Hey Stef,
If you're looking for a topic to open with, I was wondering if you'd be willing to cover a topic from Real-Time Relationships for me?
You provided two different definitions for "emotion" - or rather, described two different phenomena, which you called by the same term "emotion". From the book:
Emotion, Type 1:...Emotions are not objective responses to the outside world, but rather objective responses to internal premises - i.e., standardized responses to subjective stimuli.... However, it is important to understand that we cannot control our own emotions either... once we believe certain premises within our own minds, the emotions that will result from those premises are utterly out of our control...
Emotion, Type 2: ...Most of our deepest and truest feelings accumulate from years of experience. These feelings cannot be eradicated or changed, any more than our experience can be eradicated or changed.... These deepest emotions occur in the body - and the body is immune to propaganda.... Emotions are the empiricism of values... Emotions do not equal knowledge any more than our senses equal the scientific method...
Based on the highlighted passages, I'm having some trouble identifying the difference between these two kinds of emotions, and I was hoping you could make the distinction a little more clear.
Also, I was wondering why you decided to transition from the first type to the second? I think I may have missed why this transition occurred? Also, if you intended from the beginning to use both, why wait until so late in the book to present the second type?
Lastly, I was wondering what the implications are to your definition of "love", if we accept that these two "versions" of emotion are real? Which one of these is "love"? Does it matter?
Thanks!
Greg.