Hostile Feelings without Reason
On the destructive force of feelings unchecked by reason.

Socrates is reported to have said, "The unexamined life is not worth living". And so, it is true, not because one man opined it to be so... but because the very real toxicity of the very real neurosis that infects the unexamined life will always destroy the peace with which it might otherwise have been enjoyed. Such is absolutely predictable, because it is absolutely inevitable.

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When someone is mad (angry) at someone else, without reasonable basis, they are having a neurotic episode. (This use of the term "neurotic" herein is colloquial, and not intended to be an authoritative diagnosis)

Such a neurotic episode involves self-delusion. A neurotic episode will consume someone's life if they let it, because allowing it to go unchecked wires the brain and neuro pathways to chronically skip (fail to apply) the intellectual check and balance of reasoning, to their own feelings, perceptions, and ultimate choices.

They are letting it (the neurotic episode) consume their life, if they do not subject it to strict analytical scrutiny to keep it in check.

Strick analytical scrutiny necessarily subjects one's feelings to the reasoning (logical) process of weighing the merits of the feelings against the actuality of the facts and events they relate to (are presumed to be based on), with a value-based commitment (choice) to dispense with feelings that cannot be appropriately justified by the reasoning process.

For this process to be successful and useful, one must be humble enough to accept their own fallibility as a real factor. This fallibility must be considered (believed) to give rise to the possibility that their perception of the related events and facts may not be accurate, and so, must also be reviewed, weighed, and thoughtfully reconsidered in view of all available evidence including the point of view of others when that is available.

Simultaneously, for the process to be successful, they must be humble and rational enough to accept the fallibility of their own emotions (feelings). If they do, they understand and sincerely weigh in the realty of this fallibility by considering the possibility that their feelings may not be valid or warranted if they do not pass the test of strict scrutiny that involves full processing and the application of reason and logic.

If they do not actively consider that their feelings may not be valid and warranted, until passing the test of strict scrutiny, they quickly become hopelessly and irredeemably neurotic (self-deluded).

The absence of this measure of humility, as it relates both to their perceptions and feelings, gives rise to chronic false certainty. False certainty is self-destructive neurosis (self-delusion).

This approach to keeping feelings in check with relevant scrutiny, is necessary for the maintenance of reliable mental and emotional health and well-being. The approach can be said to be "full processing" as opposed to managing perceptions and feelings, and consequently... relationships, by the use of avoidance, repression, displacement, or distraction.

The later approach (avoidance, repression, displacement, or distraction) leaves perceptions and their corresponding feelings to be recorded in the brain, as if valid, even if repressed, avoided, or displaced with alternate activities for distraction. When recorded in the brain, as valid, they accumulate as easy to trigger packets of unreasoned neurotic reactionary responses, at the molecular brain chemistry level, that will be set off and give rise to similar feelings and similar false certainty about the validity of those feelings when tangentially similar sensory experiences occur, like somewhat similar discussion or tones of voice, in certain contexts, even if those tangentially similar experiences do not warrant the reactionary feelings, conclusions and choices they give rise to.

Intense cultural pressure, in our society, is applied by inherently manipulative and exploitive people and social organizations to discourage awareness of the reality and relevance of the actual dynamics and appropriate intellectual management tools described above. Once an individual is stripped of or abdicates their responsibility for and commitment to the intellectual "check and balance" of reasoning and strict scrutiny to keep their feelings, perceptions, and corresponding conclusions and choices in check, they become hopelessly neurotic and exploitable and blinded to the fact that they are hopelessly neurotic and exploitable.

The blindness is perpetuated by calculated and aggressive false validation (unwarranted validation and incentives), from the same exploitive people or social organizations, for conformity of the usefully neurotic individual's positions, choices, statements, and attitudes to the group think that is desirable to the social organization for its own exploitive purposes.

Sadly, there are, among us, those who believe that their feelings and therefore their corresponding perceptions, conclusions, and choices are valid solely on the basis of the emergence and experience of those feelings.

Many of these misguided souls conflate and confuse the truth that feelings are real and should be taken seriously, with the falsehood that feelings are, therefore, valid (valid because the experiential existence of the feelings are real for the person experiencing them) and should be acted upon or given inappropriate evidentiary weight in a matter that is being considered.

For clear headed individuals, this is absurd.

More serious than the absurdity of it, is the self-destructive and chronically toxic outcome for those who adopt such poisoned cognitive dynamics or even allow such infection of their psyche to go unchecked.

Any relationship with such individuals is ultimately doomed, even if enjoyable for a while. Because chronic neurosis is always devastatingly toxic, both for the individual who tolerates this cancerous infection in their own minds, and for those who delude themselves into thinking that life with such an individual will ever be consistently manageable with the inevitable crisis that will always follow and haunt an unreasoned life.

Socrates is reported to have said, "The unexamined life is not worth living". And so, it is true, not because one man opined it to be so... but because the very real toxicity of the very real neurosis that infects the unexamined life will always destroy the peace with which it might otherwise have been enjoyed. Such is absolutely predictable, because it is absolutely inevitable.

The most relevant thing that can be done in a relationship when toxic neurosis manifests its ugly head is to try to engage the afflicted soul in the process of scrutiny and reasoning as it applies to the feelings, perceptions and conclusions at hand. If that effort is obstructed, abandoned, or avoided.... no trust in the relationship is warranted. It is doomed if the value of and commitment to reason and reasoning and its relevance is not shared.

While this discussion addresses unwarranted hostility, in particular, the same principles hold true for any unwarranted feelings that drive false certainty or even false confidence. Neurotic conclusion jumping is profoundly damaging to the psyche whenever it manifests itself and is allowed to take root.

The human neurological system is an intricate biologically dynamic processing system that is either trained to consider all relevant data from all perceptive inputs to effect accurate and reliable assessments, or, in the alternative, warped to pre-filter and disregard perceptive inputs to accommodate the emotionally driven confirmation bias of the host psyche.

Once so warped, the actual biological evolution of the host consciousness persists with increasingly chronic perceptual disregard in favor of circular conclusions that feed self destructively neurotic emotions, such as fear and unhealthy subliminal desires for social acceptance, or artificial emotional highs or feelings of comfort, no matter the cost.

Once an individual's consciousness is sufficiently warped to abandon proper consideration of one's feelings, they are left an exploitable shell of a human being, tossed "to and fro" with every unchecked whim that can be manipulated by those who understand this human weakness. The LDS Church is, perhaps, the most profoundly insidious cult in the world, largely owing to its understanding and mastery of precisely the destruction of human intellectual discipline in favor of exploitable obedience and blind faith.

The general state of mental health in the state of Utah is utterly appalling in comparison to other states and the suicide rate has been cited in the Gaddy Case against the Mormon Corporate Empire to be two and a half times higher than the suicide rate in the next closest (worst) state. Both the local press and the community at large have the blood of such human destruction on their hands for their role in obfuscating the truth of the origin of such human devastation and allowing the fraud and manipulation of Mormonism to go unchecked.

See also: The Validation of Truth
See also: The Great Lie
See also: Who Cares about Philosophy
See also: Practical Considerations of the Gaddy case against the LDS Church
See also: A Simple Reasonableness Formula
See also: Management of Injustice in Social Units
See also: The Merits of Scrutiny
See also: Who Cares about Epistemology
See also: General Reasonableness Standards
See also: Character Assasination
See also: Other Interview Responses and Articles