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No matter how often you say that you are not interested in discussing other's opinions on your own personal self-control, you still seem interested in "retaliating" to those opinions.
When you offer a subject up for discussion, because it is important to you, then naturally what will interest others the most is not only giving you their own views on the topic, but to discuss your views compared to their own, in a positive or negative way. So to say that you are not interested in what others think of your own views, I think defeats the purpose of the forum. But of course you can disagree with that.
One other thing that stood out for me in your replies was your ideas on art. I confess that I am not entirely aware whether you are an artist or like to create art of your own, but I find it strange that you would imply that art can exist devoid of all/any emotion. I have to disagree.
"...Regarding this, I'm not sure from what basis you derive this assumption. Why does art have to be an expression of emotion at all? While there are admittedly some emotional arts, such as love songs and etcetera, art is an expression of creativity more than emotion. I don't have to be sad or mad or happy or angry to create an amazing painting. I only need an idea, the skill to convey that idea, and the medium to convey it on. It's my belief that the idea is the most important, stemming from your creative faculties rather than your emotional ones.
Frogza: I am a profesional artist and a very creative person, even by artists standards. My self mastery doesn't keep me from being creative and enjoying art and the many beautiful things in the world, I believe it helps me. I don't have to sit around waiting for my environment to generate an emotion in me to capture a mood in my paintings."
Emotions aren't only those simple notions that you have captured in the words "happy" or "sad" or "angry". Art does not derive, IMO, from a rational objective. Maybe once you have an idea, it can become an objective/goal, because it will then begin to take on a physical form, through matter or sound or expression (theatre). But art does not arise from being hungry, or being sick, or any practical need. You do need creativity to come up with a piece of artwork. But creativity is fuelled by something other, by an emotion that drives you to want to create. In a sense it is a need of the soul, of the heart, of passion for an objective. Even artists who create the most emotionally devoid works, create those works to elicit an emotion from a viewer, a response. And those who do not create for the viewer, often create from a need to expell their own emotions in a means that will come as close as possible to effectively describing what they are feeling about themselves/others/any given subject.
I understand what Frogza is saying when he mentions that he does not need his environment to provoke an emotion in him to create. I'm not saying that driving force has to come from the environment. Sometimes it's all inside you. I do think that to create a given mood, you have to understand that mood and "know" it. If you don't know it, you may be able to create an artificial and even effective impression of that, but not more.
But anyway, this is possibly thread hijacking - but maybe an interesting topic for a separate thread.
And finally, to address what you are indeed asking of other posters in this thread:
I believe I have enough mental self-control. I try very hard to not react to a given pressing emotional situation with an emotional outburst if I think it will harm me and others in the process, irrevocably. Sometimes though it's good to scream and let it all out. It's really great. And I also think that most people have a lot less self-control than I do - so I think it's ok to let that control go sometimes and let them have it, when they deserve it.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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