Emotional Hostility

As a species, we do pretty well when it comes to curtailing our violent impulses. I know this seems strange to say, in light of all we see on the news, but those stories are the exception. When we become angry with others, we generally fight back against any more primitive urge to resort to violence. Even in traffic.

However, we are allot looser in our self-restriction when it comes to emotional hostility. Gossip, sarcasm, insults, eye rolling and qualifications in our choice of words implying something negative about the person we're addressing ("you're going to wear THAT?") are weapons in all of our social arsenals.

Now, here's a question: If emotional pain is generally considered to be worse than physical pain, why is emotional hostility less reviled than physical hostility? Understandably, physical hostility is frowned upon because of the effect it has on social order, and because it can escalate into acts which can cause irreparable harm or death. However, for anyone who has been verbally bullied or degraded (especially as a child) we know the damage from spoken violence can be just as long lasting.

One of my favorite movie quotes is from the film "Talk Radio", in which Barry Champlain (played by Eric Bogosian) states:

Sticks and stones
May break my bones,
But words
Cause permanent damage.

I think it's important to consider the effects our words can have, and how little we gain from the hurt they cause, when anger or other hostility-provoking emotions take hold of us.

Jim

What if You Woke Up and Were Someone Else?

The idea that we are all one, and that YOU are the one that we all are, can be a difficult thing to wrap your mind around. The notion that, for example, you (Carol) are having a conversation with a friend (Bob) is also true the other way around (You, Bob, are having a conversation with a friend, Carol), can be confusing. We are so used to seeing thing in terms of our one self, separate and distinct from all other selves, that it feels like one is attempting mental contortions in order to picture it.

And that is understandable. All of our experiences, be they sights and sounds or thoughts and feelings, are local to your body. You never experience the feelings or sensory impressions of others. So why should you consider the possibility that you are anything but an isolated cell of consciousness?

Well, there is the argument in Chapter four that consciousness cannot be a product of any process, that it cannot be an effect to any cause that can be brought into being in this Universe. Not without bringing a contradiction into being; namely, that you would be you, and not you, at the same time. So, if you're a logical being you're kind of forced to accept it, because one consciousness, with all sentient beings being different experiences it is having, is the only explanation that is compatible with the Universe we live in.

So, how do you wrap your mind around it?

I use this example: What if you woke up and were someone else? How would you know that you were one person yesterday, but now an entirely different person? You would only know if you took some memory with you in the change. Unfortunately, there is no means for this to occur, so, when you woke up as someone else, you would think you had been that person all along! In fact, last night, you could have gone to bed as someone entirely different, and you would never have known it this morning when you woke up.

Well, what if you woke up in the morning, and you were EVERYONE! Again, there's no mechanism there for each body to perceive the sensations of another, so you would have no idea. You would experience being you as Bob, and Carol, and President Obama, and Gadafi, and everyone else in the world. But with no mechanism to perceive the connection, it would feel like you were trapped in one body, looking out at a multitude of other souls in theirs, all the while never realizing that there was no separation at all, that you were each of them, every single one.

I hope this helps provide a wedge into this idea of one shared "I", as I describe in Chapter 4. It's not an idea we can understand intuitively, because we have no direct experience that points that way. However, we have a great gift in our imagination to reach beyond our limitations and see what has never been seen. I hope that I have made this picture a bit clearer to the mind's eye.

Jim