It appears as if E. Shaun Russell <e_shaun@uniserve.com> wrote:
| Chances are, within most of our lifetimes, the technology will be
|manifested to such a state in which we can select our emotions to a certain
|extent. The question is this: which emotions would you like to retain, and
|which would you like to dispose of? It would be easy to come up with
|knee-jerk kind of answers such as "I would get rid of love" though I am
|fairly certain that such a move would be highly irrational. Most of our
|emotions have a purpose, and life could easily be less enjoyable without
|many of them.
|
| Personally, I would opt to exorcise any trace of fear or anxiety.
|Though I'm not naturally inclined to feel these emotions very often, I know
|that when exposed to them, it is difficult to remain rational. But some of
|the more potentially painful ones such as loneliness, I would keep. The
|problem I foresee with getting rid of too many of these "bad" emotions is that
|in their absence, there could easily be a lack of ambition. For example,
|if one didn't feel "unhappy" there would be less inclination for him to
|progress to the point at where he would naturally feel happy. It is an
|interesting thought. What do you think?
0. If I can replace the emotion FEAR with a "WARNING: DANGER" function which
works as fast (=at a low level) as FEAR does, then I would replace it. I
regard any person irresponsible who simply removes FEAR without replacing
it with some other safeguard.
I have no use for ANXIETY, and would remove it.