From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   There are many people who think that feelings are for the stupid and for the   
   weak. This justifies these people in severe emotional and often physical and   
   interpersonal violence. For such people, their worst nightmare is a   
   feeling-oriented person with a    
   brain. Such a person is dangerous to them for two main reasons. One is that he   
   cannot be credibly labeled as stupid. And the other is that he has the   
   intelligence to be of help to other feeling-oriented people, whom they want to   
   trample down and treat    
   like dirt.   
      
   A common claim about such people is that they are manipulative. That term is   
   manipulative in and of itself. A combination that is actually positive is   
   being portrayed as something destructive.The actual outcome is competence at   
   understanding feelings.    
   This can be used for wrong, but it also can very well be used for right.   
      
   Now a man who has such an inclination is deemed in some cases a potential   
   Hitler. I consider it completely wrong to compare someone who does not want to   
   kill anyone to someone who started a world war. Hitler may have had such   
   inclinations; but so have    
   many much better people, including Clinton, Dostoyevsky, Einstein, Tesla,   
   Lennon and Blake. By that standard any gray “bureaucrat” is a potential   
   Eichmann; but I do not see people working for USDA being labeled that way.   
      
   Both feelings and thinking can be paths to both wisdom and stupidity. When the   
   two work together in one head, one of the many things that happen is that they   
   challenge one another and correct one another's errors. A purely thinking   
   person will be prone    
   to the error of coldness and cruelty, and a purely feeling person will be   
   prone to the error of mindlessness and self-absorption. Two modalities can   
   challenge, check-and-balance and also feed into one another. One thing that   
   happens in someone who has    
   use of both modalities, once again, is that they check one another's capacity   
   for error. And another thing that happens is that they inform one another with   
   what one another lacks in itself thus come up frequently with greater wisdom   
   than either acting    
   alone.   
      
   So that someone who has competence in both feeling and thinking is likely to   
   come up with quite valuable observations. This, once again, is because he has   
   competence in two modalities rather than one. Ayn Rand was both very   
   passionate and excelled at    
   reasoning, and she came up with brilliant writing. We see the same, once   
   again, in Dostoyevsky and Blake. They were brilliant people who were also   
   passionate people. And this combination creates insight that cannot be as   
   easily found in people who are    
   either merely brilliant or merely passionate.   
      
   It should therefore be encouraged for people to be good both at thinking and   
   at feeling. This will create people who have a use of two modalities rather   
   than one. And that will allow them to both check each side's potential for   
   error and work with one    
   another to achieve fuller insight. The result will be wiser people and better   
   decisions made all across the board.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)