Your thoughts on my idea for an oratory speech?

[AmbivalentEye]

Well, my computer (laptop), has decided that it will not let me use the floppy drive on it, and since I have no interet connected to it, I have no way of carrying my files with me, except by printing them.

Since I don't exactly feel like typing up an 11 minute speech again, I'll just tell you basically what it is about and see if you could give me any suggestions. I've always recieved a lot of good insight and criticism here and last time I got 3rd place at the tournamen6t because of all the improvements I was able to make.

The speech is about emotions. I had to write an oratory about something dealing with a social problem that can be applied to all of humanity. So I wrote about how modern-day humans are always suppressing emotions and how that is detrimental to their well-beings.

It starts out by quoting Anais Nin with a situation she described in her book "Ladders to Fire", about a woman who suddenly experiences inexplicable shocks of anguish while crossing a street.

I connect that to how our suppressed emotions are always surfacing at unexpected moments. Then I explain some reasons why every variety of individual suppresses emotions in their everyday lives. I adress women, mothers, fathers, men, teenagers, boys, infants...etc.

Then I describe scientific studies with various people that showed the different physical characteristics of emotional suppression.

ex: tress in males, lower lifespan, affects blood rate... etc.

I even put in an example of something I once wrote in one of my old journals describing a personalized experience of emotional suppression.

My resolution is that people should accept emotional response and actually incorporate it into their daily lives, while always knowing how to recover from any negative feelins. The two suggestions I present are from 2 different studies. One says that thinking happy thoughts aleviated sorrow and pain, and the other says that just Smiling can improve your mood.

I'll try my best to post the exact speech very soon.

If you have any suggestions as to how I could defend my point, please let me know.

-J

[FeatherFall]

I'd like to see what you have done so far, once you get your comp up and running. Are you familiar with the Objectivist position on emotions and the subconscious?

[softwareNerd]

Your general thrust seems good. My only question would be about this:

The two suggestions I present are from 2 different studies. One says that thinking happy thoughts alleviated sorrow and pain, and the other says that just Smiling can improve your mood.

Trying to "counter" an emotion by another (opposite) emotion can sometimes be a short term fix, like popping a pill. Is that the primary solution you offer in your speech? If so, then -- by implication -- you're setting up negative emotions as non life-enhancing. To take this approach as a basic approach would be to treat emotions as causeless primaries. It is impractical, because it tackles the symptoms, instead of tackling the causes.

[AmbivalentEye]

The Speech: From Memory:

"Anguish was a voiceless woman screaming in a nightmare"

A diarist an author by the name of Anais Nin once wrote of a situation she encountered continuously throughout the course of her life, and that she saw sporadically within the people around her as well. That solitary line describing anguish became an eternal reminder of what those moments felt like. She described the incident in her novel, Ladders To Fire, as follows:

"Thw woman was traversing a street. The automobile did not strike her down. It was not she who was inside of the ambulance being delivered to St. Vincent's hospital. It was not she whose mother died. She was not attacked, raped or mutilated. She was not kindnapped and sold into white slavery. But as she crossed the street and the wind lifted the dust, she felt as if all of these horros had happened to her. She felt the nameless anguish, the shrinking of the heart, the asphyxiation of pain -the horror of torture whose cries none hears."

Most people would automatically say to this, "She must've been insane", but according to one of my favorite lines from the movie "Girl Interrupted": "Insanity is really our reality, magnified to a point that it becomes alarming." So I read those lines from Ladders To Fire, and gasp... That is me... and perhaps, it is all of you as well. What the incident describes in an ineplicable shock of anguish that arises unexpectedly during a perfectly normal day. The issue is, "Why did she feel it?", "Why have I felt it?" "Why is it in so many of those around us?" "Why?"

In today's society, the need for emotional suppression exists everywhere we go. Mothers suppress emotions out of the fear that they might affect their children. Fathers supprsee emotions out of the belief that they must be symbols of strength and superiority at all times. Students suppress emotions in order to concentrate on academic tasks and other extre curricular activities. And with the growth of technology and the quickening pace of everything in our lives, we are suddenly faced with the realization that perhaps life no longer has the spare time for us to be emotional. Now, the amount of competition everywhere has left us with a population of people that function solely by schedules, cycles, and timetables -with the daunting fear that the manifestation of any feeling publicly might be viewed as a personal weakness.

By observing the influence of emotions on ourselves and our way of life as we grow, it is clear that while society and our lifestyles foce us to strive for emotional suppression, what we lack, is emotional expression. Take the case of an infant child:

As a baby, it is common for parents to leave that child alone at night to cry itself to sleep and acquire some level of independence. But if you've ever cried yourself to sleep, you would understand the anguish you feel in those moments... before surrendering to the hopeless isolation. From an early age we seem to be building up all forms of suppressions for any feelings associated with loneliness or sorrow. The child's ineffective wails and screams gradually turn him or her into an introverted child. And in the same way, by suppressing those emotions in ourselves we are slowly creating more introverted members of society.

These patterns can be ascribed not only to infants, but also to young boys particularly, teenagers, and even adults. One of the major flaws in our human culture, passed through numerous dialects and authoritarian parenting, is the illogical ideology that "It is wrong for boys to cry." Through this "Be-tough-and-superior-at-all-costs" attitude, young boys all over the world are qrowing up thinking that this is the only thing necessary for being a man. Following this doctrine, men are molded into believing that they are only permitted 3 emotions: Humor, Anger, and Lust. According to Dr.Levenson of Bowling Green State University, this only reults in a life of "Strain, needless injury or illness, and an early grave."

But the true question that most of us wonder is, "How do our emotions affect our well-being?" Retired professor William James of Harvard once stated that "Emotional expression in an integral aspect of our bodily processes", and that, "emotional responses are directly linked with some of the most intrinsic functions within us." These functions include: regulation of temperature, heart rate, respiration, perspiration, and muscular contractions.

Has your heart ever felt heavy because of sorrw? Do you grind your teeth when you're angry or clech your toes when your anxious? Hve you ever tried to just STOP breathing??? In today's world, it is becoming more and more clear that whenever we do not want to feel, we take on these characteristics in order to control emotions, and to stifle them.

On an afternoon of March 2004, a High School Junior wrote the following word in his journal: "I am stricken by this innate feeling that I am dust -ceramic dust that is hard to breathe in or swallow. So I take in each breath with caution and constrict my flesh by writhing my arms and my spine to a state where I may remain motionless... and capeble of resisting the tensions of my mind, my rushing blood, and flooding emotions."

I wasn't the only person to ever suppress emotions, and the truth is that more people are doing it every single day.

Johanne Levesque of the University of Montreal says that the suppression of any emotion requires the voluntary constriction of the flow of breath. This can be achieved by tightening the throat, sealing lips, sinking the chest, immobilizing the belly, and/or by drastically reducing inhales and exhales.

Thus, we have learned through indirectly acquired knowledge that whenever we are faced with something we would rather not feel, we must forcibly begin breathing less. I know that I have done it. Now be honest, haven't you?

The way our mind interprets these responses as author Michael Sky states in his book, The Power of Emotion, is by thinking that perhaps it is better NOT to feel, because feeling always involves so much physical effort and strain. What I see is that the modern mentality to continue functioning at all costs has made us fear the ebb of energy associated with emotional release. So clearly it is time for society to make the decision whether to maintain its bottled up pressures, and to accept the inexplicable shocks of anguish, as Anais Nin had describes, or if the loss of energy from allowing ourselves to feel warrants the denial of phsycological relief.

In a study done by Ms. Levesque, healthy teenage girls and adult women were analyzed for the physical effects of emotional responses in females. At various intervals, the participants were shown either a picture with a sad or joyful scenario, or a recorded clip with the same themes. They were also asked to try their best to make it seem to their observer as if they were feeling nothing. After being shown the pictures and movie clips, the following physical responses were aparent: excessive blinking, shallow breathing, tense fingers, sweating palms, stationary discomfort, and/or the wrinkling of various facial features.

(I'm going to post this now and finish it later because I'm afraid of it getting lost.)

[AmbivalentEye]

(Continued...)

Afterward, the second part of the study included an analysis of various methods by which an individual could recover from a state of sorrow or anger. One suggestion, as advocated by the book, Senses and Intellect 2nd Edition, was to imagine an enjoyable scenario or to picture images of peace and affection. The study showed that the older a woman is, the easier it is for her to restore her happiness and self esteem from no more than Peter Pan's trite expression, "THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS".

Another alternative to emotional restoration was to ask the participants to do one of the simplest things of all: SMILE! It was found that when a person makes themselves smile during a sorrowful or stressful situation, the alteration of the muscles propts a psychological response that oddly, but honestly, induces a small sense of enjoyment or relief in most people. Through these findings, Mario Beauregard, PhD., director in charge of the study, concluded that: "Humans have the capacity to influence the dynamics of their brains by voluntarily changing the nature of their thinking." He also says that this quality is clinically important because it is essential to a healthy psyche.

So, for the sake of our well-beings as well as our sanity, we must learn to incorporate emotional responses into our everyday lives as natural processes and reactions to the perception of our surroundings. A report printed by the Society of Neurosciences in 1974 stated that emotions are our internal guidence system that alerts us when our human needs are not being met. We must heed to those warnings at first sign, and learn to treat those emotions ourselves, before the remaining 2/3 of the American population is also bound to weekly consultations with a shrink.

Therefore, when you find yourself at that momnt of "Traversing the street", as Anais Nin put it; When you are stricken by that baffling shock of anguish, just remember that We are all human -it is OK TO FEEL. Then, "Think Happy Thoughts", or "Put on a SMILE", and face the rest of your day with renewed vitality and self-esteem.

(End)

I've presnted this like 20 times to all sorts of people already. I've done almsot all of the editing I think it needs, unless you have any good suggestions. I did want to personalize it more, but... that only makes it more controversial when it comes to judging.

My main issue right now is presentation. My teacher says I have to "emote" more, and others say I need more expression with my hands and body. If you could make any suggestions it would be helpful I will be using this piece at competitions for the rest of the year.

My last piece, on the Evils of Altruism, did not carry through very well. It only got to 3rd place in minor competitions, because many judges felt uncomfortable with my view of the issue. They said it wasn't a strong enough topic to win some of the top positions. I don't know.... I just didn't know how else to improve it.

The topics that were winning the competitions were:

-Competition

-Expectations

-Stereotypes

-And an amusing piece on American eating habits.

Thank You for all of your help.

-J. (Florida Student)

[softwareNerd]

I have a question about a seeming contradiction in the speech. (Not saying is it a real contradiction. Only, if it is not, then how do I reconcile these two points?):

1. In part of the speech, you explain that repression is harmful
   
2. In another section, you speak of the ability to think happy thoughts or smile, thus changing one's emotions. For instance, you quote the following: "Humans have the capacity to influence the dynamics of their brains by voluntarily changing the nature of their thinking."
   

My question, then, is: how is the second not an invitation to repression. For example, say I am sad about something. Let's say I consider three options:

1. Weep
   
2. Stiff upper lip
   
3. Smile and forget about my sadness
   

I know you are not recommending #2. Are you, however, recommending #3 rather than #1 ?