Darren New wrote:
> Tim Cook wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> You can only be humiliated by yourself, not others.
>>
>> Pardon my French, but that's rather BS. 
> 
> I suppose if you haven't learned not to be humiliated.
> 
>> Our emotions are affected by external stimuli.  In fact, pretty much 
>> entirely.  Even if it's an internalised reaction to something, the 
>> origin is external. 
> 
> Humiliation, as an emotion, is internal. The external stimulus does not 
> necessarily make it occur.

But the external stimulus is necessary for it to occur.  (Semantics, what?)

> It's no harder to avoid being humiliated by clowns making fun of you 
> than it is to not be frightened by horror movies.  You merely need to 
> recognise and internalize that the opinions of strangers who you don't 
> know and will never see again are irrelevant to you.
> 
> Similarly, you can be embarrassed you made a mistake, or you can accept 
> that you sometimes make mistakes and say "Oops, I made a mistake" and 
> move on with your life.

This is nihilism, to some degree.  While it is perfectly understandable 
on an intellectual level, even if they're suppressed, ignored, or 
rationalised away, emotions do rear their ugly heads from time to time.

>> Variances in brain chemistry only serve to augment things (even if 
>> vastly), not spontaneously generate from whole cloth.
> I haven't any idea what that has to do with the topic.

The popular supposition goes that people with depression, psychoses, et 
cetera, are that way *because* of having different brain chemistry, 
hence Prozac, other antidepressants, and antipsychotics.  In a way, 'the 
chemicals *are* the emotions', or at least to the extent that they can 
be altered with other chemicals.  To which I disagree--the chemicals 
facilitate augmentation of emotions, but are not in themselves the cause 
thereof.  Re: the topic, this is to say that even the stimulus of brain 
chemistry is an 'external' factor.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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