If you want to change the behavior of those around you—and you’re right, sometimes you don’t—then the emotional response is a good source of motivation.
That depends on what you define as “good” and “motivation”. Most kinds of negative emotional responses don’t promote taking positive actions, and they’re strressful and harmful to the body as well.
The example I had in mind was someone changing their macroscopic reaction from “VERBAL HULK SMASH” to “icy courtesy” in order to leave a better impression
Note that this ignores the ongoing personally detrimental effect on the person having the reaction, which is unchanged by the change in external behavior. Even if nobody knows you’re angry, you still get to keep the health detriments (and reasoning deficits) of being angry.
without compromising the fervor of their principle.
Most people who are using the fervor of principle to motivate themselves would be better off having goals, instead. The distinction is that a principle’s Platonic purity can never truly be satisfied in an imperfect world, but goals actually have a chance.
Fervently-held principles are also often a convenient excuse to avoid doing the sometimes-difficult job of thinking about what results one would like to have existing in the real world, and what tradeoffs or compromises might have to be made in order to create those results.
In effect, I see “fervent” principles as a form of wireheading… one that, not incidentally, wasted many more years of my life than I care to think about.
(This should not be construed to be against acting on reasoned principles, just to choosing one’s principles based on fervor.)
Reading this comment this instant, I think we are talking past each other to some degree. I argue for two related propositions:
On occasion, anger is an appropriate response to a stimulus.
It is the right and responsibility of each person to determine what stimuli deserve to be responded to with anger.
I will grant that anger has negative effect on quality of life, but I maintain that anger is effective on many occasions, and can be wielded without compromising the powers of rational reason. And I argue that it is the right of the individual to decide when to do so.
Edit: If we agree on these propositions, whatever remains is minor.
I maintain that anger is effective on many occasions, and can be wielded without compromising the powers of rational reason.
This is a true statement for some definitions of its terms, and false for others. I maintain that actual anger is both less-than-effective for one’s considered goals and cannot be “wielded” because actual anger is something that wields you… and this applies as much to ongoing low-level infuriation as to a moment of rage.
(Strategic anger is only a simulation of anger: physiologically, it is not the same thing.)
I argue that it is the right of the individual to decide when to do so.
Sure it’s their right… as an individual. My argument is that they’ve got no business trying to claim that as a social right in a community of rationalists, without displaying major fail by doing so.
Otherwise, for example, I could demand the right to go berserk any time anybody spoke in favor of negative emotions. ;-)
This isn’t a hypothetical example, actually; I used to actually do that here. (Go berserk, I mean, not demanding the right to do so.)
But instead of demanding the right to my berserk button(s) I did the rational thing and got rid of them… which now allows me to be merely passionate in my response to you, rather than actually upset or frustrated or infuriated or any of the other buttons that I used to get pushed in circumstances like these.
And as you can see from my comment volume in the last hour or two, abandoning those feelings hasn’t hurt my motivation in the slightest. ;-)
(It also seems to have somewhat improved the humility and courtesy of my writing in this context, with a corresponding improvement in karma… though of course the latter can still change at any moment.)
That depends on what you define as “good” and “motivation”. Most kinds of negative emotional responses don’t promote taking positive actions, and they’re strressful and harmful to the body as well.
Note that this ignores the ongoing personally detrimental effect on the person having the reaction, which is unchanged by the change in external behavior. Even if nobody knows you’re angry, you still get to keep the health detriments (and reasoning deficits) of being angry.
Most people who are using the fervor of principle to motivate themselves would be better off having goals, instead. The distinction is that a principle’s Platonic purity can never truly be satisfied in an imperfect world, but goals actually have a chance.
Fervently-held principles are also often a convenient excuse to avoid doing the sometimes-difficult job of thinking about what results one would like to have existing in the real world, and what tradeoffs or compromises might have to be made in order to create those results.
In effect, I see “fervent” principles as a form of wireheading… one that, not incidentally, wasted many more years of my life than I care to think about.
(This should not be construed to be against acting on reasoned principles, just to choosing one’s principles based on fervor.)
Reading this comment this instant, I think we are talking past each other to some degree. I argue for two related propositions:
On occasion, anger is an appropriate response to a stimulus.
It is the right and responsibility of each person to determine what stimuli deserve to be responded to with anger.
I will grant that anger has negative effect on quality of life, but I maintain that anger is effective on many occasions, and can be wielded without compromising the powers of rational reason. And I argue that it is the right of the individual to decide when to do so.
Edit: If we agree on these propositions, whatever remains is minor.
This is a true statement for some definitions of its terms, and false for others. I maintain that actual anger is both less-than-effective for one’s considered goals and cannot be “wielded” because actual anger is something that wields you… and this applies as much to ongoing low-level infuriation as to a moment of rage.
(Strategic anger is only a simulation of anger: physiologically, it is not the same thing.)
Sure it’s their right… as an individual. My argument is that they’ve got no business trying to claim that as a social right in a community of rationalists, without displaying major fail by doing so.
Otherwise, for example, I could demand the right to go berserk any time anybody spoke in favor of negative emotions. ;-)
This isn’t a hypothetical example, actually; I used to actually do that here. (Go berserk, I mean, not demanding the right to do so.)
But instead of demanding the right to my berserk button(s) I did the rational thing and got rid of them… which now allows me to be merely passionate in my response to you, rather than actually upset or frustrated or infuriated or any of the other buttons that I used to get pushed in circumstances like these.
And as you can see from my comment volume in the last hour or two, abandoning those feelings hasn’t hurt my motivation in the slightest. ;-)
(It also seems to have somewhat improved the humility and courtesy of my writing in this context, with a corresponding improvement in karma… though of course the latter can still change at any moment.)
If the state of our conversation after this reply is not sufficient to justify dropping this thread, please let me know.