Hi Tom
Tom Says
“The irony of quoting from a dictionary and yet also mentioning that one should “base your evaluation on your experience rather than on what you read in a text book” is not lost on me. “
No irony intended, I was attempting to communicate with you in a context you would understand
Tom Says
“Experience with the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary tells me that it is highly unlikely that three words is sufficient for it to cover just the etymology of a single entry.”
Experience with the usage of a dictionary as a reference source tells me that the full textbook definition of a word is found by examining all the denotations of a word, plus the word’s roots, derivations, synonyms, and even cross referencing to other dictionaries.”
I agree, however the entry I chose is the most appropriate for the meaning I intended.
Tom Says
”Experience using words in many relevant conversations tells me that the word ‘excitement’, within a context that indicates emotion but is not otherwise specific, has a general connotation associated with happiness (at a minimum, to me it does).
An inappropriate assumption based on the generalisation
”Experience with actually being excited repeatedly in an extremely wide variety of situations in my life tells me that where the word ‘excitement’ is used within a more specific emotional context, its connotation typically refers to the emotional range including (but not limited to) joy, rage, jealousy, etc. (Interestingly, these emotions are all classic textbook emotions based in the ‘approach’ response centers of the brain, whereas the emotion of fear incites an ‘avoidance’ response.)”
Not necessarily, in reality Fear can also be the trigger for rage as a survival response.
Anger and anxiety are the polarities of fear, & depending how an individual has been previously successful toward their survival they will tend to react to a threat to their integrity with what is deemed to be a historically successful pattern for the individual.
Either way these responses may well be problematic for an individual in many areas of their life
My suggestion is to change (reframe) the label that one uses for the experience of fear to gain distance from the negative cultural and personal associations that the word fear can be loaded with, rather than take away the resources and benefits that the actual reality of the experience brings
Tom Says
”Whew! Sorry about that. I become full of excitement when a subject comes up that can be and actually is reasonably debated in an open forum on the Internet. (Or, am I full of fear? Nah. ) Within this thread, we have a range of intelligent posts as to what to do about fear (embrace it, conquer it, suppress it, eliminate it, welcome it, etc.). However, one of the intelligent posts was to try to equate fear and/or its response with other emotions and/or responses which do not share the same purpose. Because my views were not previously presented within any of the other posts, I felt compelled to write a bit about fear from my own perspective as to what to do about it.
Anyway, interesting thread and excellent dialogue.”
“Our disagreement over whether observation of a phenomena such as emotion is an attempt to gain control we can leave for another day.”
Thanks Tom, I’ll look forward to that thread 
Oh I also forgot to mention that in my opinion the fact we have emotions does not make us human but in fact affirms our animal status, the fact we can take the opportunity to objectively manage and evolve our emotions is what makes us human
