Interestingly enough, I've just had a series of lectures relating to emotions and what their role is, and there are some interesting thoughts. One of the most popularly held theories at the moment is that emotions are used to pick out the relative details of a situation, and so help organise our perceptions of the world around us, so that we only consider relevant actions, rather than all possibilities. Hence, emotions are essential for us to actually function.

The question of when an emotion is appropriate seems odd. Emotions generally occur - I would say that the best you could do is make yourself more/less inclined towards a given emotion, but not actually directly cause the emotion yourself. Expressing emotions, however, depends on what you believe is an appropriate way to express them. With the example of hate, I would argue it would generally be best to make it relatively clear to the person you hate that you hate them, with any reasons you have as to why, but whether they merit any further action is debatable. I guess I'd probably go for a rule of thumb as express an emotion in the way that you judge as least damaging to you, but that's just my suggestion.

As for what brings about hate, I think Yoda credited that to anger, but that's beside the point I'd suggest finding someone or something that goes against what you believe to be right, or consistantly causes you difficulties. Hence authority figures who keep your nose to the grindstone, objects that obstruct your aims, or even types of weather that you find constantly incovenience you, would all be objects of hate potentially.

Psychiatrists say that when you're in love, you're temporarirly insane.

Psychiatrists say that when you're in love, you're temporarirly insane.

I wouldn't dispute that...I can't say I was sane when I was in love either...

So would psychologists also say that when you hate you are temporarily insane?

I thought the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Jimro

That's one popular definition, but certainly not the one psychologists use.

I do have one theory about emotions, hate in particular.

To truly hate someone, there have to be feelings already there for that hate to be made from. You can't just hate someone without knowing them.

Or at least something to that effect.

As for going insane, well, there could be a couple of good reasons for going, well, nuts. Especially when it comes to the love & hate department. An example could be that you're in love with someone, but know that you might never get to be with them. I personally know what that I've had that experience u_u; There's also hate, going insane, due to a previous love. I've heard the stories. *nods knowingly.*

I'm pretty sure there's more, but nothing comes to mind right now.

Hate is probably the result of our survival being threatened. And so we sink into a state of mind which automatically leaps to thoughts on how to threaten the entity that we hate, how to create trouble for them, and how to eliminate them from our worries.

It may sound quite primal and Freudian, but let's say somebody insults you in a big crowd. You're going to feel threatened, maybe hurt. Your image, after all, is at stake. And image in a purely reproductive sense is everything, and as a living organism it would seem one of your priorities is to pass on your code, and you don't want anything to jeopardise that. So hate spawns, and you set about loathing and plotting against this 'challenge'.

Now let's say you're insulted by somebody in private. They say something really nasty to you, but nobody else hears about it. You're probably going to dismiss it. It has no real social consequence outside of the relationship between you two, and you will most likely be bemused or slightly scared. Hate probably won't come up, unless they have taken something away from you (back to survival again )

Nevertheless, we need hate. After all, competition is hate in mild doses, and that helps step up the level of productivity in the world.

That's my random assortment of initial thoughts, anyway.

Spontaneous...

Competition is hate in mild doses is an interesting statement. Care to elaborate on that further? How about solitary games where a person competes against themselves? Is that "self hate"?

Jimro

Well, just as I feel dislike is hate on a smaller magnitude, competition is hate on a miniscule scale. I'd say all emotions are different blends of a basic set of let's say 3-5 main ingredients, with varying amounts. Kind of like how you can you the RGB system to create any colour through changing amounts.

And I find that in solitary games, the player is against the game itself - creating a personality around the game and half believing it is an actual entity in a admittedly disingenuous way.

Well, at least that's how I feel.

Not to bug you, but could you elaborate on the 3-5 emotions that make up all emotional color?

Jimro

Contention, melancholy and passion - As far as I can remember. But it's been a while.

Just some thoughts based off The Spontaneous One's suggestions.

The idea of there being fundamental elements for the emotional spectrum does sound plausible, as I would suggest that, although we can pre-dispose ourselves towards some types of emotions - happiness/sadness/anger, etc. - based on previous feelings and which ones we cultivate, that is pretty much the extent to which we can control the type of emotion we experience based off various stimuli, but we can control the intensity to a greater degree, as well as how much we act upon an emotion. For example, if someone insults you, you will generally feel angry towards them. However, how intense your anger is would depend partly on the severity of the insult, partly on how inclined you were to feel angry at the time, and partly on how angry you want to feel towards the person - since you could choose to dwell on the insult and build the anger into hatred, or shrug it off, thinking that it was probably a mis-understanding.

Hence, the idea of competition being a mild form of hate makes a lot of sense, as you tend to see people who take the competition "too far" acting in a way that demonstrates hatred for their opponent, and people who are being competitive tend to be more inclined to get angry over mistakes they make/any legally dubious action by the opposition than normal. This, I feel, is also characteristic of hatred.

Where did you come across the idea of the "emotional elements", or did you come up with it yourself, Spontaneous?

I used to have empathic synaethesia (to give it a proper name, hur hur), and that gave me a lot of ideas about how emotions work. But I rather wouldn't go on about it.

Well, this got me to thinking, which is always a dangerous prospect.

Colors are only how we interpret different wavelengths of light. That means that at a fundamental level, all colors are the same, and only our perception is different.

If we break emotions down into only 2 fundamental states we can artificially create a gradient that would cover the entire range of varients between them. Any point on the gradient would be some percent x and some percent y.

If we break it down into three fundamentals we go from linear directly to three dimensions of data. Percent x, percent y, percent z. However, we can collapse this down into a planar triangle and limit our equation to x+y+z=100%. That way we can never have more than 100 percent emotiotion.

I appreciate your posts Spontaneous, and I hope that we can really figure out what the 3 fundamental emotions are, and what their purpose is, at least in a hypothetical setting.

Hate and Love are both passionate, so passion is a possible fundamental as has already been stated. Fear, anxiety, worry, are all related, we'll call them stress/contention. Is stress fundamental? And melancholy is a type of boredom, as well as a type of contentment.

Can anyone think of an emotional state that wouldn't be covered by some combination of passion, melancholy, and contention?

Hatred would be 50% passion, 50% contention.

Love would be 50% passion, some parts melancholy and contention.

Any more complex emotions that can't be broken down into three?

Jimro

Things like "startled", which are arguably more reactions than emotions, might be difficult to assign a PCM value to...

Thanks for your idea, spontaneous. The reason I asked was that I hadn't come across a view like the one you gave, and wondered where it had come from, as I think it provides a very interesting perspective on what links various different emotions.

What about perception, Jimro.

In combat one perceives danger even when the atmosphere seems to be serene. Some call it the 6th sense. Others call it a trance.

I call it an extension of a flashback created by our unconcious mind when our dream state does not allow us to remember it.

Elpidio Gonzalez

I believe the term you're looking for is "spider sense".

We call it "Trusting your gut", and your gut is right more often than not.

It's that nagging feeling that something is not right, that something is out of place, or not as it should be, or things may not be what they seem.

However, it may be an altered form of perception, but I do not believe it to be "emotional" in nature. Emotions cloud perception. Love turns a pimple into a dimple, anger gives you tunnel vision, boredom means you are reducing your perception of the world around you and focusing on something trivial.

A heightened sense of awareness does none of these, it gives us "external awareness" instead of "internal awareness". I think that the terms zanshin and mushin refer to these two skills, being aware externally and internally.

Any other ideas?

Jimro

I'd like to add my two pennies.

How about the "fight or flight" reaction? When the body starts releasing increased amounts of adreneline when in danger to prepare to fight the said danger or to run from it? Would that be considered an emotion?

The "Fight of Flight" adrenaline rush is a response to an emotion, fear.

We have fear for a reason, to keep us alive. However, I don't think you can be truly alive unless you master your fear. We can be slaves to our emotions as much as we can be slaves to anything else.

Jimro

Emotions cloud perception. Love turns a pimple into a dimple, anger gives you tunnel vision, boredom means you are reducing your perception of the world around you and focusing on something trivial.

While emotions may limit what we perceive, this is probably a good thing, since otherwise we may run into the problem of having too much information coming in that is not relevant to what we want to do. Through limiting our perception to what is important to us at a given point, which is arguably one effect of emotions, we are better able to act quickly and efficiently to accomplish the task at hand, rather than being bogged down in unnecessary detail.

Take a look at the "frame problem" in AI to see just how much of a problem unnecessary detail can be.

Heightened perception is not good for long periods of time, but it is good when you are on patrol. That one little detail like flies not hovering over a trash can, or new tires on an old car, will let you know that things are not as they seem.

On of the problems of "combat stress" is that guys become hyperaware all the time and cannot relax because they are taking in so much detail, constantly analyzing there surroundings for potential threats. They fear they will lose that "edge" if they stop being alert.

For a few days it is fine, but longer than that and it becomes a problem.

Jimro

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If we eat only from the sweet honey of love/peace/contentment, will they lose their flavor? Or do we need a dose of bitter hatred/anger/pain to balance out our life to let us appreciate when things go well?

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People seem to adjust their emotions to their upbringing. Astrid told me about a rommate a while ago who said she was "so ghetto" because she only had an extra $2000 spending money. This girl was from a rich family and most people would say she was spoiled and didn't appreciate things going well. However, while her choice of words was inappropriate, I don't necessarily agree. A person from Afghanistan would probably find American standards for poverty ridiculous. Tarzan would probably find people worrying about the usual things people in a city worry about ridiculous. Even if you live on the Star Trek Earth and everything you want can be replicated or transported, you'd probably take that for granted and react negatively to not getting EVERYTHING you want. Good and bad are subjective, so this isn't a case of losing the flavor of good and bad, but just having different standards. You're still just as capable of appreciating your own good and bad, unless those emotions have been removed from you somehow.

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Psychiatrists say that when you're in love, you're temporarirly insane.

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Then I should hope to be insane the rest of my life.

I'd like to discuss this further but with only four more minutes before I need to leave, it's really not worth it. But I plan to come back to this, it's an interesting topic.

Does this mean its unhealthy to reject emotions?

Cuz if so, I'm VERY unhealthy.

I could go into detail about why I consider emotion weakness, but I say we finish the colour spectrum idea first.

We can always come back to the spectrum idea, it isn't going anywhere.

Denying emotion is generally unhealthy.

Controlling your emotions until a better time and place to deal with them is extremely healthy. This allows one to act logically despite illogical feelings, it allows oneself to be in control, not one's emotions.

So please expound on your idea of denying emotions.

Jimro

Ok. You asked for it. And I even warned you.

I see emotions as weakness because they mean you cannot control yourself. If you cry, you cannot control the feelings of unhappiness. Feelings are artificial, and they really aren't nessacary (sp?) and generally provoke a feeling of scorn among others. When something happens, isn't it better to act rather then waste time by succumbing to your emotions? If you have unpleseant memories, isn't it better to not care so they don't emotionally effect you?

Interestingly enough, Rebbe, a few years back I generally felt cut off from my emotions, and was left with a fairly dead feeling inside, where I wasn't affected particularly by various things happening aroundme. I could cite suspected reasons for this, but that is beside the point. A couple of years ago, I developed a bit of a theory on emotions - that intensity of feeling worked both ways. Basically, I wasn't really going to be happy at any time unless I was prepared to feel as intensely sad at others. I also figured that killing off my emotions also kills off a certain amount of who I am, especially in a social sense. To a certain degree, I basically rationalised that not having emotions was not something I really wanted, and so started unlocking my emotions more.

I'm not saying that I'm right in my conclusions, but I can sympathise with your position. I would just say that there is a difference to not feeling emotions and being able to control what effect emotions have on you. I would say that it is better to experience emotions, but know when to ignore them, than to shut them out completely, and maybe you'll reach the same conclusion, or maybe you won't. I would certainly say that I appreciate my life a lot more these days than I did previously, even if the quality has not improved that much.

Just as a final comment, the absence of emotion is a common symptom of depression, so be slightly careful on seeing emotions as a weakness. While depressed people tend to have better awareness of their capabilities, they also tend to be more suicidal, and more isolated/introverted, since they fail to see any reason in continuing living, or interacting with others. I wouldn't say this is necessarily the case for you - I wouldn't have said it was the case for me either although I sometimes wonder - but just be slightly cautious of dismissing emotions entirely

I see emotions as weakness because they mean you cannot control yourself. If you cry, you cannot control the feelings of unhappiness. Feelings are artificial, and they really aren't nessacary (sp?) and generally provoke a feeling of scorn among others. When something happens, isn't it better to act rather then waste time by succumbing to your emotions? If you have unpleseant memories, isn't it better to not care so they don't emotionally effect you?
To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.

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I would just say that there is a difference to not feeling emotions and being able to control what effect emotions have on you.

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The problem is, I am very suceptibal (sp?) to my emotions, causing me to be easily frustrated. I also used to get upset easily. Since I can't control my emotions, I simply deny them.

And yes I am depressed. Its a proven fact. But I'm also pessimistic, and I believe I have no talents.

Don't worry, I've only seriously considered suicide once, and that was years ago. When I was in GRADE THREE. So I won't be killing myself any time soon. But this is centered on me, so lets move on to something else.

If hate defines love, does love define hate?

I think that you don't want to "deny" your emotions so much as you want to "control" your emotions.

Denying your emotions is a sure way to become ruled by them. Eventually the pressure builds up and that uncontrollable crying will happen. It is better to deal with your emotions at an appropriate time in an appropriate way.

Pick up a copy of "Feeling Good" by David Burns, MD. It cannot hurt you to read it, and it might do some major good.

Jimro

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To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.

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Maybe yes, maybe no. When you really think about it, animals have feelings too. They just don't display their emotions the way we do since they lack the intellience capacity to do so. I mean, tell me a kitty isn't happy when their contently purring on your lap. What about kittens who cry for their mom? ...yeah I know...I've got a big soft spot for those cute little furry animals *hugs the kitties*

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If hate defines love, does love define hate?

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Well, if that were the case, the two would be synonimous, and so would indeed define each other...

Anyway, I would see hate and love as two of the most intense emotions possible - maxP on the PCM scale - with only positivity and negativity distinguishing them. Because of this, love and hate can be very similar in terms of obsession, and there are several cases of one switching to the other. So love and hate are very similar interms of definition.

As for denying our own impulses implying that we deny our own humanity, I certainly didn't feel as though I was not human when I was denying my emotions. I don't believe it is a good thing to do all the time, and reduces quality of life to an extent, but it does not stop you being human - although it can make you harder to relate to, and so others may suggest that your actions are "non-human". In any case, as Mau pointed out, emotions/impulses are commmon to other animals as well, and to suggest we have sufficiently different impulses to make ourselves distinguishable from other species may be slightly arrogant and difficult to justify - I would suggest the differences lie elsewhere...

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I would suggest the differences lie elsewhere...

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Nicely worded. I think the real differences lay in how emotions are expressed. As a christian, I believe they are they are there for a reason. Unlike animals, we can control our own emotional impulses. We can also interpret them into music, art, poetry, writing. Animals can create music and art, (dolphins painting and dogs playing keyboard) but in all honestly I doubt they know entirely what their doing.
Humans have the choice to allow themselves to be dominated by their emotions or not, to make choices, to allow their actions instead to dominate their emotions. Animals I think are far more dominated by emotions, and a lot of it is how they are treated, ALTHOUGH that can ALSO affect humans. Humans however are more fixable when it comes to experiancing abuse early in life, animals aren't. That's why on the Animal cops shows on Animal Planet, a lot of dogs are put to sleep because they develop different kinds of aggression that make them unsafe to adopt. This isn't their fault, it's the fault of the owner. Animals can't understand as we do, that's why psychological councelling doesn't work on them at all. But I AM about to contradict myself here, there WAS someone who called herself a cat therapist, she was able to fix a cat's problems to make them more emotionally stable. But my point is, what makes us human isn't our emotions, it's how we use them, it's the fact that we can interpret them, and learn to control our own impulses, that put us above animals. Yes, I do believe to a certain extent we're animals, but you cannot however, say that animals are human.

The problem is, I am very suceptibal (sp?) to my emotions, causing me to be easily frustrated. I also used to get upset easily. Since I can't control my emotions, I simply deny them.
So basically you think everyone is weak because of your problem. Obviously, there are times when emotions are best controlled, but not all the time. There is no way I could have enjoyed my recent trip to France if I had been controlling my emotions the whole time. Plus girls generally tend to prefer more emotional guys, so that's always important. There's a difference between controlling your emotions so they aren't outwardly shown at awkward times, and simply refusing to feel anything. Indifference and apathy are't strength.

If hate defines love, does love define hate?
Passion defines both.

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There's a difference between controlling your emotions so they aren't outwardly shown at awkward times, and simply refusing to feel anything. Indifference and apathy are't strength.

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Agreed. There are appropriate times when to express certain emotions and when not to. People need emotions, we wouldn't have them if we didn't need them. Though...there are times when I'd rather not have emotions...we won't get into that though...

Well, in general I suspect people would prefer to experience positive emotions without experiencing negative ones, but I reckon that you can't have one without the other. Also, in terms of the intensity, or passion, of the emotions you experience, the level tends to be equal both ways. Hence, if you tend to be an emotional person, you will either love or hate something (severe generalisation), while a less emotional person will like or dislike, or even just be apathetic. So, in that sense, in order to love you also need to be capable of hate, which is not something people tend to want.

On Mau's previous point about animals, I would suggest that our ability to understand, rationalise, and so control emotions is one advantage we seem to have over animals, or at least our sophistication of understanding. In terms of the cat psychologist, I would suggest that is more down to understanding the motivations of cats, and so manipulating their behaviour based on that, than the cat identifying a problem itself. Of course, we are far from above such understanding ourselves - just look at Derren Brown...

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Indifference and apathy are't strength.

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This is actually an interesting idea. In my opinion they are.

But deep down inside, the me I'm covering up OBVIOUSLY doesn't think so.

Because whenever I try to express this idea in poetry or fic writing, it always turns out all right in the end.

But that's not the point.

The point is, do we subconsiouly know what is the right thing to do with our emotions?

Well, we might not know the right things, but we can generally figure out what we think does not work. Might be worth listening to yourself on occasion, as if you're fighting with yourself, that tends not to be too good for you...

*grins* Since when do I care about my health?

*gets back on topic*

Can having negative emotions effect you if you are sick or if you are suffering from an injury?

There's a certain amount to suggest that people heal better if they believe that they will get better, and it has been obsrved that animals will often "give up" on life due to some injury or illness when, with appropriate care from a vet, they could most likely survive and live a subsequently normal life. So it does appear that mental states affect how well we cope with injury/disease, but whether that equates to emotions, or even if emotions are symptomatic of the cause of the difference, is questionable.

Still, there does seem to be reasonable evidence to suggest that positive emotions, or at least some sense of wanting to live, helps survival chances in life-threatening situations.