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KB:... which is a sign of greater emotional competence, reacting to a feeling of being threatened with ferocity or with great restraint?
I think that's going to depend a lot. If it's a feeling of threat occasioned by, say, irrational thoughts and habits belonging to a previous context, then probably restraint. In other situations, other responses. Couldn't it be argued that emotional competence means an appropriate response? I wonder whether there can be found anything in common in the way people who have a secure attachment style respond to stressful situations?
I realize that my model of what appropriate behaviour looks like is heavily shaped by my own religious context: Jesus advocating giving also the shirt when sued for the coat, putting any observers and thus the prosecutor to shame by making them witness nakedness in an unjust lawsuit; Jesus advocating walking an extra mile with a soldier's pack in an occupied territory, putting the soldier on the wrong side of the military regulations and so on (cf Matthew 5 38-42 & for exposition of the context, Walter Wink's 'Powers' books). There, the response to oppression is transformative rather than violent: same principle as used in the Gandhian movement in S. Asia.
I think it's pretty common that we find those kinds of indications in our various scriptures and hero narratives? The discussion of what 'good' looks like seems to be really important in religious texts & certainly in my own discussions in faith community. I think that's a common thing: for example, the recording of lives of saints - people picked out as having embodied a particularly high standard of 'goodness'?
FN:There is a large body of scientific literature where the degree (and nature) of faith is an independent variable regarding for example mental health, economic status etc.
Well, the way it comes across to me is, you've written the same thing twice now without providing any useful or interesting information. If you'd summarized, linked to or reviewed any of those studies, I could see the point in you posting that. I think I am unused to people expecting that their unsupported claim for the existence of a thing be a point in itself. The first time you posted that, your words "but they smack more of Lab-material than Headshop wares," made me think you were saying those studies were somehow not relevant to this discussion - which seemed odd to me especially because the thread's not in Headshop and wasn't when I first posted in it up there. That was why I was making the point that I don't see any reason to divide different kinds of investigation, because philosophy and sciences in UK academic culture have the same root - I hope it's clearer what I meant? I'm still fairly much in the dark about what your point was, but perhaps I am failing to read what is of crystal clarity to all the other readers and should retire gracefully from the discussion.
E-A: I think all of these aspects of human life should be judged after actually examining the subject (impacts, causes, relations etc.) and a faith-based decision will most probably, per definitionem, not do that.
I think broad considerations should ideally be taken into account, and that any holy power expects us to use the best of our minds to engage with them. Faith for me is about helping me mind the larger context - not just 'what is convenient?' but 'what is holy?'/ 'what is of eternal value?'. It's an attempt to learn from the history and live in the light of what I hold to be most valuable, using all the resources at my command including reason. I guess that's the opposite kind of faith to yours? |
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