Doubt me, my dim companion! Why, God would be content with but a fraction of the love poured thee without a stint. The whole me, forever, what more can one—say, quick, that I may share a natural gift of endowment with thee! It cannot be my spirit, for that was thine before; I ceded all of dust I knew—what opulence the more had I, a humble soul, whose farthest of degree was that one might, some distant Heaven, dwell timidly with thee! Give up your abstraction and you will give up your question along with it. Do not think, do not question me. A vocabulary of sentiments is a linguistic expression of experiences shared by group members, and mirrors their interest and concerns. Each concept imposes meaning on experience as a way of preserving distinctions that are of importance in group life. Sentiment vocabularies differ among subcultures in a complex society such as social classes, men and women, and age cohorts. Modern women distinguish between liking and loving more clearly than men. The socioeconomic implications of mate selection pressure women to be more cautious and interpretive than men in their heterosexual relationships, in order to distinguish male friends from potential husbands. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
Philosophy is the love of knowledge or truth; its aim is personal salvation. It springs from the love of being; philosophy is humanities loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune oneself to it. Generally speaking, in comparison to the working class, middle-class language contains more words and makes finer, more complex differentiations of experience. This elaborated code permits the middle class to vernalize feelings and to react to them more precisely. A genuine statement must be capable of conclusive verification. If there is no possible way to determine whether a statement is true, then that statement has no meaning whatsoever. For the meaning of a statement is the method of its verification. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of beings, Gnosticism uses heresy which is made up of a diverse set of beliefs. Gnostics for political mass movements, and their theories and jargons have shaped the thinking of millions of people in the Western World, very often without their being aware of it. Gnostics believe that global warming is real, while others think it is an act of God. God has promised to “Turn desert into pools of water and the parched ground into flowing springs (Psalm 107.35).” Many fail to understand that the Earth is alive and will not always stay the same. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
Sentiments that are devalued or of little practical importance in a culture are poorly discriminated for lack of an expressive vocabulary. Because moral sanction in some cultures they operate mainly through teasing, ridicule, and other forms of shame, these feelings have undergone considerable cultural definition and elaborator in contrast, the feeling of guilt is culturally played down to the point of conceptual invisibility. Similarly, feelings that we term sadness or longing contradiction, these societies value and are not culturally organized as sentiments. The rule and prescription actually disturbs or even hinders the genuine illumination of life. It is an act of spiritual violence. Separation and isolation from others evoke sensations that these fake news practitioners describe in terms of nonspecific, troubled, or subdued bodily states, such as heaviness or weariness. Without meaningful concepts for designating a feeling to self and others, the person’s emotional response remains private and socially amorphous. Sensations are served from their external social cause, minimizing the social significance of the event. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Power and status are the significant relational meanings to which people respond emotionally. Cultures and individuals vary in the specific stimuli and language that reflect power and status relationship, but power and status are the basic dimensions to which people are sensitized that underlie the differentiation of emotions. To use one’s influence usually implies actively and intentionally working through or on other people, and one who can do this recurrently has influence. Of course, people who have power (that is, who can do many things they want and induce many other people to accept their initiative) are likely on that account to influence (that is, to have effects on) other aspects of society in ways that neither they nor their social inferiors necessarily understand. Other classes, envying and admiring them, may imitate their tastes and practices, and in this sense, they may be influenced by them. However, this influence is not a manifestation of power; it is only one of its effects. Emotions result from real, imagined, or anticipated outcomes involving excess or deficit in power status. For example, power deficits produce fear or anxiety; status loss generates anger or depression. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
There is also accepted evidence that specific physiological states underlie different emotions to some degree, so that physiological, psychological, and sociological (power-status) levels of differentiation coincide. Experiences, thoughts and emotions are translated into chemical expressions or codes by our bodies. If you have an emotionally charged experience or memory, that experience activates the brain’s limbic system, where it gets filtered and associated with other information and catalyzes, a chain reaction release of ligands (peptides, hormones). The receptor, having received a message, transmits it from the surface of the cell deep into the cell’s interior, where the message can change the state of the cell dramatically. New proteins are manufactured and that is how the emotional life and stress levels can actually be hard on your body, and then cause a response. One sentiment may be defined as a precondition for another sentiment, so that grief is not regarded as credible or authentic unless the mourner is known to have loved the deceased. Alternatively, the consequent sentiment may be used as a criterion for inferring the precondition. “You must have loved him very much,” the mourner is told. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
One sentiment may be believed to transform into another sentiment consistently. We may believe that men and women cannot be friends without falling in love eventually. Sentiments may be seen as opposites (love and hatred), or as acceptable substitutes from another person (guilt and shame). A belief that humor when we are feeling awe. These beliefs provide ideological support for a sentiment’s social reality. Any doubt about one sentiment’s reality would have to challenge the whole system of interconnected meanings. Sentiment vocabularies change historically in content and appropriateness. A shift was detected in culturally approved sentiments toward children. A medieval pattern of harsh egalitarianism changed to a sentiment of tenderness, protection, coddling, and charm over childish antics. Historical forces promoting this change included the higher survival rate of infants, a shift from social life to home life for families, and the emergence of childhood as a distinctive life stage. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Many new shades and varieties of sentiments are developing in modern times, but with less feeling. Refinement of feeling is diffusing from the higher classes to the common people, whose lives are becoming more varied and less crudely determined by primitive conditions. Although primitive societies made occasional but sever demands of feeling, with alternations of apathy and explosion, modern emotional life if made up of diverse but mostly mild excitements. However, those who imagine up some vain thing in their hearts, that is was wrought by people and by the power of the great deceiver, to lead away people and deceive the hearts of the people; and thus, did the adversary get possession of the hearts of the people, insomuch that he did blind their eyes and lead them away to believe that the doctrine of God was a foolish and a vain thing. And it came to pass the people began to wax strong in wickedness and abominations; and they dud not believe that there should be any more signs or wonders given; and the great adversary did go about, leading away the hearts of the people, tempting them and causing them that they should do great wickedness in the land (3 Nephi 2.3).” Grief, pain, and humiliation may be experienced at the loss of exclusive love and favors, but if the community does not sanction one’s feelings, they can hardly express themselves as jealousy. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7