I Just Can't...


Michael Stuart Kelly

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21 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Peter,

I remember seeing that film a long time ago. It's funny because the thing that stuck in my mind was a scene before Julie Andrews did the dirty deed. In my memory, she was plastered, falling all over herself, laughing and saying mischievously, as if to herself, "I'm going to show my boobies..." :) 

That may be accurate or not. It's how I remember it. Now for the funny part. I can't conjure up the image of Julie topless. Not even a vague ghost of a scene. There's nothing there in my memory...

I guess her boobies didn't leave much of an impression on me back then. WTF?

:)

Now I'm going to have to see the goddam movie again...

:) 

Michael

I'm guessing there was supposed to be a point to comparing the Julie Andrews movie to the Cardi B song...but if the point is that "scandalous" material has been with us for a long time, and including our "wholesome" heroes, well...substitute Cardi B with the following, and the original point comes out stronger...try to minimize this one...

"Netflix was widely praised for CUTIES, a French film that sexualized kids. But now, Dr. Seuss books are too offensive to exist."

https://gab.com/patriotsfl/posts/105834448729761642

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4 hours ago, ThatGuy said:

I'm guessing there was supposed to be a point to comparing the Julie Andrews movie to the Cardi B song...but if the point is that "scandalous" material has been with us for a long time, and including our "wholesome" heroes, well...substitute Cardi B with the following, and the original point comes out stronger...try to minimize this one...

TG,

Oh, it can get worse. Try going the other way.

Imagine a new woke version of The Fountainhead movie with Cardi B as Dominique shaking it and pumping it all over Gail, Peter and Howard.

Or the Atlas Shrugged movie and Cardi B as Dagny Taggart with a wet ass pussy. Maybe John Galt fighting for social justice, Ragnar Danneskjold leading Antifa, Francisco D'Anconia as a soy boy and Eddie Willer as a transgender... 

Doesn't work, does it?

:evil:  :)

Michael

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13 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

TG,

Oh, it can get worse. Try going the other way.

Imagine a new woke version of The Fountainhead movie with Cardi B as Dominique shaking it and pumping it all over Gail, Peter and Howard.

Or the Atlas Shrugged movie and Cardi B as Dagny Taggart with a wet ass pussy. Maybe John Galt fighting for social justice, Ragnar Danneskjold leading Antifa, Francisco D'Anconia as a soy boy and Eddie Willer as a transgender... 

Doesn't work, does it?

:evil:  :)

Michael

I think I just threw up a little in my mouth... lol

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The fine art of Cardi B at the Grammy Awards.

Strivin' for the highest, let me tell ya'...

:evil: 

An article to go along with this.

Cardi B Serves Up Vulgar Performance at Grammys – Media Praises Her For “Sex-Positive” Production, “Female Empowerment” (VIDEO)

I have no fear YouTube will take this video down. It will stay up forever. This is the brave new world the woke YouTube owners want for us barnyard human animals.

A thought just crossed my mind. I think I need to reread Animal Farm by George Orwell...

Michael

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A couple of reactions on Twitter:

and

There's a lot more, though.

Zooming out, I think the media emphasis on this kind of trash is a sign that the centralized recording industry is nearing its end. It is looking to porn with high production values for its blockbuster hits.

I have reasons for saying this, but it is a deep topic I have not been involved in for over a couple of decades and some thing might have changed, so, for now, I'll just leave it here as an opinion.

I will give a hint, though. Satan-themed music productions have been involved with all kinds of big-money artists and genres ranging from the Rolling Stones (Sympathy for the Devil) to Heavy Metal. And this has been going on for a long, long time. Now porn is taking Satan's place theme-wise. :) 

The problem with relying on shock-value is that it eventually gets too saturated to sustain blockbusters. With the Internet, the saturation time is getting shorter and shorter. For insider people in the recording industry, habituation is a bitch.

Michael

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5 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

This is the brave new world the woke YouTube owners want for us barnyard human animals.

To me it was monotonous, moronic chanting, beating on water pipes and drums, no clear melody and all chanted by a woman with a huge butt and thighs who looked awful.  And that was applauded. 

edit.

What has been around since the 1950’s? This observation and attitude.

Where have all the cacti gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the Venus fly traps gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the rag weed gone?
Young girls have picked them every one
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

If young girls look to rappers as an inspiration, without a scolding from their wiser elders, we are doomed, and not just musically.

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  • 1 year later...

There are about twenty mentions of Paul Ekman on Objectivist Living. The last one was in 2020, with a compelling "consider this" post by Michael. I think I put a flea in my ear to look up and confirm what Michael presented about Ekman's findings.

The flea must have died, and I must admit that I thought emotion wonk Ekman was a hundred years old. Diving into his output reveals he is less than a hundred years old. And he has a medium-sized website for commerce. Here's his 'about' page at PaulEkman.com [the Ekman Group].

WWW.PAULEKMAN.COM

To know more about Paul Ekman, an influential psychologist, read his biography, online training and workshops, current work, awards and honors, appearances, and most popular books.

 

On 8/14/2020 at 2:13 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:
On 8/14/2020 at 12:50 PM, dldelancey said:

Young girls are not damaged by random music videos, even music videos that have 42 million views.  They are damaged by a lack of exposure to healthy relationships in their homes and peer groups.

Deanna,

I agree with the random video part.

But how about a steady stream of videos glorifying Satanism and porn?

Cutting out the bulk of the challenge.

On 8/14/2020 at 2:13 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

[...]

Paul Ekman and his people discovered how pleasant and unpleasant isolating and mapping facial muscles to expressions of emotions could get. One mainstream opinion at the time he started was that (1) an emotion is felt, then (2) a body reaction occurs. Not the contrary. As Ekman and company worked in front of mirrors on their own faces to isolate and map and see what that looked like, they discovered that purposely articulating muscles used in negative emotions caused them to feel these negative emotions. Ditto for positive. So if they were in a bad mood and they started working on the facial muscles predominantly used in positive emotions, their mood would lighten up a lot. And vice-versa.

It's not either-or. Felt emotions cause facial muscles to articulate an expression. But articulating an emotional expression and holding if for a while causes the emotion to be felt.

If you're feeling happy, you smile. If you're feeling, say, grumpy and you plaster a smile on your face and keep it in place, pretty soon you start feeling happy. It may not last depending on how intensely grumpy you are, but it does happen that way.

That process happens with music and culture in general, too. Sometime a bad mentality in an individual (whatever the reason) causes bad intensely-felt cultural choices and sometimes a bad emotionally charged culture causes said individual to make bad choices and develop a bad mentality. Both can happen at the same time and in the same individual.

Michael

Here's a brief video that I discovered last week. Just now getting around to watching and cogitation. I got caught at the point where Ekman talks about capacities. "The empathy of the torturer" is not a correct translation, but it threatens to send me down another warren where former torturers in Latin America were ostensibly studied by psychological 'science.'

torturerNeedsEmotionalRecognition.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AgvKJK-nrk

Active on Twitter at 88.

 

Edited by william.scherk
Unwanted smiley ):
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A little, somewhat - 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi4_IHr5YX4AhUFgv0HHWbEC1IQFnoECDMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2Fsections%2Fhealth-shots%2F2019%2F07%2F01%2F735822187%2Fthe-science-of-smiles-real-and-fake&usg=AOvVaw0kRYeN6PgeVKtDCj3oU90F

 

In another study I read that habitually smiling to improve one's mood soon loses its efficacy because the brain 'recognizes' it's being fooled. Further, constantly "faking it" for others, e.g. coworkers, customers, can have negative effects.

"What they found is that surface acting intensifies the authentic, underlying feelings a person is experiencing, regardless of whether those feelings are positive or negative. “So, if you're faking being happy, the authentic feeling of being unhappy is exacerbated,” Lennard said.

 

Much more fascinating, what precedes a smile or frown:

In reverse: 4) The body/features responds to the prior cause 3) a specific brain cocktail released into the body, caused by 2) an observation by senses or recollected in memory, or anticipated, of - "a something". The entire process due to the first cause 1) the "value" (or disvalue) to you, that your mind made, assessed, was informed, experienced, (etc.) and habituated subconsciously - about that "something" or class of somethings.

1-2-3-4. Your mind caused the emotion your body feels. You have to know something in order to smile.

 

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59 minutes ago, tmj said:

Your smile/frown is for others. Evolution said you have a better chance of getting your genes into the future if you interact/cooperate with others of your kind.

T,

Bingo.

Bodily expression of emotions is mostly nonverbal communication.

The inner feeling of emotions (with the accompanying neurochemical soup) is a kind of fuel or impulse for action and inaction.

(As an aside, there are "get going" emotions in the brain like rage, excitement, etc., and "shut down" emotions like sadness, contentment, etc. And they all sit on an underlying mood like serenity, anxiety, etc.)

This is my understanding from reading a lot and seeing a lot of lectures about emotions.

And, of course, evolution is all about survival being weighted for the individual and reproduction weighted for the species, with individual and species doing both.

 

14 hours ago, anthony said:

In another study I read that habitually smiling to improve one's mood soon loses its efficacy because the brain 'recognizes' it's being fooled.

Tony,

This is a misidentification.

The two-way interaction between emotion in the body and emotion in the brain does not involve being fooled on either end. It is real both ways and the influence of one on the other is real.

This kind of misidentification is prevalent in O-Land and I constantly argue against it. Just because something exists and it is not in line with the way Rand wrote, that does not mean it is a separate individual thing and has malevolent intentions.

There is no innate battle between emotions and mind going on inside of us. It's not either-or. We have both as part of the way we are and both are necessary to our health, well-being and even cognition.

 

One cannot replace what goes on in the brain by artificially making a bodily expression of an emotion like a smile, but as any of these studied show, one can influence what goes on in the brain that way. Part of the nature of that influence is that the emotion in the brain does not last long.

That's not good, bad, the result of an inner battle, or one part of one's being deceiving another part in some kind of metaphysical transaction gone bad.

In Eckman's writings I read years ago, he wrote about himself and a helper mapping the individual facial muscles for emotions by isolating them in a mirror and moving them individually. When they were mapping negative emotions like anger, etc., they stayed in a bad mood all day long, even after the workday ended. :) 

But none of this means one is fooling the brain that way any more than watching an exciting movie to get the adrenaline and dopamine (or oxytocin or serotonin, etc.) going "fools" the brain. 

It's just simply the way the brain and body are integrated.

They come wired that way.

 

One accepts that nature as Law of Identify because one can observe it on a primary cause-and-effect level, or one can try to deduce the nature of emotions from some principle or other.

I go with observation, especially when I can do a lot of those things myself. And I can observe them in the meta part of my brain as I am doing them. And I can observe others doing them with the same results I get.

I cannot observe some of the conclusions Rand arrived at about emotions. Instead, I observe the contrary. (For example, the mind being tabula rasa at birth--including emotions. Or emotions always being effects, never causes. Or her computer model of the brain. And several things like that. As usual when I disagree with Rand, her observations are valid for some instances, but not for all instances, of what she is addressing.)

 

Here is the bottom line with my own independent thinking. If I cannot observe something, I won't believe it just because Rand said it. I did that in the beginning and it was useful--quite useful in fact--as I learned to operate my brain at higher levels. Like I said, my entire outlook on life has been informed by Objectivism and the way Rand gets you to check premises, look at reality and so on.

But now I can operate my brain at higher levels and I see that some of those initial premises do not hold as universal. They were great as training wheels when I did not know better. But as one matures, just like with learning a language, at some point the training wheels have to come off.

Michael

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4 hours ago, tmj said:

Your smile/frown is for others. Evolution said you have a better chance of getting your genes into the future if you interact/cooperate with others of your kind.

The minor objection to that- the private, unobserved, frown or smile one often makes, and often witnesses others make when they think no one's watching.

With not any effect had or intended, on another person. The basic fact is, an expression is a natural display of an authentic emotion. Of course, it can be counterfeited - inauthentically - by people for many reasons, many quite benevolent, some by hypocrites, some by predators. Because everybody knows emotive signals, anyone can pretend to be one "of your kind", with the appropriate 'emotional display' they mirror, copy, etc. .

The amount of face muscles we have shows that the human expression matters - to others. Right, you'd infer interaction and cooperation of pre-verbal, early man depended on one ~seeing~ others' pain-pleasure, and its merit continues today--while one has to allow hugely for fakery of emotions. 

None of that detracts at all from the process of HOW an authentic emotion arises.

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Isn't 'authentic emotion' redundant ? or oxymoronic? It is to me , the way I understand/use the concepts of emotion and authentic.

It's like an inauthentic rock as opposed to an authentic one. One could make an object that looks like a rock out of nonrock material , but that would be an 'artificial rock'. A copy of the Declaration of Independence could be either authentic or not and the latter could be described as an 'artificial' copy , but just something about American English vernacular hits the ear wrong , yeah ?

Your phrasing here points to an almost torturous mode of thinking to establish a dichotomy between mind and body and yet giving lip service to an 'integrated' individual.

Michael's preceding post more eloquently states the point about the 'whole shebang' being , in reality , a lot less 'either or' and a lot more integrated.

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1 hour ago, tmj said:

Isn't 'authentic emotion' redundant ? or oxymoronic? It is to me , the way I understand/use the concepts of emotion and authentic.

It's like an inauthentic rock as opposed to an authentic one. One could make an object that looks like a rock out of nonrock material , but that would be an 'artificial rock'. A copy of the Declaration of Independence could be either authentic or not and the latter could be described as an 'artificial' copy , but just something about American English vernacular hits the ear wrong , yeah ?

Your phrasing here points to an almost torturous mode of thinking to establish a dichotomy between mind and body and yet giving lip service to an 'integrated' individual.

Michael's preceding post more eloquently states the point about the 'whole shebang' being , in reality , a lot less 'either or' and a lot more integrated.

I don't follow. This drifted to *outward displays* of emotion, not integrated (or not) FELT emotions per se .

You haven't put on a smile, when you didn't feel like smiling? Nothing wrong with that, when e.g. one doesn't want to hurt someone's feelings needlessly. Or seen and heard, and this is prevalent lately with increasing fears, false laughter that doesn't ring true? But, then there's pretend expressions of 'kindness' and compassion, for advantage.

I'm a student of facial expressions for my profession, and maybe they are more obvious to me.

I am pointing to how many people are indeed, inauthentic; which bears on being non-integrated, lacking integrity. People fake other expressions, verbally - exactly as they would facially, usually simultaneously. In other words, they deliberately deceive.

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17 hours ago, anthony said:

A little, somewhat - 

 

"What they found is that surface acting intensifies the authentic, underlying feelings a person is experiencing, regardless of whether those feelings are positive or negative. “So, if you're faking being happy, the authentic feeling of being unhappy is exacerbated,” Lennard said.

 

 

 

I am quoting what I read by someone in the field, I don't know who and he's not an Objectivist. "Surface acting intensifies the authentic, underlying feelings".

The feeling of unhappiness is "exacerbated"- he wrote. This is clearly psychological, I'm sure Branden also wrote similar on living authentically.

 

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35 minutes ago, anthony said:

I am pointing to how many people are indeed, inauthentic...

Tony,

Authenticity and inauthenticity are important for social signals, but this dichotomy is not a standard for how emotions connect the brain and body. That standard is biological, not social.

Just because someone is trying to fool other people with a fake emotional signal, that does not mean NO emotion is present in the person, with NO brain activity and NO relevant bodily correspondences for the emotion that is actually present.

Back to my cognitive normative principle: one cannot evaluate something correctly unless one has identified it correctly.

If you want to establish universal truths about emotions, you have to look first at biology. Notice that biology is present in all authentic and inauthentic manifestations.

However authenticity is not present in all biological manifestations. Ditto for inauthenticity.

Biology is more fundamental.

Hierarchy of knowledge (of concepts) and all that...

Michael

 

 

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Michael, there is the interface between consciousness and biology... body-mind... that is fundamental. They can be and are allowed to pull apart, obviously.

The mind produces an appropriate response we will feel emotionally, *by way of* bodily functions that are tangible. Heartbeat rises, etc.etc.

[A descriptive term for emotional function, "psycho-physiological" (NB)

Bodily responses initiated by seratonin, and the rest - haven't consciousness, they cannot have a clue of the 'correct' emotion to make us feel in a given circumstance to a given stimulus.

Therefore, the mind-body "interface", a mind perceiving/judging/retaining - a body responding automatically to those prejudgments made: pain-pleasure, good/bad for me.

One even can identify instantly the type of emotion felt and its cause: Say I feel embarrassed. I know why, exactly. e.g. I got "caught out" by my wife on some little thing.

One can identify that embarrassment on others' faces, perhaps imperfectly. Often a red face is a give away. One can even feign shame, embarrassment, humiliation. (I've done some acting).

An emotion is the instant and strongly felt *end result*, which can in turn be the cause of taking evasive action, etc.etc.

Absolutely critical to our survival, are emotions, and not only physical-biological survival but to our consciousness' well-being and survival.

I identify rigorously, enough to not have found a single self-contradiction to the basic theory. The many, unending and absorbing variations "on a theme", branching off in every direction, that's what you'd expect from this endless subject. 

 

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2 hours ago, anthony said:

An emotion is the instant and strongly felt *end result*...

Tony,

This is where we disagree.

Some emotions are not end results of anything. They are simply there waiting to come like waves come. They will happen irrespective of any theory or principle.

You can't eliminate them except, maybe, through brain surgery.

Or death. That last does a pretty good job.

:) 

Michael

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On 5/30/2022 at 11:55 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Tony,

This is where we disagree.

Some emotions are not end results of anything. They are simply there waiting to come like waves come. They will happen irrespective of any theory or principle.

You can't eliminate them except, maybe, through brain surgery.

Or death. That last does a pretty good job.

:) 

Michael

Michael, Clearly I take the point of view that there can't be a causeless emotion. Each one had to be created by something, by some process, concerning "something" (and the value placed on it), "out there".

"Like waves come" - right!

One mustn't forget "the powerful role" of the subconscious, the continuous absorption by a brain of sense-stimuli, even when the mind is focused elsewhere, most of which one isn't aware one is seeing/hearing/etc. -- and its contents.

(Comforting to know the senses and brain 'never sleep', in a sense, always on the broad lookout for your wellbeing and survival).

So, some emotions may seem inexplicable and mysterious, such as a strange and sudden melancholy evoked when you're otherwise enjoying yourself - I think that's the subconscious in play, absorbing, recollecting, associating, and comparing, this immediate place and time, e.g. in the company of friends etc. -- with a past time and similar circumstances. Except, perhaps, some cared-for person (the "value" component) is absent here and now which subconsciously saddens one, without apparent cause.

What appears inexplicable always has an explanation.

 

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2 hours ago, anthony said:

Michael, Clearly I take the point of view that there can't be a causeless emotion. Each one had to be created by something, by some process, concerning "something" (and the value placed on it), "out there".

Tony,

Try Law of Identity.

You are looking for the equivalent to the cause for the appendix or the toenail or the prefrontal cortex, etc.

Species-wise, there are evolutionary causes we can discern (and maybe others we don't yet--that kind of knowledge is open-ended.) But there are no individual-initiated causes for all emotions. There are for some, but not all. 

The individual human comes that way.

Law of Identity.

Ironically, this position of yours (and Rand's, for that matter) is a perfect example of the mind-body dichotomy. Formal dualism at its finest: value choices made by the individual soul causes all emotions in the individual's body.

That's religion.

Michael

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Tony,

And for those who like to look deeper at current events to see how this stuff is used, Polly goes to the conspiracy theory side and speculates on things emotional.

FChnyfYUiwri_640x360.jpg
WWW.BITCHUTE.COM

Are frequencies weaponized? Can they alter behaviour to the point of genocide? If you can send a gift of support I’d be thrilled! Click here for my website:...

The gist of her idea is that there is already proven a correspondence between different frequencies and different emotional states. However, the frequencies can be disrupted by many influences, so implementing them is difficult. One possibility is that bodies can be prepared to accept frequencies and make sure they vibrate as intended.

This would account for the push to vaccinate everyone by mandate. Prepare the bodies, then control through frequencies.

She also suggests (through the work of another person) and the Ruanda massacre was the result of a frequency experiment carried out by a USA government agency covertly at the time. It seems like there is plenty of documentation now available proving that this happened.

 

The main approach to all this is that human emotions can be triggered by frequencies in combination with other physical things. Including smartphones as frequency transmitters, which are perfect since they are so close to the human brain all the time.

Polly showed one French researcher back in the 70's talking about research on crystal particles being lodged in the human brain through injections like vaccines. And these crystals are perfect frequency translators and discipliners.

No matter how much pooh-poohing there happens in the mainstream press about those Americans in the Cuban embassy damaged by frequencies, the fact is these individuals continue damaged and no rational explanation for their damage has yet been provided. There was a hard push in the press and pundits to discredit frequencies, then the issue was swept aside as if it were resolved.

Well it wasn't resolved.

So what is true or false among all this?

Who knows? But when there is so much pressure to not even ask questions, that leads me to believe something needs to be looked at and exposed.

 

Here in philosophy-land, we give bad guys free reign by promoting speculations derived from principles as fact regarding emotions. On the Randian side, there is this business of values only causing emotions. On the opposite and really toxic side, some people claim free will does not exist and emotions are simply the result of automatic neurochemical soup.

What gets lost in all of this is simple observation and measurement.

Well, the bag guys observe and measure up a storm.

I hate to say it, but they are more rational than the philosophy people, even though they have evil intentions guiding their rationality.

Michael

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2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

 But there are no individual-initiated causes for all emotions. There are for some, but not all. 

If an "emotion" - all come from individual consciousness.

How is any emotion, begun by the individual's awareness and identification, about 'something', evaluated by his individual value-importance, experienced by him personally, and biologically evolved for his own purposes of survival/well-being--

-not "individual initiated"? A self-contradiction: The "self-less" emotion. (A 'collective mind' there is not)

Since I'm sure you're referring to one's emotions for and about "other people", (specifically, the group of compassion emotions) I ask by whose senses and consciousness - and by whose standards - does one see and judge others' pain, suffering, etc. - but by the individual's own experience of pain/pleasure and by what he understands is bad/good for any humankind - suffering/joy?

iow, not to be confused because someone else may be the object of pity, it's you the subject who recognizes their state and has that emotion on their behalf.

You feel compassion for someone because their signals of physical or psychic pain are clear to you, self-fully. Take out 'the self' and all we have is a duty to help others, without the slightest value attached to them or in helping.

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1 hour ago, anthony said:

How is any emotion, begun by the individual's awareness and identification, about 'something', evaluated by his individual value-importance, experienced by him personally, and biologically evolved for his own purposes of survival/well-being--

Some bad, mental phenomena I find interesting are: Worry and anxiety. Regret, even for things that happened years and years ago. Emotions experienced while dreaming and even though the dream is not true or reflective of anything that has happened to you, it still affects your waking, emotional life. Things you “can’t get out of your head.”

I see little evolutionary value in my brain for those thoughts.

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4 hours ago, anthony said:

If an "emotion" - all come from individual consciousness.

Tony,

That is an ideological definition deduced from a principle.

It is not based on observation and it is not a biological definition. 

The bad guys are using, and using well, the biology.

They couldn't give two hoots for ideological definitions they can't do anything with--because, basically, nobody can.

Well, we can argue about them. That we can do with an ideology idea divorced from--and contrary to--biology.

:) 

Michael

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