About 1.4% of the US population has an allergic reaction to peanuts with a range of severity of physical reactions, from mild to severe, itchiness to asphyxiation resulting in death. What this means is that if 1000 people were given a peanut, 14 of them would react adversely to the allergen while the other 986 would be unaffected. People who are allergic have a predisposition to being allergic while they may happily eat a walnut, like in the picture below.
In a class today my client told me of a story he read where a father murdered his six year old daughter. I have no other details than that by I will work under the assumption that the little girl, no matter what she may have done was not to blame for her father's behavior, she was an innocent. My client said his wife doesn't want to read the news anymore because it is all so negative.
We had been talking in the class about emotional control and how we are responsible for our actions, no matter the catalyst for our feelings. If I have a fight with my wife, drive angrily and happen to run over someone at a zebra crossing, it would not be my wife's fault, she would not be liable. Although my inattentive and reckless driving might be due to a mood she evoked, my actions are always mine. Aren't they?
Going back to the peanut allergy and the physical reactions associated, are those predisposed at fault? This gets into a free-will area however, there are things that those who know they have a peanut allergy can do to limit their risk such as avoidance of allergen and carrying a tool like an epi-pen to counteract the effects. Once the predisposition is known, one can create habits and tools to deal with it.
There is a problem we have created in society as for decades we have encouraged people to increasingly show their emotions publicly and have often enough discouraged emotional control. We have made it "unnatural" to control ourselves and labelled those who do as unfeeling robots. There is a difference between feeling something and acting upon it though.
The father who killed his daughter showed his emotions didn't he? He was in the moment, lived his feelings, shouldn't he be celebrated for being true to himself? Of course not. He is a pathetic excuse for a human who due to his ability to control himself took the life of an innocent. Yet, he has been encouraged to do so.
The problem is that no matter how angry people are, most people are not going to react in such a way even if they want to but, there are always going to be some percentage who are unable to limit this emotional reaction. Some might be predisposed to it but encouraging them their whole life to show it without also encouraging self-limitation is going to see an increase in unlimited expression of emotion and more such events.
This is of course great for the news media as they have an increasing amount of extreme behavior at the global level to gather and sell to the public while concurrently telling them to be free, unrestrained, true to themselves. A ramping up of extremism.
As I see it, emotions are personal and should always come with the tools of self-control before they are shown outwardly, before they move a hand or a mouth. This is especially true with negative emotions and reactions that can lead to violence. Yet, we have built safe zones where we expect others to not cross our negative emotional zones and the politically correct world has obliged. As a result, we have an increasing number of people who have physical allergic reactions to simple words and ideas without the proverbial epi-pen to control themselves.
Your emotions, like your genitals, are yours. If you want to show them it is your choice but there are consequences to flashing them in public. No matter how you feel, you can't walk around the streets with your tackle out no matter how you feel about it. You have to have the maturity of emotional control, no matter how you feel or what you believe is okay.
It was no excuse for that father and you being upset is no excuse for behavior you would find inappropriate under normal emotional circumstances. but in a world of "show your emotions as your truth", this takes the responsibility of reaction out of the hands of the actor. It is a freeing of emotional control and in encouraging it universally, is going to result in those predisposed to "allergic emotional reaction" to act uncontrollably as they don't necessarily have the mental tools to do anything other than behave badly.
I have argued with many people who believe emotional control is not a natural part of life but hose same people want restrictions placed on the words and actions of others. they want to be free to act openly on their feelings but of course, they don't want to be raped and murdered by those who act freely on theirs. They expect everyone to react identically to themselves yet want to feel unique. They expect people to respect their boundaries and their decision to react as they choose but want to restrict that same choice in others.
It is emotional immaturity, the behavior of a toddler and without consequence of action due to protective safe zones, becomes the reactions of tyrants and dictators in adulthood. Could you call a man who kills his own six year old daughter anything other than a tyrant, an emotionally uncontrolled, tantrum driven, violent dictator who's expression of his own emotions are more important than the life of a child?
We live in a world that is increasingly emotionally charged resulting in continually polarizing views and less and less chance of effective discourse and therefore, solutions to the problems we face. Instead of taking control of our own experience and actions and developing our personal toolset, we expect others to curtail their words and behaviors for us and even if they try, they can't know the increasing number of things are allergic to.
Some will avoid people and places that trigger them, some learn how not to be triggered, not how not to feel. A trigger is a detonation device, it sets something in motion. An emotion never need be a trigger that sets violence in motion but unfortunately, it is increasingly the case. It is possible to have genitals and show them at an appropriate time to appropriate people. It is also possible to have emotions and do the same.
Take some responsibility for action and learn a little self-control and have the tools in place in case you find an emotional allergen that triggers a reaction in you.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
