Like last night -- I had a pretty long day at work, felt tired and ready to crash on my drive home, but instead went to Alex's to hang with him and Joey. When I arrived, a delicious meal was waiting, and I felt so happy and thankful to have these guys in my life. We ate and chit chatted, smiled and played Munchkin, and I had an all around relaxing and fantastic evening.
I've once again been listening to Radiolab a lot recently, and there are several really interesting things I've learned about that have resonated with me.
There is a psychological condition called Cotard's Delusion where patients describe this intense and deep seeded feeling that what they see around them and who they are isn't real. Some are convinced that they are actually dead, and that this reality that surrounds them is purgatory, or hell, or just... an in between space on their journey to somewhere else. -- This distortion fascinates me because, well, what if they are right? I'll ask it. I'll ask that question: what if - they are right- ?
There was a man named Antonio Demazzio who would describe his emotional state as being "numb". He said he had no feeling, and the only thing he could feel was a disconnect between himself and his emotions. Now, I should preface this and say that this was from the Radiolab about Choice (in fact, that's the title of it). And I pulled this quote, listened to it over and over to get it right, for several reasons.
"The conventional theory is that a person without emotions would be perfectly rational -- that emotions somehow interferred with rationality -- that it got in the way, yet here was this guy who couldn't experience emotions, and he was pathologically indecisive."
-Radiolab, Choice
I'll explain the significance of this for me some other time, but it is significant to a particular degree.
3 comments:
I've been there, in that Cotard Delusion. What a phrase, huh? To even THINK your dead... that's a delusion. Total value judgment on beliefs, as if there is one "RIGHT" belief, or way to think. Sounds dangerously fascist to me, calling it a delusion. Go ahead and question it... it's good fun ;)
Being an eternal, immortal, infinite spirit, encased in a mortal, huwan body, can be quite confusing. For one who questions, seriously, "What is going on here?", the possibility that we are all dead, that nothing exists, this is a dream, or a machine we are spokes of... these are all equally possible, in that all we have to go on is what we feel. Maybe, if it's true, being indecisive, doing NO thing, is completely rational.
Without emotions, we may not be able to make decisions, for I believe emotions are our drive, our attraction, to certain choices. Emotions are what bring us to these physical bodies in this space-time continuum.
Take away emotions, and we have the state-of-being very similar to universal oneness, which we are in essence, and in between incarnations. That state does not make choices or discriminate between yes or no, because that state is both yes and no; that state is Oneness.
Emotions drive us to discriminate choices. Emotionless... call it dead or alive, it just IS.
Emotional, call this experience death or life, it still IS! Maybe this is hell! Maybe this is heaven! Maybe it's an endless play, like Sisyphus' mountain. Still... what are we gonna do with it is what matters. and How we gonna feel about it is where we lay our care.
Thanks for sharing; I thought I was just existentially curious; now I know, I've been delusional. (I still can't prove I'm dead or alive... but I do in joy this exIStence... is that delusional?)
I agree with what 'Aaron' said about the power (and necessity) of emotions in making decisions. I've read in philosophy classes (I want to say Kant) about how normativity is grounded in taking the means to your ends. But how can you have ends or a goal without values and emotions?
Cotard's Delusion reminds me of Inception, and so did this quote from "Notes from Underground" which I think is relevant as well:
"man, whoever he might be, has always and everywhere liked to act as he wants, and not at all as reason and profit dictate; and one can want even against one's own profit and one sometimes even positively must." (pg 25)
Like in Inception, it isn't the rationality of the action that is important, but the underlying emotions.
I think the indecision also indicates the multi-layered nature of all choice - pro&con, good&bad, yin&yang, etc. I think we all feel this type of indecision on a regular basis.
Life and death: they are one, at core entwined.
Who understands himself from his own strain
presses himself into a drop of wine
and throws himself into the purest flame.
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