Comment by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
16 hours ago
I guess I should make explicit my general assumption that we are not talking about psychopaths given the overwhelming odds that a given individual is not a psychopath. That said...
> If the idea of choking women to death makes one feel excited - no it's not natural or valid to feel that emotion, they have serious problems.
I disagree. That is surely a natural and valid emotional response for whatever reason this hypotheticals individual feels it. Yes, they also surely have serious problems but I contend that said problems are obviously what lead to this "very strange" emotional response. Their problems are also valid, regardless of the personal damage (read: devoid of outward violence) they cause.
In this case, the response might affect their behavior such that they actually do it and that would obviously be tragic; that behavior is not valid regardless of the emotions (or lack thereof) which motivate it. Otherwise, speaking of their emotional response, I don't see a reason to condemn them for a reaction they have such little control over.
You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid.
You are just wrong on this. You want to seem sophisticated and understanding, and it's just lazy stupid thinking.
> You keep talking in circles around a definition of valid.
We could decide on a similar word to use if you prefer. Perhaps "acceptable" from a sibling comment. Replace "valid" with "acceptable" and "validation" with "acceptance" in all of my comments and the meaning is still true; that seems to suggest I've been consistent with my use of "valid".
> You are just wrong on this.
What you mean is that we are of different minds. You try to make yours the objective one in spite of the glaringly obvious fact that opinions are not necessarily shared between differing minds.
> You want to seem sophisticated and understanding
Genuinely, what a compliment! I was just writing about my perspective. My goal with the writing was primarily to espouse my understanding of this subject while secondarily avoiding "you" statements in my comments. If you think the result sounds sophisticated and understanding, I am more than willing to believe you. If you don't think that, well, you might want to consider where those words came from because I sure noticed. (It might also help to consider that you have no means of discovering my motivation; you must have made an assumption and expressed said assumption using your own words.)
The fact of the matter is that I spent the first three decades or so of my life being extremely emotionally unstable until I (at least somewhat) learned to manage that. I suspect this "sophisticated and understanding" sense you get from my writing on this topic comes from the care with which I write about a subject so dear to me.
I think their definition of valid is consistently aligning with the meaning of "acknowledging and accepting someone's internal experience".
As soon as you start trying to apply normative judgements to someone's feelings, as opposed to their behaviour, you inevitably end up drawing an arbitrary and cutlurally informed line between what you or socirty think is okay and what's not. It's only a problem if I feel excited by someone else's pain if my consequent behaviour actually leads to the other person suffering. I have no direct control over my emotions, but I can control my reaction to them. You just telling me it's wrong to feel excited is futile and potentially counter-productive.