Emotions as Characteristics of Living Beings; Standards of Human Conduct

I should make a note of the fact that there's been a very disturbing tendency, among people in a variety of areas of society that include academia and also medicine and psychology, to make "judgments" about the extent to which a person either should or shouldn't feel emotions about things. Part of this has been a result of some of the grave issues that exist in psychology these days, but it's simply not appropriate or possible for a person to make some sort of assessment about the emotions a person either should or shouldn't feel about something. Unfortunately, people have become so fearful of anything new or challenging to their mindsets that they are willing to be bullied into silence, essentially, and it's a very terrible thing to see. Let me also say that, with regard to torture, compassion and the willingness to help people who are sufferring terribly, as people thought to be held in the kinds of secret prisons, as discussed previously, are likely to be, are basic characteristics of living beings. Without those things, there's nothing much about a person that can distinguish himself or herself from a nonliving machine or robot. A piece of "intelligence" or a piece-of-shit machine isn't alive, but a person is alive. There have to be some halfway-reasonable standards for human conduct. If there aren't basic standards, there isn't much else of value that's left, in their absence.