My thoughts on all this (cause I know you're terribly interested):
I agree, by and large, with jgbrowning. People's emotions are their problems and they are responsible for how they feel.
First and foremost, my own. The primary corollary of the above notion is the idea that I am responsible for my emotions. They are mine to control. They are not the fault of anyone else.
Happiness is as simple as asking for it. I am happy unless I choose to feel otherwise or unless I forget my ability to understand.
There's a funny notion that things like grief or anger are incompatible with happiness. To me, happiness is not a transitory thing that comes and goes. It is a bedrock upon which the rest of my emotional life builds. When I am angry, which is usually because I have surrendered understanding for a time, my happiness has not disappeared. I don't need to seek it out again. It remains with me and when the anger has passed, when understanding has returned, my happiness is still there. Because I put it there.
Here's a true funny notion: You NEVER get angry at other people. Anger at other people is displaced anger. It is a refusal to face your own failings, which causes you to blame someone else. The son crashes the car and the father expresses anger at the son when in fact he is furious with himself for having raised such an incompetent, thoughtless child. Unwilling to see his own culpability he strikes his son.
Every time I feel myself getting angry at someone I ask myself what it is that I have failed at. What it is that I could have done.
jdavis, I agree with your idea of embracing your emotions. Letting them overtake you completely -- very often what I find is that I'm getting worked up over nothing. Often when you let emotions run free you realise that you are being self-indulgent and melodramatic, and that very realisation brings one back to earth.
I guess the common thread is that applying blame to other people is useless. You can't make them accept the blame if they don't want it, and if they do want it then they've already figured it out, thanks very much. When you take on responsibility yourself, however, you can study things and make changes if they're called for. So you might as well take on responsibility for your own emotions. No other response is going to do any good.
Train wreck? Philosophy? Danger to society?
