she believe in both? Oprah doesn't know. Who does?
A lot of people are taken in by the, "devil (read my feelings, desires, whims, passions, impulses) made me do it," nonsense. As long as one believes one's feelings, sentiments, desires, "depressions," or whatever else they substitute for reason are valid reasons for making choices they will always be subject to behavior that is self-destructive. No feeling, desire, or passion makes anyone do anything. Everything a human being does is by conscious choice, including their denial of it.

If she really believed, that is truly valued losing twenty pounds, no desire in the world could have compelled her to go off her diet. She no doubt did believe in the value of losing twenty pounds and would have loved having it happen to her, but she did not believe in doing what was necessary to achieve what she valued, because she believed in the value of her pleasure more.

I'm not just guessing here. My wife was a Weight Watchers leader for years and observed this over and over.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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RCSaunders
Everything a human being does is by conscious choice, including their denial of it.
IMO it is the opposite. Only small part of what we believe and do is the result of conscious choice.

Our body creates our beliefs. We learn for example that fire is hot by being burned. We believe fire is hot. We don't believe it today and deny it tomorrow. The belief that fire is hot has become a part of the whole of us: mind, body, and emotions.

Our emotions also create beliefs. We believe an action is good or bad because of emotional conditioning. There is nothing conscious in emotional belief or denial. It is a mechanical reaction as opposed to a conscious action.

The power to do things comes from the body and our emotions. The literal mind may want to believe but it doesn't have the power to do so. The literal mind may want to lose twenty pounds but if the body and emotions do not agree, we just turn in circles.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 3:16 am RCSaunders
Everything a human being does is by conscious choice, including their denial of it.
IMO it is the opposite. Only small part of what we believe and do is the result of conscious choice.

Our body creates our beliefs. We learn for example that fire is hot by being burned. We believe fire is hot. We don't believe it today and deny it tomorrow. The belief that fire is hot has become a part of the whole of us: mind, body, and emotions.

Our emotions also create beliefs. We believe an action is good or bad because of emotional conditioning. There is nothing conscious in emotional belief or denial. It is a mechanical reaction as opposed to a conscious action.

The power to do things comes from the body and our emotions. The literal mind may want to believe but it doesn't have the power to do so. The literal mind may want to lose twenty pounds but if the body and emotions do not agree, we just turn in circles.
I have no idea how to respond to this Nick. I cannot imagine what it would be like to believe one's own life and behavior were determined by things which could neither understand or control. From what you have said, you seem to think the emotions are some ineffable things that are just there, without cause or reason.

Perhaps I could understand your view better if you told me what you believe the emotions are.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 2:52 pm
Nick_A wrote: Sat Aug 03, 2019 3:16 am RCSaunders
Everything a human being does is by conscious choice, including their denial of it.
IMO it is the opposite. Only small part of what we believe and do is the result of conscious choice.

Our body creates our beliefs. We learn for example that fire is hot by being burned. We believe fire is hot. We don't believe it today and deny it tomorrow. The belief that fire is hot has become a part of the whole of us: mind, body, and emotions.

Our emotions also create beliefs. We believe an action is good or bad because of emotional conditioning. There is nothing conscious in emotional belief or denial. It is a mechanical reaction as opposed to a conscious action.

The power to do things comes from the body and our emotions. The literal mind may want to believe but it doesn't have the power to do so. The literal mind may want to lose twenty pounds but if the body and emotions do not agree, we just turn in circles.
I have no idea how to respond to this Nick. I cannot imagine what it would be like to believe one's own life and behavior were determined by things which could neither understand or control. From what you have said, you seem to think the emotions are some ineffable things that are just there, without cause or reason.

Perhaps I could understand your view better if you told me what you believe the emotions are.
Control would require a quality of consciousness we lack. That is why we are creatures of reaction rather than creatures of conscious action - the potential for human being. Where sensations allow us to experience, emotions allow us to experience value. We, like all the higher mammals, are born with emotional potential. For example, we have the potential for selective love the same as a dog does. We have the potential to experience the love of life itself as a higher value but at the same time Man is unique in his ability to create and live by acquired negative emotions, We are not born with them. They are learned and how we value is determined largely by our negative emotions.

Pride is the classic male sin while vanity is the classic female sin. They are the results of learned negative emotions. Self pride would be considered a negative emotion while pride of self would be a positive emotion. How many sense the difference?
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Nick_A wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 3:19 pm Control would require a quality of consciousness we lack. That is why we are creatures of reaction rather than creatures of conscious action - the potential for human being. Where sensations allow us to experience, emotions allow us to experience value. We, like all the higher mammals, are born with emotional potential. For example, we have the potential for selective love the same as a dog does. We have the potential to experience the love of life itself as a higher value but at the same time Man is unique in his ability to create and live by acquired negative emotions, We are not born with them. They are learned and how we value is determined largely by our negative emotions.

Pride is the classic male sin while vanity is the classic female sin. They are the results of learned negative emotions. Self pride would be considered a negative emotion while pride of self would be a positive emotion. How many sense the difference?
I asked what you believe emotions are. I mean, what is it you are feeling when you feel an emotion. How do you feel it, where do you feel it, and why do you have the emotions you have.

Pride and vanity are not emotions. There are certain feelings associated with both, but one can be proud or vain without any feeling whatsoever.

As for, "vanity is the classic female sin," perhaps you need to read the book of Ecclesiastes again.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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What might " negative emotions" be? Talk of negative emotions makes no more sense than talk of negative heart beats.
The only comment I could make is that if the doctor pronounced "emotions negative" the patient would be either dead or moribund.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 4:56 pm
Nick_A wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 3:19 pm Control would require a quality of consciousness we lack. That is why we are creatures of reaction rather than creatures of conscious action - the potential for human being. Where sensations allow us to experience, emotions allow us to experience value. We, like all the higher mammals, are born with emotional potential. For example, we have the potential for selective love the same as a dog does. We have the potential to experience the love of life itself as a higher value but at the same time Man is unique in his ability to create and live by acquired negative emotions, We are not born with them. They are learned and how we value is determined largely by our negative emotions.

Pride is the classic male sin while vanity is the classic female sin. They are the results of learned negative emotions. Self pride would be considered a negative emotion while pride of self would be a positive emotion. How many sense the difference?
I asked what you believe emotions are. I mean, what is it you are feeling when you feel an emotion. How do you feel it, where do you feel it, and why do you have the emotions you have.

Pride and vanity are not emotions. There are certain feelings associated with both, but one can be proud or vain without any feeling whatsoever.

As for, "vanity is the classic female sin," perhaps you need to read the book of Ecclesiastes again.
Emotions are expressions of what we like and dislike Negative emotions are learned emotional expressions of denial. We are born with the ability to feel love, hope, and joy. They are positive emotions. Negative emotions like anger, jealousy, hatred fear,and resentment, etc. are all negative responses. They are learned responses and most of our lives are spent expressing them.

Though it is hard to explain why, we enjoy our expressions of negative emotions without realizing what they deprive us of. We have them because of what we've witnessed taking place around us as we grow up. We feel them in our head as opposed to positive emotions which are felt in the solar plexus region. Most tend to glorify the negative. Learning why is valuable for anyone with a sincere need for truth and what it means to know thyself.. It seems absurd to fantasize about negativity but it is what we do.

Self pride is a negative emotion since it denies what we are in favor of an imaginary belief in what we are.. Pride of self is not negative since it is the awareness of the potential for human being in the context of what we imagine ourselves to be. Even though we are objectively nothing, we have the being potential to become something worthy of the name Man.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Nick_A wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 3:10 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 4:56 pm
Nick_A wrote: Sun Aug 04, 2019 3:19 pm Control would require a quality of consciousness we lack. That is why we are creatures of reaction rather than creatures of conscious action - the potential for human being. Where sensations allow us to experience, emotions allow us to experience value. We, like all the higher mammals, are born with emotional potential. For example, we have the potential for selective love the same as a dog does. We have the potential to experience the love of life itself as a higher value but at the same time Man is unique in his ability to create and live by acquired negative emotions, We are not born with them. They are learned and how we value is determined largely by our negative emotions.

Pride is the classic male sin while vanity is the classic female sin. They are the results of learned negative emotions. Self pride would be considered a negative emotion while pride of self would be a positive emotion. How many sense the difference?
I asked what you believe emotions are. I mean, what is it you are feeling when you feel an emotion. How do you feel it, where do you feel it, and why do you have the emotions you have.

Pride and vanity are not emotions. There are certain feelings associated with both, but one can be proud or vain without any feeling whatsoever.

As for, "vanity is the classic female sin," perhaps you need to read the book of Ecclesiastes again.
Emotions are expressions of what we like and dislike Negative emotions are learned emotional expressions of denial. We are born with the ability to feel love, hope, and joy. They are positive emotions. Negative emotions like anger, jealousy, hatred fear,and resentment, etc. are all negative responses. They are learned responses and most of our lives are spent expressing them.

Though it is hard to explain why, we enjoy our expressions of negative emotions without realizing what they deprive us of. We have them because of what we've witnessed taking place around us as we grow up. We feel them in our head as opposed to positive emotions which are felt in the solar plexus region. Most tend to glorify the negative. Learning why is valuable for anyone with a sincere need for truth and what it means to know thyself.. It seems absurd to fantasize about negativity but it is what we do.

Self pride is a negative emotion since it denies what we are in favor of an imaginary belief in what we are.. Pride of self is not negative since it is the awareness of the potential for human being in the context of what we imagine ourselves to be. Even though we are objectively nothing, we have the being potential to become something worthy of the name Man.
Certain women radiate a quality of energy, as opposed to an image inspired by vanity, which enables men to feel the foolishness of the negative defense of imaginary self importance. Such a woman can enable men to feel the utter foolishness of war for example. I would call them the most important role model a woman can be for the benefit of our world.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Nick_A wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 3:10 pm Emotions are expressions of what we like and dislike Negative emotions are learned emotional expressions of denial. We are born with the ability to feel love, hope, and joy. They are positive emotions. Negative emotions like anger, jealousy, hatred fear,and resentment, etc. are all negative responses. They are learned responses and most of our lives are spent expressing them.
Perhaps I did not make my question clear. I'm not asking for an interpretation of feelings, I'm asking what emotions actually are. When someone feels, "anger," where do they feel it and what does it feel like. I know we cannot actually describe our conscious experiences as we experience them (because one can only know their own consciousness), but you could express what that, "feeling," is to you. What does jealousy feel like and how does one distinguish it from a feeling they call love, or anxiety.

The reason I ask is because I have counseled people who believed their emotions were controlling what they thought and did. One might explain they did something because of some very strong feeling of desire to do it. So I would ask, where they had the feeling and how they knew that feeling meant they should do such'n'such. At first the answer was, they just did, but really they didn't know why they did, or how they did. Eventually they came to see that what they felt was the result of what they thought and believed, that there were no feelings that were, "just there." They would discover they could not just decide to change their feelings, but they could choose to think differently and that when they thought differently, they felt differently.

So what I'm asking is, when you have a feeling, how do you know that feeling is what you say it is, and not just a feeling that accompanies what you are thinking? I'd also like to know exactly what you mean by an emotion, that is, exactly what it feels like and how you can tell the difference of one emotion from another. Describe how they feel different.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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RCSaunders
Perhaps I did not make my question clear. I'm not asking for an interpretation of feelings, I'm asking what emotions actually are. When someone feels, "anger," where do they feel it and what does it feel like.
Anger like all negative emotions are expressions of our personality as opposed to positive emotions which are expressions of our essence.

When we say “ I am angry” We no longer exist because we become anger. However when we are conscious enough to say “Anger is within me,” we have not become anger but rather experience it as a learned reaction influencing our personality.
What does jealousy feel like and how does one distinguish it from a feeling they call love, or anxiety.
Negative emotions like jealousy feed our self esteem – our imagined self importance. However when love is a positive emotion it serves the benefit of the beloved. Conscious love is experienced in the solar plexus region while jealousy as an acquired characteristic is experienced in the head
So what I'm asking is, when you have a feeling, how do you know that feeling is what you say it is, and not just a feeling that accompanies what you are thinking? I'd also like to know exactly what you mean by an emotion, that is, exactly what it feels like and how you can tell the difference of one emotion from another. Describe how they feel different.
The first thing I must make clear is that feelings and emotions are not the same. Feelings refers to essence and emotions refer to personality. For the benefit of anyone following this thread I’d like to include n excerpt from Jacob Needleman’s wonderful book “Lost Christianity” Jacob Needleman asks Metropolitan Anthony a question about feelings. A person can get a glimpse of the depth of Christianity from this excerpt.
Metropolitan Anthony," I began, "five years ago when I visited you I attended services which you yourself conducted and I remarked to you how struck I was by the absence of emotion in your voice. Today, in the same way where it was not you but the choir, I was struck by the same thing, the almost complete lack of emotion in the voices of the singers."

Yes he said, "this is quite true, it has taken years for that, but they are finally beginning to understand...."

"What do you mean?" I asked. I knew what he meant but I wanted to hear him speak about this - this most unexpected aspect of the Christianity I never knew, and perhaps very few modern people ever knew. I put the question further: "The average person hearing this service - and of course the average Westerner having to stand up for several hours it took - might not be able to distinguish it from the mechanical routine that has become so predominant in the performance of the Christian liturgy in the West. He might come wanting to be lifted, inspired, moved to joy or sadness - and this the churches in the West are trying to produce because many leaders of the Church are turning away from the mechanical, the routine.."

He gently waved aside what I was saying and I stopped in mid sentence. "There was a pause, then he said: "No. Emotion must be destroyed."

He stopped, reflected, and started again, speaking in his husky Russian accent: "We have to get rid of emotions....in order to reach.....feeling."


Again he paused, looking at me, weighing the effect his words were having. I said nothing. but inside I was alive with expectancy. I waited.

Very tentatively, I nodded my head.

He continued: "You ask about the liturgy in the West and in the East. it is precisely the same issue. the sermons, the Holy Days - you don't why one comes after the other. or why this one now and the other one later. Even if you read everything about it you still wouldn't know, believe me.

"And yet . . . there is a profound logic in them, in the sequence of the Holy Days. And this sequence leads people somewhere - without their knowing it intellectually. Actually, it is impossible for anyone to understand the sequence of rituals and Holy Days intellectually. it is not meant for that. It is meant for something else, something higher.

For this you have to be in a state of prayer, otherwise it passes you by-"

"What is prayer?" I asked.

He did not seem to mind my interrupting with this question. Quite the contrary. "In a state of prayer one is vulnerable." He emphasized the last word and then waited until he was sure I had not taken it in an ordinary way.

"In prayer one is vulnerable, not enthusiastic. and then these rituals have such force. they hit you like a locomotive. You must be not enthusiastic, nor rejecting - but only open. This is the whole idea of asceticism: to become open."
We rarely experience feelings since we are rarely in touch with what we essentially are. We re governed by our personalities which are governed by acquired negative emotions. That is why IMO you overestimate the power of thought and underestimate the power of our negative emotions to govern our lives.

Metropolitan Anthony was describing something essential for Christianity because it lessens the power of negative emotion. Yet in normal secular society negative emotions are glorified and without them advertising and the whole of modern entertainment would soon disappear.
The reason I ask is because I have counseled people who believed their emotions were controlling what they thought and did.
They were right. When we become negative emotions we become reacting things. What we call I doesn’t exist for us. Thoughts can suggest options but when we become things, there is no choice.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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Nick_A wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:14 pm When we say “ I am angry” We no longer exist ...
I'm sorry Nick. You've completely surrendered your mind to superstition so there can be no basis for our conversation. I wish you well.
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Re: A ROLE MODEL FOR WOMEN

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RCSaunders wrote: Tue Aug 06, 2019 1:47 am
Nick_A wrote: Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:14 pm When we say “ I am angry” We no longer exist ...
I'm sorry Nick. You've completely surrendered your mind to superstition so there can be no basis for our conversation. I wish you well.
And you have surrendered your mind to the denial of impartial verification necessary for all sincere efforts to "know thyself" - to have the experience of oneself. I wish you well as well.
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