My understanding of this space.

[drlynch]

Dear readers,

Originally posted as noted below, this essay comments on the dynamics of the The "Behavior On Line" forum at that time. It however can be read, and I wish it to be read as also pertaining to this forum. Always hoping for more interest and participation.

drlynch

Thanks
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My understanding of this space.
Brian Lynch · 11/15/01 at 5:49 PM ET

I articulated some of these ideas in a previous recent post about how it is basic to understand that according to this theory we cannot ever really separate reason and emotion.

This is a public Internet forum. It is a public Internet forum for the exploration of Affect and Script Theory. The world being what it is and people being people the discussion is bound to go off topic much.

1) It may go off topic as the writer is in some emotional state that does not permit them to focus on what others are saying at the moment. How this will manifest itself will depend on how the person has learned to express themselves when feeling badly.

2) It may go off topic as the person, although listening and trying to learn, has just not 'gotten it' yet. Students, even serious students, often make blunders but is not that what learning is all about?

As I said previously I don't think either of these would be a problem if there was a bigger commitment by those who do study this stuff and I refer not to Dr. Nathanson here. This is a heart felt question to many of those I have met and care for. Either this is great important stuff or 'just another theory'. For me it has been life changing as much as anything can be. When I think along these lines I often think of a quote I heard about Steve Jobs the then and again present CEO of Apple trying to recruit the then head of Pepsi (name escapes me) he asked him "if he wanted to make sugar water the rest of his life or change the world?"

I make no apologies for my feeling that this material has the power eventually to change a great many things. Dr. Nathanson certainly believes this otherwise he would not be so passionate about his school program.

The rub is that since the theory shows us that human beings basically have two ways to go:

1) Believe that reason is first and emotion second

or

2) believe that emotion is first and reasons second

and that , for me, for very understandable reasons, man has taken the 'wrong' turn much of the time and chosen #1,so we now have a very big problem. That problem is how do we get a critical mass of adults to understand that #2 is the way to go if we are going to maximize peace and joy in our lives? We must have that critical mass in order to teach younger folks that they can come to mange emotion and reason together.

Now comes this forum and it's role in this goal of bringing these ideas to a wider public audience. By the foregoing we see that as it is open to the world this information will be foreign to many people. It may be also upsetting to many people . Many people will think they understand the basics but don't. Many, as we have seen, will express much emotion in often hurtful ways, many will also express intense emotion and then deny that they did so. Some will have discharged their daily quotient of negative feeling in other ways appropriately or inappropriately outside this forum and thus are able to come here and be cordial and conjoin Interest and Reason in a more useful fashion.

Note that here I am going back to the basic truth that reason and emotion are always conjoined, always. This is the genius of Tomkins. This is the genius of the 'central blueprint'.

Maximize positive feeling
Minimize negative feeling
Achieve both by maximizing the expression of all feeling
Achieve this by recognizing the conditions under which these goals can be achieved

This blue print has to be applicable here. For me the most important of the four rules is the fourth. Unless the human beings that come together define the rules of engagement, and insofar as those rules do not maximize an environment where all affect can be safely expressed , then the human gathering will be less then it could be.

The interesting thing about this then is that in no way is it saying that we all have to be in agreement or not express anger, fear, distress or shame. We do not therefore have to always appear to be the paradigm of interest and joy and reason here. In fact I would much prefer to see negative affect 'out in the open' than held back by a facade. It is obvious that the public and private lives of many of our entertainers politicians and CEO's are divided such. Monsters in private/angels in public. We see these stories, read about them all the time, but then disavow their reality as we somehow need to cling to the belief that someone is prefect. This is of course dangerous. We should not expect anymore of ourselves than the reality of what we see of our public figures.

In order to disagree one needs to be informed by affect and if so might well show some of it which is certainly what we want too. If the 'central blueprint' is to work we must then be advocating the public expression of negative affect too.

There has been discussion of whether, at least in spirit, this is a public or private space. I think the way I am approaching this that is a moot question yet it brings up questions that we should all ask ourselves and among them is how and what are we going to tolerate in terms of expression of negative affect be it in public or private.

We like to think of our private space as being civil just as or public space appears so much to be civil. But thinking again about why we are here we have to look at the truth of the matter, the matter of reason and emotion in both places. When we look behind closed doors what do we find? Often we find the discharge of huge amounts of negative affect? Many will even find it acceptable, and in fact necessary, to do in the home what we would never do in public but the opposite is also true. This is personal and family scripting. It is created willy nilli in the family and in public unless we have a blueprint!

It can and has been objected that 'how can we claim to have the answer yet not be 'cured' ourselves' and it has been explained that although emotion is king reason is also very powerful and capable of producing thought outside a specific personality. I, again, may find the cure for kidney cancer but it may be too late to save myself.

Likewise much great art, maybe the majority of it, has been produced by extremely damaged persons. Yet all that said it seems to me, again, the solution is here but is there the Interest and desire for us all to solve the problem? I don't know. I would like to think of this as an important place that is needed until that magical critical mass accumulates that will make the forum passe.

So as the purpose of this forum is to talk about, among other things, the relationship between reason and emotion this forum is somewhat of a special case. That is although what is going on here in terms of the negative is quite common and more so on all other types of lists I have been on. It is essential that we at least note that at some level we claim to be expert on solving such problems. That is we believe that the 'central blueprint' is the solution.

So for me it is a matter of determining what the rules of engagement will be and how they will be enforced. It seems to me that these , for the most part, have been practically worked out and it just so happens that I just took a break and noted the post of Mr. P.T. Jonesberry of today. Thank you Mr. Jonesberry you reduced my writing load a lot. If people chose to read that post I think the answers of how to manage things and maximize Interest and Joy is pretty clear. So does this negate what I have written above in that if we have a practical solution already why bother with the theory? Well we here especially want to bother with the theory as we think the theory explains and describes why practical solutions work and it is very important to do that.

Take care.