I picked out comments here and there that I thought were important. Here goes.

Jeff: Whereas we can cease certain displeasures without, simultaneously, originating pleasure, God can not.

Tom: Yes.

Jeff: But for this distinction to be of great significance to the subject at hand, we have to assume that there is something other than resistance that God can do in the here and now that will remedy all misrelation.

Tom: Yes.

Jeff: Let's suppose, e.g., that God really did imprison fallen angels in the past or that He truly restrains Satan from all of his designs. Can God really make the situation better by doing something other than restraint?

Tom: I think part of what determines what is best to do “now” with regard to some individual situation is an eschatological perspective. Having the earth open to swallow several thousand Israelites is the best thing to do with respect to these Israelites given the overarching eschatologically. But seen as an act in isolation it might looks like mere restraint. In other words, restraint depends upon overarching purposes.

Jeff: One other thing. I think God desires to resist sins of ignorance, too. I suspect that transgression is associated with an impulse/desire that is more intense.

Tom: Agreed.

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Exousia: Love doesn't try to eliminate misrelation for ITS OWN SAKE, but for the sake of others.

Jeff: I say both, in the sense I described above. Love gains pleasure by giving pleasure.

Tom: I tend to side with Jeff here. Why the either/or, D?

I don’t think Paul in 1Co 13 meant to exclude love’s ever acting for its own sake. I think what Paul essentially means to say is that love is not selfish.

It seems impossible to make sense of God’s feeling ANY negative emotion (disgust or revulsion) if God does not act for his own sake.

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Exousia: Love does what it can to maximize good for it's beloved, knowing that this will inherently decrease God's displeasure.

Jeff: YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tom: I can say yes to this, except I don’t think the pleasure God experiences is as secondary or incidental as Exousia seems to be suggesting. In other words, we can’t say God knows that doing X will inherently result in his experiencing pleasure and then say God doesn’t do X “so that” he experiences pleasure. But neither does it have to be the case that God does X “only so that” he experiences pleasure. It’s both/and.

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Exousia: If you [Jeff] mean by "oppose actions of being" the SAME THINGS that I mean by "operations of opposition" (where the contrary operations have NO adversarial perspective undergirding them), then we are fine.

Tom: I don’t like adversarial because that term, I think, requires a certain perspective on “persons” that I think God doesn’t share. I think you misuse this term. But I do think God’s perspective on “operations of opposition” is “oppositional” (though not adversarial).

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Exousia: What I mean, Jeff...is that God's motivation for right-relatendess is NOT the decrease of God's displeasure. It is the maximization of good FOR OTHERS. God just knows that a SECONDARY EFFECT of God's maximizing good is his OWN increase of pleasure.

Jeff: But how can a teleological and omniscient being not act for both simultaneously?

Tom: I’m with Jeff on this.

------------------

Exousia: But why would God want to create Creation anyway? What's the motivation? God created so that contingent expresssions could find aesthetic satisfaction in God. God was COMPLETELY FINE without us. God has aseity.

Tom: I think this is a misapplication of aseity. We agreed that aseity meant God was unsurpassably satisfied in Godself and so didn’t have to create. But ONCE God creates, we agreed, God in grace and love opens himself up to being affected. But D, God can only do this if his purposes for creating include his getting pleasure and sentient satisfaction from creation. That’s the only way we are able to affect God. Saying God can’t do this because of divine aseity is to say God can’t in grace let us be meaningful to him.

Exousia: But God wanted to have a different VARIATION of pleasure by providing context and content for enhancing the pleasure of contingent expressions of Godself.

Tom: One could construe this as just as problematic as God’s being motivated to create by the pleasure he seeks from creation. That is, it just doesn’t make sense to say God “wanted to have…” and also say God is not motivated to desire this by the affect it will have on him. And the pleasure God seeks isn’t merely a consequence of other aims. It motivates the formation of aims.

Exousia: God wanted someone OTHER THAN Necessary Existence to enjoy God's beauty...just like God does! The anticipated pleasure is INSEPARABLE from the anticipated pleasure of the contingent expressions. So, God created not FOR HIMSELF directly...but for OTHERS. And in doing so, it was STILL for himself.

Tom: It doesn’t follow by some rule of logic that because the pleasure God gets from us is inseparable from the pleasure we get from God that one pleasure if primary and one secondary. It just follows that both pleasures are linked. One can’t happen without the other.

We could just be splitting hairs. I mean, I really resonate with what you write here Exousia. But I find myself agreeing with what you affirm but disagreeing with what you deny. Who is going to say God doesn’t want contingent sentient creatures enjoying God’s beauty? Not me. But it just doesn’t make sense to say God “wants” this and not posit the priority of “this desire” as a primary motivation. To want X is to make X a source of pleasure for one’s self. God’s wanting to me just means God seeks sentient satisfaction from something.

Now, which reeeeally comes first (God’s pleasure or mine) is, I think, not really that important. Like Jeff said, for an omniscient God, both are present in the other. But personally, I still like the idea that creation is God’s gift to Godself.

----------------

Jeff: We're saying the same thing, I think, D., except this: You want to make divine sentient satisfaction secondary instead of primary in divine motivation. I don't see that this buys us anything. All it does is make God's self-disposing more mystical than it needs to be. Why not just make it analogous to ours, and hence explicable, by making God's sentient satisfaction primary or equal in importance in divine motivation?

Tom: Exactly.

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Exousia: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE means loving even when their is NOTHING TO GAIN from giving that love. God loves us and does good to us just because we exist...and for no other reason. He doesn't do it for himself. He doesn't NEED to.

Tom: This is where I’ll disagree. There is conflating going on here. It doesn’t follow that because God does something “for himself” that God “needs” to do this something.

I would not say that loving someone unconditionally precludes perceiving some gain that is achieved from loving. It’s impossible in my mind to exclude all anticipation of pleasure as a ‘condition’ from ‘unconditional’ love. What makes unconditional love unconditional is that the person loved does not first has to “earn” love by “qualifying” on the condition of some performance. We discussed this before, D. We CANNOT deserve God’s love. Nothing we may do can serve as the “condition” upon which God’s love is extended to us in the sense that if this condition is not met by us, God would not love us. THAT is all I understand unconditional love to be. It does not preclude God’s creating people to love so that God may get pleasure.

Exousia: God doesn't do it for himself. He doesn't NEED to.

Tom: Why do you see it this way? Why is it EITHER (a) God creates and loves us FOR NO REASON other than because we exist, or (b) God creates because he NEEDS to? It doesn’t follow that if God determines to create under the condition that creation give him pleasure (as well as replicates his pleasure in and through us) that God has to NEED to do this.

In fact, I think God always “gets” a certain “gain” from doing and being God, from just being what God is. I think this figures in as a motivation for all that God does. That is, the pleasure God gets from observing himself, being himself, is always a motivation for all God does. When God opposes (your acts does acts in opposition to) some behavior and the behavior fails to achieve right relatedness (let’s say the person goes deeper into evil), does God come up completely empty handed? With respect to achieving right relatedness with creation, yes. But God does, I believe, get pleasure from his own performance. When he responds justly, lovingly, consistently to evil, God’s actions are always a successful demonstration of God’s own mercy and love. Surely this is pleasing to God. But if God’s pleasure can ONLY come from our being pleased in God, God could not get pleasure from contemplating God’s own forebearance.

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Starkman: So God's anger is really nothing more (or less) than God lovingly -- His context of existence -- taking up a "tough love," stance so to speak.

Tom: Tough love. Yes.

Starkman: God perceives the opposition but He receives said opposition only in an emotional context of complete awareness of the depravity of the accuser.

Tom: I brought it up before. Our ignorance and depravity certainly explain our misrelating. But that’s not the end of it. This is why I try to say “willfully misrelate.” We may be victims, we may be sick, crazy, etc. But if we’re also responsible, then we have to have had enough knowledge and ability to avoid becoming what we become. My point is, God’s perspective takes not of truly willful, informed, could-a-decided-otherwise misrelation. I feel like Exousia sees our misrelating entirely in terms of our falling victim to a condition or virus. That doesn’t capture everything God takes into consideration.

Starkman: Therefore, because God can never not fully comprehend this information, and because of who God is, God neither receives nor reacts to opposition with an emotion apart from His self-existent context of love.

Tom: Well, sure. God never feels or acts in ways love can’t feel or act. God is love. If he feels and acts in oppositional terms, it’s only because love feels and acts oppositionally with respect to certain states and behaviors. I honestly don’t see this as obviously impossible.

Starkman: Never does God "loose it," and never does He come close to loosing it.

Tom: Right. The oppositional emotional stances I’ve been trying to describe are not what I would call God’s “losing it.”

Starkman: Never does God have to restrain emotional anger as we know it.

Tom: As we know it, right. Dysfunctional negative emotions by definition result from the failure of some other proper emotion or perspective. We lose it because we drop something along the way. God can’t do this. But this doesn’t so far as I can see rule out ‘negative’ emotions per se.

Starkman: And never does He react to His opposer in any context except the context that defines who God is; God can never react to his opposer in an "againstness" to His opposer, the way we can.

Tom: I feel like I need some clarification on certain words. I think instead of “the way we can” you probably means “the way we often wrongly do.” But since I think God can emotionally oppose certain states, I think we can rightly do so too.

Just to clarify, Jeff and I are agreeing that God loves, values, and works for persons and their potential. I just think this requires feeling and working in opposition to misrelation. If some feel there’s really something at stake in saying this opposition is a natural effect of God’s just doing right-relatedness, OK. I honestly think we’re splitting hairs though. I agree that God loves and values persons, that God never “loses it,” and that when God does what some of us call “opposing” persons, God is doing what he believes is the most loving thing to do in the best interest of the persons he loves.

Isn’t that enough? I mean, if we just say that to people, won’t that heal a lot of misunderstandings and wounds?

Starkman: So when God responds to the opposer, God's motivation is not from any other context but one of love, even when demonstrated in "tough love," which we might perceive as emotional anger as we know it. Tough love is not a negative emotion, however, but rather a reaction based on complete awarenss of the depravity of the opposer and based on a context of love for the opposer.

Tom: Do you think God ever feels “negative” emotions?

Starkman: Though God's love may look disproportionate (or even emotionally charged), it is never the case that God's reaction is based on anything other than [my bold] His desire to cause a positive response from the opposer.

Tom: I see what you and E are saying. I just don’t think it’s as full a description as it could be. Again, I’m agreeing with what you affirm but disagreeing with what you want to deny. I affirm that God always wants to illicit a positive right-relating from those who oppose him. I just don’t see why God’s motivations can’t be complex enough to include his really opposing that behavior which endangers the pleasure he seeks from right-relatedness. It’s the necessary flip-side of the right-relatedness God desires. Given this complexity, I can’t agree that God’s actions are “never based on anything other than” his desire to cause a positive response from those who oppose him. That desire is always there, yes; always present. But it doesn’t rule out God’s genuinely perceiving his actions in oppositional terms to misrelating.

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Exousia: My main concern was with this: God, despite how his actions may look to us, NEVER has an adversarial, opposition stance towards Creation at any time.

Tom: I don’t equate ‘adversarial’ with ‘oppositional’, so I can deny the former and affirm the latter.

Exousia: God doesn't feel like he's "at war" with sin or sinners. God doesn't SEE GODSELF as an opponent AGAINST other opponents. God doesn't see Godself as FIGHTING against other opponents. God doesn't see Godself as "over-against" us in any way.

Tom: I can agree with this, but there’s nothing of MY position in it. Dude, we can’t have a conversation if you keep misconstruing the arguments of others. Jeff and I have repeated insisted that God does not oppose “persons.” Yet you continue to frame OUR position in such terms.

Exousia: God doesn't have an adversarial perspective where EMOTIONAL RESPONSES grounded in that adversarial perspective can emerge.

Tom: I think I can agree to this since I don’t equate ‘adversarial’ with ‘oppositional’.

Exousia: This is NOT to say that God doesn't do "operations" where God is working "at cross purposes" with misrelation. NO! … I've never had a problem with God doing "operations of opposition"

Tom: See, this just makes no sense to me. I honestly think most people will read this and say, “Come on, D, you believe God does ‘operations of opposition’ but deny that God ‘opposes’ anything?” The overall message gets lost in splitting hairs. I say “God opposes such behavior!” You say, “No, God doesn’t oppose. He ‘does works of opposition’!” What?

Can’t we keep it simpler? — God loves us. But we willfully oppose him and wreak havoc in his creation. This grieves God, who loves and values us. God opposes those actions that harm us and others, but behind this opposition is an unfailing love that aims to bring our despair and misrelation to an end and bring us into our potential.

If we can agree on this much, even if we disagree on the subatomic quantum-propositions (whatever they are) that it actually breaks down to, that’s good enough for me.

Tom

PS Haven’t read Jeff’s last two posts yet.

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/14/2007 7:33:36 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/14/2007 9:39:32 PM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/15/2007 12:47:21 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/15/2007 12:21:48 AM (GMT-6)

But I'm not fearful about that anymore (or anything else, for that matter). I believe that love conquers all...and that if I am just respectful, attentive, caring, and responsive to the pain of others, that God will give me the wisdom, patience, and grace to bring the most love into a situation that I can. And I believe that will be enough.

Moreover, I REMEMBER very clearly what it was like to be angry all the time.  (Remember, it was just ONE YEAR AGO that my wife was strongly suggesting for me to go to ANGER MANAGEMENT CLASSES!)  So I have plenty of MEMORY about being angry to empathize somewhat with how angry people feel. I trust that as God needs to use this memory, that God will do so.

Just where I'm coming from.

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/15/2007 12:40:25 AM (GMT-6)

Exousia: Now, let's say that I am disgusted and saddened by the MISRELATION (not the person!), but I never have any perspective where I feel either "opposed to" or "opposed by" the person or the misrelation...AND I don't get angry at all. Not one bit. I just take the opportunity to show MORE love and MORE consideration...because their behavior shows that they need MORE love and MORE consideration. I see their privation like NEGATIVE SPACE...that just shows HOW MUCH MORE GOOD can be done in this situation!

Now...

If I do this, am I MORE or LESS like God by NOT being angry at the misrelation? Am I MORE or LESS like God by NOT having an oppositional stance towards the misrelation?

Jeff: I'm thinking that any time we discipline our focus on what produces the most efficient and effective action unto proper relation, we are more like God--with respect to that choosing. And I definitely think that scripture is clear that we are to feel anger much less as we grow. Because anger arises from focusing on relations over which we can legitimately do very little. If we end up eliminating anger, I say great. But unlike God, we have to choose focus in a SofA. God always sees all relations of a SofA crystal clear.

For me, then, it's about, what is practical and how that relates to what we are to attend to and why. God doesn't choose what to attend to in this way. He apprehends all relations and feels the negative feelings they cause, for there is no worry in God that these feelings are going to make Him less efficient and effectual. We simply can NOT, with equal intensity, do that. Hence, we are not accountable to. So, again, for me it's about recognizing where we want to be, but not labeling as wrong the simple experience of the emotional state we call anger.

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/15/2007 8:07:07 AM (GMT-6)

Exousia-

Sorry to butt in. I know you're talking to Jeff. Sorry Jeff.

I want to show you, Exousia, how you’re confusing me (I don’t know about Jeff). You say:

If I do this, am I MORE or LESS like God by NOT being angry at the misrelation? Am I MORE or LESS like God by NOT having an oppositional stance towards the misrelation?

I read these synthetically. That is, both questions express the belief that “being angry at misrelation” is equivalent to “taking an oppositional stance towards misrelation.” I don’t know how else to read you here. But since I don’t equate “anger” with all “opposition” I’m left out of the conversation. I got into this convo without ever suggesting what we ought to call the negative feelings that motivate God to oppose certain behaviors, but you keep calling this anger and that prejudices the conversation and beggs the question.

Exousia: Am I MORE or LESS like God by NOT having an oppositional stance towards the misrelation?

Tom: Two things. (1) Negative spaces don’t abuse children, rob banks, or racially discriminate. Dude, you keep coming up with analogies that fail to capture the concrete, willful, oppositional behavior we’re talking about. To describe such behavior as 'negative space' seems to me to come close to saying such behavior isn’t real or is just an abstraction in our minds. (2) Knowing how proactive you are, and knowing your belief in complicity and concrete engagement with creation, I’d say you WERE adopting an oppositional stance and WERE more like God even if YOU refused to call it this. In my book you actively oppose misrelation.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/15/2007 8:09:14 AM (GMT-6)

Here’s where I am. Correct me if I’m processing something wrongly.

(1) God’s triune experience is characterized by aseity; that is, God is unsurpassable, impenetrable enjoyment of loving relationality. Nothing can threaten or endanger this. In this primal sense, we are meaningless to God. That is to say, we are relatively meaningless to God.

(2) God has, in love, freely decided to create the world and us in it. This decision is equivalent to God’s deciding to let us mean something to him. But this is only significant if we are meaningful to God’s “experience.” Thus, though we are relatively meaningless to God, we are also relatively meaningful to God. This in turn means that some or much of what is impossible for God to experience, in as much as we are relatively meaningless to God, God may experience in as much as we are relatively meaningful to him. God experiences changing states of mind and emotion appropriate to an omniscient, all-loving person who always perfectly perceives our finite perspectives and does all he does out of love in an effort to maximize good and minimize evil.

(3) Much of human misrelating (evil, sin, wrong doing) is unintentional and due in large part to ignorance. Much of it, however, is sufficiently informed and willful. These different human perspectives which motivate misrelating are perfectly apprehended by God. They evoke different intensities of negative emotional response from God.

(4) All emotions are motivational. They tend to motivate a corresponding behavior designed to increase or decrease those states responsible for evoking particular emotions. Negative emotions motivate oppositional behavior (= behavior designed to decrease those states or behaviors responsible for evoking displeasure and emotional pain).

(5) God experiences negative emotions. These emotions motivate God. God always experiences positive emotions as well, and always relative to those agents responsible for evoking negative emotions in him. Thus God always feels on several layers with respect to us. God’s emotional states are complex. It follows that God’s motivations are complex. He loves and values persons but opposes despairing and harmful behavior. This is my problem with Exousia saying God never in any way perceives himself as opposing anything in creation. This essentially makes God’s negative feelings non-motivational. Exousia did say divine disgust motivated God, however. It “contributes to the intensity of God’s zeal.” But doesn’t this say something Exousia would want to deny, namely, that God’s zeal is not perfectly intense out of love of good only? Given Exousia’s view, why should God’s zeal require the contribution of “disgust” and “revulsion” to be as intense as it ought to be? Cannot love of right relatedness make one’s zeal as intense as it could be? Same problem wearing different clothes if you ask me. Once we posit the motivational nature of emotion, and then posit a complex emotional life in God that includes positive and negative emotions (even if love is primary), I don’t see how we then exclude the negative emotions on a motivational level with respect to behavior (in a real but secondary sense).

(6) Love is in fact primary in this complex web of emotions. It is what all else is consistent with and what all else is an expression of since love is constitutive of divine aseity. I don’t think negative emotions can be primary in God because “primary negativity” is what characterizes our dysfunctional emotional life. Negative feelings are never enough to constitute their own “because,” their own independent motivation for God’s behavior (since they arise as love’s response to misrelating (ignorance and willful).

(7) When we just look at creation, observe the fallout, no one metaphor catches all that can be said to describe it. It IS an insane asylum, as Exousia has described it. But it really is sometimes more like a battle-field or theater of war. I don’t see a problem in adopting whatever metaphor works to describe the particular slice of reality we’re trying to describe.

I think there’s enough here to let any struggling person know that they’re loved unconditionally, that God never perceives himself as their adversary, and that he does all he does with their best interests in mind. But the same people would agree, I should think, that God opposes forces and actions that work contrary to God aims. I call that “God opposing” such and such.

Gotta run.

Tom

Exousia: In my last example, I tried to make it as clear cut as all get out! I described a person that I KNEW was out to get me because they told me so. There were KNOWINGLY, WILLINGLY trying to hurt me and my wife. I didn't think I could get anymore concrete than that.

Tom (smiling): Dude, we’re going round and round. I’m sorry to be so frustrating. Maybe I’m just getting in the way here!

But after describing those persons who oppose you (which WAS a real, concrete description), the analogy you immediately used to describe it was this:

“I see their privation like NEGATIVE SPACE”

and then ask:

“If I do this, am I MORE or LESS like God by NOT being angry at the misrelation?”

I just don’t see how the concrete opposition you describe is at all analogous to “negative space.” And then you frame your question about not responding in terms of “anger.” But I at least haven’t been arguing FOR an angry oppositional stance. See?

Exouisa: How do a belief that God works in and through fallen structures (the complicity thing) and being in the world, not of the world (concrete engagement) have anything to do with me adopting an oppositional stance to misrelation? I don't even get that.

Tom: Well, I’ll drop that then. No problem. My point was that if God engages the fallen world in concrete terms then it’s analogous to his engaging concrete entities, not negative space.

*******************************

Tom: (I don’t see how we then exclude the negative emotions on a motivational level with respect to behavior (in a real but secondary sense).

Exousia: If the primary motivation (zeal from love) is SUFFICIENT to motivate towards wanting to bring right-relatedness, then it would seem that the negative emotions are SUPERFLUOUS, though going in the same direction of wanting one to desire more right-relatedness. Do you believe that the primary motivation is SUFFICIENT to motivate God towards what he does?

If not, why not?

Tom: This is where we’re missing each other. (1) I don’t have this either/or approach. Either love is sufficient and negative emotions are superfluous OR God’s feels negative emotions but they’re superfluous and not a necessary, defining aspect of God’s response. I deny the disjunct. It doesn’t at all get to what I’m trying to express. In my view, to ask whether love as the primary motivation is sufficient to motivate God is simply to miss the point. Of course God’s love, as primary, is sufficient to motivate. But what is that love? What are its characteristics relative to willful misrelation? You see negative emotions like disgust and revulsion (which you agree God feels) as something absolutely other than, independent from, love. I see them as definitive of that love relative to misrelation. It may be a very fine tuning, but it makes better sense to me.

(2) Your view now seems very confusing to me. God does feel disgust and revulsion, but these are superfluous. One the one hand you say these emotions do figure in motivationally; they “contribute to God’s zeal” and intensify it is how I think you described their role in motivating God. On the other hand, however, love’s zeal is sufficient without their contribution. It’s either/or, and since love is primary, negative emotions are superfluous (although God has them). I don’t know what to say. You posit superfluousness in God experience of the world. That seems to undermine the perfection of the very perspective you say God has on the world.

Now, to my mind, if God DOES “works of opposition” then God PERCEIVES “works of opposition.” But this is complete nonsense God doesn’t perceive opposition, i.e., perceives his actions as opposing other actions and states. See, D, an act gets its definition (in God’s apprehension of the world) from God’s perspective, right? God’s “works of opposition” get the “…of opposition” from God’s perspective. It’s God perspective that constitutes the oppositional nature of these “works of opposition.” And certainly God’s emotions are constitutive of God’s perspective. So where God experiences negative emotions, these emotions figure into the complex emotional stance God takes regarding the world. But superfluous emotions in a God who perfectly apprehends all things? I categorically reject the notion. I’m sure you do to. So you must be meaning something else.

You keep driving this wedge between love on the one hand and these negative emotions on the other, and because love is primal and definitive of God it must be the case that the negative emotions aren’t. They must then be superfluous. You don’t see this as problematic at all?

Tom

I just saw your last post. Haven't read it yet.

This is a much better analogy. I’d agree that if someone asked me why I cleaned the room up I say, “Because I love a clean room.”

But consider this. People enter the room and start trashing it. What do you do? Just walk around cleaning up after them? Well, you might do SOME of that. But you'd oppose them. You'd do those “works of opposition.” And these works are NOT “cleaning up the room after them.” You don’t vacuum, dust, or wash up behind them. You engage THEM (their actions) in order to bring their effects to an end, and if they're your children and you love them, you probably are motivated by a complex emotional stance of BOTH positive and negative feelings (the negative feeling GET their definition from the positive feelings). We can even say that the people trashing your home were those to whom you originally gave the job of keeping it tidy. In fact, the way they trash things tells you they have real potential for cleanliness and you value that, but right now they need to be opposed. They need to be stopped. You can even talk to them while you’re opposing their actions about how better it would be that they change their ways. You don’t hate them and you don’t have to be dysfunctionally angry with them. But you do FEEL WHAT YOU DO when you do those “works of opposition.” Now, in SOME cases you’ll be opposing them indirectly by CLEANING UP AFTER THEM. You’re minimizing the effects of their behavior. However, that’s not all you do. In SOME cases you man-handle them, you oppose them. You throw them out of the house until they come to their senses perhaps. You constrain them.

If someone were to ask me: What did you DO TO those who trashed your house? I’d say “I opposed them. I threw them out. They have great potential, and I’ll keep working with them. They’ll be great house cleaners some day. But in that case I had to shut ‘em down. They were displeasing me and wreaking havoc, endangering my purposes and causing me pain."

Would somebody reply, “You sick, unloving, dysfunctional, despairing tyrant!” I don’t think so. Would anybody even think to investigate the unseen logical relations between the positive and negative emotions to determine which was which, which was more prior to, anterior to, what percetage of motivation did THIS emotion play and what function did THAT emotion play? I should think not. I think people would say, "Yeah, totally understand. That's pretty responsible and loving of you."

It’s BOTH/AND.

Jeff?

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 1/15/2007 11:26:50 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (Exousia) : 1/15/2007 11:31:52 AM (GMT-6)