C. S. Lewis describes emotional balance:
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
(The Abolition of Man)
Shakespeare also described balance, but for artists (they need it) — “Art is restraint!”
Emotional Balance
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3 Comments
Whew – For a minute there I thought you’d posted a picture of Alfred Hitchcock.
http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/images/hitch_portrait.jpg
Did you see the latest research on bullies? It confirms what you are teaching in Love Ethics.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081107/sc_nm/us_brain_bullies
Brain scans of teens with a history of aggressive bullying behavior suggest that they may actually get pleasure out of seeing someone else in pain, U.S. researchers said on Friday.
While this may come as little surprise to those who have been victimized by bullies, it is not what the researchers expected, Benjamin Lahey of the University of Chicago, who worked on the study, said in a telephone interview.
“The reason we were surprised is the prevailing view is these kids are cold and unemotional in their aggression,” said Lahey, whose study appears in the journal Biological Psychology.
“This is looking like maybe they care very much,” said Lahey, who worked on the study with Jean Decety, also of the University of Chicago.
In the aggressive teens, areas of the brain linked with feeling rewarded — the amygdala and ventral striatum — became very active when they observed pain being inflicted on others.
This is a tremendous article, Joe. Thanks for finding it. It confirms, first of all, what Ankenman was teaching last Wednesday about how some people (esp. in extreme Tribal & extreme Diffuse love spheres) thrive on negative emotions and interpret them as love feelings. And secondly, how they do so in order to fill their Love Banks. I archived it at http://neoxenos.info/biblenet/Counseling-LoveEthics-Research/BulliesBrains for future reference.