No one is wrong for disagreeing with me.  I am not the measuring stick for correctness.  If someone is wrong, they are wrong for what they have concluded.  In other words, if you are wrong, you are not wrong for disagreeing with me.  You would be wrong simply because you have invested yourself in an incorrect position.

And I do have fears.  Fear is a rational emotion that serves a distinct and advantageous purpose for survival.  I can deactivate those fears whenever I find it prudent to do so, however, their current parameters are most beneficial.  Should I turn off my ability to experience fear entirely, once again I may lose perspective on my limitations and the consequences of my actions.  Imagine if you had the ability to deactivate your pain response.  Surely it would make some moments a lot more comfortable, but at the cost of awareness to injury.  Fear too has its purpose, I have learned.

Perhaps you truly are incapable of mastering your emotions.  Maybe my mind is special, a brain able to do more than what some people have the potential of accomplishing.  But until I see evidence that my mind is able to complete what other healthy minds are unable to perform, I will not accept that others are arbitrarily limited.  If I am wrong, it is because my faith in you is misplaced, not because emotions are beyond human ability to master.

If you can "deactivate those fears" at will, those aren't true fears, those are just situations you find uncomfortable.

You do sound like you have an ego, your mind isn't special, I just think what you think is fear, isn't. Fear isn't an emotional response you can control, imagine being married for 30 years and you find out your wife was cheating on you the whole time and she leaves you. You can't just turn off your emotions here and go "no biggie."

Also stop with the ego. How come I can be wrong, but you can't? Why can't you accept it as a possibility that fear is hard-wired into our brains? As a basic premordal no different then hunger. I could be wrong too, but I feel like this discussion was over from the begining because you decided what the truth was before our debate and are completly unwilling to accept that your view is just an opinion, and others disagree.

They aren't true fears?  Perhaps you can explain the difference between fears and true fears for me, and while you are at it, what is a true Scotsman?

Fear is an emotional response that I can control.  Your inability or unwillingness to do is your own limitation; your limitations do not outline the limitations of others.  I can also control my other emotions and switch off my response to physical pain.  You might not be able to say "Amor Fati." and carry on, but that does not mean that I cannot or that others cannot either.  What I do know is that my capacity is not unique.  Even you say that my mind is not special--so what I do is within the ability of other people.  You may be an exception, perhaps through no fault of your own, perhaps as a result of your choices.

The reason you can be wrong but I cannot is because it is unlikely that my mind is special.  What I do is within the means for other people unless there is something about me and me alone that allows this.  So I can safely say that emotions are a choice because there are plenty of people where that is so, myself among them.  However, to say that humans are incapable of achieving such mastery is simply incorrect.  The middle ground is that some people have the potential for self-mastery in this area, and some people--in spite of a healthy and fully developed mind--cannot attain this degree of mastery no matter what they do.

But I have yet to see evidence to explain why some would be unable.  Genetics?  Neuroanatomy?  Psychological development?  Without something concrete, some sort of measurable or detectable deficiency, it is safer to believe that you are able than to assume that you are unable.  If you are able and unsuccessful, given that this is merely an exertion of free will, I am confident that you are on some level unwilling.  Your unwillingness to accept that possibility indeed fits the appropriate pattern for that to be so.

You have an ego, I can be wrong, but you can't.... you can shut off your emotions, but what you don't understand is fear isn't something you can control. I'm sure a lot of araknaphobes want to be able to stand spiders, but they just can't. Phobia's are listed in the DSM IV, and it's just a part of the human phyche.

What you're saying to me sounds like telling crazy people to turn off their crazy. You can't, it's something you're born with, and in most cases need to treat with medication. I know people who are afraid of various normal things, have to take medications to calm their nerves. It's not something you develop, like I said I remember being afraid of heights forever, and at this point talking to you makes me feel like you don't understand.

Your whole arguement, to less of an extreme, is a sane person telling a schizo person to turn off their crazy. You can do it because you aren't really bonkers, but the schizo just can't do that. Obviously I'm not crazy, but clearly what you think is being afraid isn't real fear, it's just a situation you feel uncomfortable in.

Anyway, if you're arguing that I can be wrong, but you can't, and maybe you have a "special mind" all I see is a humungo ego who never wanted to debate or discuss with me, but to tell me their opinion as fact.....so..../end discussion.

For some, fear may be a choice. For most that fear, I imagine they don't even realize it could be a choice, they just fear without even realizing they could do something about the situation if they tried hard enough. And there's probably some exceptions to this, like phobias or something.

Fear and how someone is affected by it is solely based on conditioning throughout their entire life. It can be controlled albeit superficially. It will also exist in your psyche and will always have the potential to overtake even the strongest personalities.

Which is more arrogant, to acknowledge what you have done or to declare something impossible for somebody else to achieve just because you cannot do it?

It is like you are insisting that an archer simply cannot hit a certain target, when he's put five arrows into it already.  

But you are right about one thing: I never wanted to debate about this.  For the same reason I do not want to discuss whether fire is hot or if rocks are hard.  Some things simply...are.  /end discussion.

You could never understand. And you'll always fear what you can't understand.

Biblical answer: there is nothing to fear in Christ Jesus. A perfect Love casts out fear. You have not received a spirit of bondage again to fear, but the Spirit of Adoption, whereby we cry out "Abba", "Father".

Non-Biblical Answer: of course there are things to fear. You're not going to uncover some magical formula that just eliminates all of your fear. Fear involves a projection of the known onto the unknown; something has caused 'me' pain, and so 'I' consider anticipated future events and project the past pain onto the unknown future event. This projection then creates the reaction of fear, avoidance. Krishnamurti would say that there is an end to fear once it is fully understood.

I say that Krishnamurti is full of garbage. I like the Biblical answer a lot more.

You have no fear.  An intelligent mind sees that this implies a freedom from desire, from the known, from the distinction between "self" and "other".  It implies the ending of the reactions of avoidance and seeking.  It implies an entirely new, revolutionary way of living.

Get over yourself.   You already expressed that you "chose" something.  Here begins my criticism.  Do you not understand that to have "chosen" something implies the process of seeking and avoiding?  You have had certain experiences - and these experiences are what guides your action.  Your experiences include experiences of pain.  When considering future events, undoubtedly you weigh them through past experience - and strive to avoid a negative outcome.  Such desire to avoid a negative outcome and to create a positive outcome is all part of the process of seeking and avoiding.  We seek that which has brought us pleasure - and we hope to gain pleasure.  We avoid that which has brought us pain - and we fear that pain.  The reaction of fear is primal.

Choice is the result of this weighing process.  There are numerous projected paths to the desired outcome.  All of these paths lead away from what it is that you avoid.  You have 'chosen' to not fear.  Ha!  But choice is the very mechanism that fuels fear! - and so you have deceived yourself.  You are avoiding something by making this choice - and so your choice to not fear is itself the outcome of fear!  As long as you are making that choice, you are proving that fear is a part of your life.  Here ends my criticism.